PILLARS TO MODERNIZE 7 - Weave...Pillars to odernie Your Practice 5 Are you holding your staff...

PILLARS TO MODERNIZE

YOUR PRACTICE

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7 Pillars to Modernize Your Practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 3

Familiarity 4

Accountability 5

Data Management 6

Analytics 7

Adaptability 8

CommunicationControl 9

Simplicity 10

Conclusion 11

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Dental offices are busy places. The front office and back office have to work together seamlessly to best treat every patient who walks through the door. Business practices today may be a little different than they were 20, 10 or even five years ago, but the ultimate goal is always the same — to build positive relationships between your dentists, your office staff members and every single patient you treat.

While each and every dental office is a little different, most patients all want the same thing. Patients want to feel valued, to receive the best quality treatment and for the overall process to be simple and carefree. This short e-book discusses seven pillars to modernize your practice —simple ways you can make sure your current business practices and client relationships are up to date with 21st

century expectations.

INTRODUCTION

Patients want to feel valued, to receive the best quality

treatment and for the overall process to be simple and carefree.


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FAMILIARITY

Familiarity is the act of building actual relationships between your staff and your patients so that each feels a connection that extends beyond the job at hand. However, this is one of the most difficult things to accomplish. Think about it: Could you write down the names of all your siblings, nieces, nephews and friends without difficulty? Have you memorized the names of all of your patients? If you cannot do it, why do you think your staff can do it? Depending on the size of your practice, becoming intimately familiar with every patient may be difficult, if not impossible.

As competition continually grows, you must find some way to stand out from the crowd. Providing familiarity to your patients is one way to do this. When your patients walk in the door, they should feel valued and essential to the practice. Even if you do not always know who every patient is or know something special about each one, your patients should think that you do. When they feel that you know them, patients feel valued. When all services are equal, this type of relationship-building will make you stand out from the crowd.

You accomplish this by building a relationship at every single opportunity. Take the time to make connections with patients and make them more than just a name and a face. However, with your busy practice, you will need to take note of these interactions and create digital connections. That way, when you pick up the patient’s file next time, you will have a reminder of who the patient is — beyond simply someone who stopped by the office to have his or her teeth cleaned.


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Are you holding your staff members accountable for every task you are paying them to complete? If not, what is holding you back? Keeping your staff accountable is the key to assuring that all patients are treated with the same level of care that you would provide if you were the one to answer the phone, pull the files or clean their teeth.

To keep up with modern times and stay ahead of the competition, your staff should:

• Answer every phone call in three rings or less.

• Log every phone call into your software program — so you have access to

this data.

• Avoid placing patients on hold, since all information should be available.

• Never ask how to spell a name or require a patient to repeat information.

• Find opportunities for relationship-building on every phone call.

• Know all outstanding appointments for household members.

• Know birthdays and other important facts about household members.

• Have information handy about account balances — to answer any

questions.

While this may seem like something for front office staff to do, it is important that anyone who interacts with patients (from receptionists to hygienists to dental assistants) be held accountable, too. Accountability will go a long way toward helping improve relationships between your staff members and every patient who walks into your office. The right technology solutions can make it easier for your staff to do the tasks listed above, and it can make it easier for you to hold staff accountable —

creating a win-win scenario.

Accountability will go a long way toward helping improve

relationships between your staff members and every patient who walks into your office.

ACCOUNTABILITY


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Are critical pieces of information slipping through the cracks? Chances are this is happening because you are not properly managing data in your office. Are you using a paper-based system, a paperless system or some system that combines the two? No matter which method you use, it is possible for data to slip through your fingers unless you have a good system in place to catch it all.

The average office misses 17 opportunities each week to set up an additional appointment. Unless you have technology in place to find all of this data, you may not know how any revenue opportunities are slipping through your office. You need one simple, central system so that you can quickly access all of the data in the moment. Not only will it help you in the day-to-day operations of your office, but the big data picture will help you plan for the future and grow your practice.

To stay up to date and to turn a profit, your front office will need to act on every possible revenue opportunity. This means capturing data and finding ways to turn these missed opportunities into potential appointments. Data management may not be fun, but it is the key

to avoiding missed opportunities and big mistakes in your dental practice.

DATA MANAGEMENT


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So you have the data under control — or at least you are bringing it into your files. However, what do you do with the data once you have it? Analytics are essential to helping your dental practice grow and expand. If you want insight into the moves your office staff is making, or you want to know the metrics to which you should be holding your staff accountable in the first place, analytics are the answer.

