Hey there, this is Rich, Dr. Richard Madow. Welcome back to the next installment. Installment -- that sounds kind of weird like you’re on some kind of installment plan, but I guess you are. Welcome back to the next installment in the Mega-Bundle package, this is module number 11 which is about running an efficient dental practice and so much of running an efficient dental practice is never running late. So we're going to spend a considerable amount of time on how not to run late, but we're also talking about a number of great tips so you can run your dental practice more efficiently.
When you run your dental practice more efficiently, what happens? The patients are happier, the team is happier, the doctor is happier, the overhead goes down, and more money comes in. There are so many better things about running your dental practice efficiently, so I guess in the name of efficiency we should get going now.
As you can tell, I'm in… Actually, you might not know where this is, but I'll tell you. I'm in the actual Madow Brothers world headquarters in Reisterstown, Maryland right now this is our conference room. We’ve got some TBSE guitars on the wall, little pictures -- this is when Dave and I did a fantastic speaking engagement in North Carolina they actually put us in the PNC Arena, the same place where they have their major rock concerts. It was really fun. I remember Barry Manilow was playing there, I think the next day or that night. So as we were packing up, his big trucks were pulling up and our little tour bus which is some midsize rental car was pulling on out of there driving ourselves, so that was fun. Yes, we've got our BS Leaders in Dental Consulting plaque. I don't know what else to do with these things, so we just hang them up here in our conference room. We've got some motivational quotes over there, some TBSE pictures there, you can't see. Speaking of efficiency, again you can't see we've got a big corkboard over here where we organize all of our speaking gigs, so we can always know any time where we're going to be on any given day. All kinds of fun stuff in our conference room, but I like doing it in front of these out of tune TBSE guitars.
So, Hats of Dentistry, Hats of Dentistry and this one was at our 20th anniversary one in Miami Beach. Okay, so let's move on and start talking about the efficient dental practice and as I've said a significant amount of time is going to be spent on how not to run late. Why is it so important to never run late? Let's take a different and angle on that, what does it say to your patients if you're constantly running late? It says two things, it says we have no idea how to run our schedule and organized our practice and even worse it says we are not considerate of your time, our time is more important than your time. Now, you don't feel that we, of course, you are very considerate of your patient time, but if you constantly run late, that's the message you send to them. So why would you ever want to send that message to your patients? Now will patients ever actually leave your practice if you are constantly running late? Well, I'll tell you something, they will. They won't tell you that's why they are leaving your practice, but they will leave your practice if you're constantly running late and not only that they certainly -- even if they stay in your practice they certainly will not refer their friends or family to your practice if you're constantly running late.
So I'll tell you a quick story. Many, many years ago I had bad allergies. I woke up every morning with runny eyes, stuffed up nose, little sinus ache,.I had big dark circles under my eyes. I think they're a bit better now, but I had big dark circles under my eyes so I went to see an allergist. Being from Baltimore, of course, we’re the home of the best hospital in the world, right? Johns Hopkins hospitals. So you know we all start searching for the best allergist in Baltimore which typically mean best in the world, so I saw this allergist, the guy was supposed to be fantastic and he diagnosed after given me 50 zillion sticks in my arm. I had a ton of allergies, you know, trees and moss and molds -- I don’t even remember what they were. So I have to come in every week to get my allergy shot and every single time they were running late. I mean I'd sit in that waiting room 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. It was ridiculous and one day I walked up to the nice woman in front of us and said, “you know this practice is great, but you run late all the time and it's not really working well with my schedule. I'd like to be seen as the first patient of the day, schedule my next appointment… can you make me the first patient of the day?” And she said, “absolutely we can make it the 9 o'clock patient, but...” I'm just calling him Dr. X. I don't want to rat out anybody, “but Dr. X doesn't get here until 9:40 so even if you come in at 9 until about 9:40.” I’m like, “you've got to be kidding me.” This is the way, I mean, I did not say this, but that doesn't sound right to me. So I said, “Okay I'll tell you what how about if I come in 9:40. I'll be here 9:35 make me the 9:40 appointment and when Dr. X comes in he can see me right away.” She says, “well, I can make it the 9:40 appointment, but when Dr. X comes in at 9:40 he starts with the 9 o'clock patient first.” This is not going to work for me so I looked at her and I said, “Hey, you know what I don't think this is going to work for me. Can you recommend an allergist that always runs on time?” and she thought for a second and, sure enough, sent me to an allergist just a few blocks down the street, the competition. I left the practice and she referred me to the "competition” because this great Dr. X was always running late. Now was the doctor I went to see after Dr. X as good often allergist? I have no idea. They don't make you better anyway. After three years of shots, I still have the same allergies. Did he always run on time? Absolutely. So just an illustration of what can happen when you run late, patients feel slighted they weren't referred and they actually will leave your practice.
So now let's talk about a bunch of ways we'll do the big finale kind of at the end but a bunch of things you can do to ensure you never run late in your practice. First of all, please be realistic when you're logging appointment times, I know the doctors are all big studs and studdesses - the female version of a stud? We’re all studs and lionesses -- whatever we want to call ourselves. “Oh, I have a patient who needs two cores and two crowns I could do that in 35 minutes.” Be realistic when you're allowing appointments. Remember, the patient has to get numb, you have to do the core the crown, the temporary, the impression, give them some time to relax and sit up and rinse out and ask questions and you want to be nice and use social skills. So again don't overestimate and waste time, but be realistic when you question appointment time. We know some doctors and practices actually have a little stopwatch and they time how long it takes them to do each procedure if you want to do that’s fine just be realistic.