Data-driven decisions are the best decisions for your practice. Even if you are someone who uses your heart when you make business decisions, you need to check with what the data says now and then just to make sure you do not run your business and, in turn, yourself into the ground by mistake. To do this, you need data that you can understand. You need software that can take all of the data you collect and turn it into plain English. After all, numbers and figures probably do not mean a whole lot to you. A good analytics tool will put things into a form that is easy to read or understand.

Not every analytics program is the same. Spend time looking over all of the benefits that a program will bring your practice, and make sure that the bottom line is patient satisfaction. After all, all of the data and analysis tools in the world are worthless if you wind up focusing on the numbers too much, and the people wind up getting lost in the shuffle.

ANALYTICS


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ADAPTABILITY

Are you interacting with your patients in the way that they want? You cannot always do the same things just because they worked in the past. Compared to 10 years ago, your patients are communicating in many different ways. While many of these changes are simply a matter of how they communicate with friends, it is also a change in how they interact with businesses like yours, too.

Think about it. Your patients use text messaging, social media and email to stay in touch with the world around them. How do they know when a significant event is occurring? Likely, they get texts from friends or check their social media networks of choice for reminders. These modern patients may not even answer their phones when you call with an appointment reminder. A phone is much more than a phone these days. If you want to reach your patients and stay in touch with them on a personal basis, you will have to be adaptable. Becoming modern means being adaptable — every step of the way.

Be open to changes, and do not use the same program you used 10 years ago. It just will not work — at least not on a large scale. However, at the same time, do not go crazy with your modernization, either. Remember that some of your patients may not have gone modern. You want those patients to feel comfortable, too, so be adaptable to their needs, too.

If you want to reach your patients and stay in touch with them on a personal basis, you will have to be adaptable. Becoming modern means

being adaptable — every step of the way.


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Who controls the inbound and outbound calls for your practice? Someone needs to be the one who is ultimately in control of what calls come into and out of the practice. If you cannot monitor them yourself, make sure someone who is responsible and knowledgeable can do something about it. Do check the in- and outgoing lines from time to time to make sure all communications are held to the same high standard to which you would hold yourself.

Communication includes what is said in person, too. Do your staff members have a script that they can reference or at least some answers to frequently asked questions? It can help them avoid uncomfortable silences and awkward moments that could make them appear unprofessional. While you certainly can’t control every word that is spoken, you can at least have an idea what might be said and help prepare for those occasions.

Finally, remember that what is said online may actually affect your practice more than any other form of communication. Are you monitoring what your patients are saying online? In the modern world, a patient can blast a bad experience all over the Internet. When this happens, it can actually be out there not just for a day or a week but forever. You cannot escape a bad review. While you may not be able to prevent every single bad review, you can do something to prevent many of them. Be active in any online forums where your practice is mentioned — that way, your patients realize that you care and that their issues are a serious priority, too.

COMMUNICATION CONTROL


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While all of the above pillars are important, there are simply not enough hours in the day to get it all done. After all, how many hours are you open — maybe eight? How many staff members do you have? Not enough!

A modern software program can enter the picture, modernize your practice and, yes, simplify things. All of these best practices will occur, and they’ll occur with little effort by you. A good software setup can help keep your current staff working smarter, not harder, and give you more time to devote to your patients.

Look for a dental software program that keeps all of your patient files in one central space — in the cloud. You can extract the data you need, analyze it, and even see how your staff is interacting with patients using the cloud saved files. Having a software that allows you to go online and check out your brand from the inside saves you revenue and time.

When you implement Weave, you have simplicity — and the other six pillars fall into place, too. Your dental practice will operate smoothly, and your patients will get the high level of care that they deserve every time they come into your office, call for an appointment or even stop by your social media page to find out what is new. That broad level of care and relationship-building is unlike anything else

out there. That is the Weave difference and what sets this setup apart from other software solutions that currently exist.

SIMPLICITY


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While each of these seven pillars can help modernize your practice and improve client relationships on their own, putting them all together enables you to accomplish more than you ever thought possible. With the right technology solution in place, building client relationships does not have to be a challenge.

If you would like to learn more about simplifying the patient experience as you modernize your practice, reach out to Weave. This relationship-building platform is the ideal way to strengthen the ties between front office, back office and patient, helping you bring your office into the 21st century — and beyond.

CONCLUSION

PILLARS TO MODERNIZE 7 - Weave...Pillars to odernie Your Practice 5 Are you holding your staff...

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