Also, some patients waste your time, you may want to call these patients pitas, not pita bread, I think you know what PITA stands for pain in the... You know what that means, so some patients are pitas, but you know what? These patients, sometimes they need the most love and they need the most attention. they need you to talk to them and reassure them. They are good people, but if you know of patient’s a PITA, they're going to ask one million questions. They're going to need to sit up every minute and cough and gag and go to the bathroom at the worst times -- know which patients are pitas and allow them the proper amount of time for your appointment because they will hold the schedule behind.
Now if a patient's a real jerk, you can even charge like a nuisance fee just to make up for your time, but I'm not saying you should do that, but, at least, know which patients are going to require more time. Give them the time they need. Everybody's different. Dentistry is not cookie-cutter. Let's treat everybody like the individualized real human being that they are.
Also, how not to run late, don't dilly-dally in the clinical area of the practice. What do I mean by dilly-dallying? You know, Dave and I have been in hundreds of practices. We’ve watched, we’ve observed some doctors of highly- skilled levels, great doctors, they’ll do their crown preps and it looks great and they'll come out and sit back and just stare [?]. Just go around it one more time, kind of ceremoniously. It doesn't even do anything - look at it again, take out the burn- don't dilly-dally! Do what you got to do, you know, the more you dilly-dally, the more you ruin your crown preps, whatever it is that you're doing.
Kind of reminds me of dental school. I remember way back in basic dental science lab that's what we called the first year dental lab where we learned on ivorine teeth. That's what we call it in the University of Maryland. I doubt they still call it that, but basic dental science lab we had a practical, an exam where you had to do an amalgam prep, an occlusive amalgam prep and that they would give you three hours and it would take about ten minutes to do the prep. I remember one time I asked one of the professors, I said, “why do you give us three hours to do this amalgam prep?” he said, “basically, we give you ten minutes to do the prep and then two hours and 50 minutes to screw the thing up.” And it's so true when you dilly-dally and look again and, again and again. Half the time you're just messing things up, so do it quickly, do it right the first time stop dilly-dallying.
Okay, in another module which was about cancelations and no-shows, we discussed what to do with patients who always run late, how to put them on the VIP list. Sometimes with a patient that shows, but they run late, they don't cancel, they don't know sure, but they always run 15 minutes late. we do what's called giving the patient the arrow. The arrow term we developed it in my practice. There sophisticated term. It's from way back when we did the schedules on paper, we would give the patient… let's say that they needed a three o'clock appointment, so if we know a patient was always 15 minutes late, we’d give them the arrow. We’d write them in at 3 o o'clock but then draw like a red arrow looping up pointing to 2:45 so everybody would know this patient's appointment is 3 o'clock. But when we tell them the appointment time we tell them 2:45, when we confirm, when we do all that stuff they think their appointment is at 2:45 -- it's actually 3 o'clock because we've given them the arrow. Nowadays you can do it electronically, the electronic arrow, but it's just a way to easily handle those people just… And you know who they are they just always are 15 minutes late, so give them the arrow, which a lot of times brings up the question what do we do when the arrow patient is on time? Well, don't tell them you gave them the arrow -- that ruins the whole thing, take them back make them numb, do the x-rays, do something for them, clip their bib on, get them started with something so they… but then, you know, let him sit for a few… whatever you figure don't let them sit in the reception area for 15 minutes because then they'll be 30 minutes late next time, so give the arrow.
Another way to probably never run late, but also be more clinically efficient we call it being like Sonny Lee. Now many of you know if you watched some of these modules, especially if you're one of our powerhouse members, you know that very often our studio is in the back of a Chinese restaurant and there is a beautiful fish tank back here. That is Sonny Lee’s [?] Taste, the best Chinese restaurant in Reisterstown, Maryland. It's not a very crowded field, but it's a great place probably the best in northwest Baltimore, great place. Sonny Lee is the owner and he's executive chef and a lot of times he's the host as well. He knows everybody in there. You come in, he's friendly, he shakes your hand, he kisses your baby, he's just a great… And he's really authentic, really does mean it, he's a great guy. But something else that Dave and I noticed about Sonny Lee he's got a fairly large restaurant: he's got two main rooms, he’s got a sushi bar, he's got like a back party room. He knows everything that's going on in there at all times. He knows what the people at table three are eating, he knows that table seven left a bad tip, he knows what kind of sushi people at the sushi bar ordered, he knows the customer table three gets up to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes, he knows the favorite dish of his regular customers, and he knows who comes in every week, every month. He always knows it every second -- we've talked to him about this. It's really true, he knows every single thing, he knows what's been packed in the kitchen, he knows which busboy is on break - so he can have somebody else go fill the tea - he knows every single thing that's going on in that place at every single time. And I think dentists, we tend to be maybe in our own little zone, we’re in our treating room and we have no idea what's going on in the rest of the office. If you want to run a really efficient dental practice, you've got to be like Sonny Lee. This is something you can discuss in the morning. You need to know what's going on in every single treatment room at all times. If an emergency is put in you, need to know, if somebody's a walk-in, you need to know everything if you want to run efficiently. You need to know what's going on,.You cannot bury yourself in your treatment room and metaphorically close the door and shut yourself off to the rest of the world, because then you're in there and everybody else in the practice needs you for something that would take five seconds or you need to make a decision about something or just know what's going on or just can even stop by to say hi to patients which is great for your internal marketing, so to speak. So be like Sonny Lee. Don’t shut yourself off, always know what's going on in your practice every second.