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By Dr. Sami Bahri, DDS
Why prioritizing certain production efforts will help improve your bottom line
Recently, I watched a video of a presentation by Stephen Covey, author of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He was helping a member of the audience in filling a jar with a combination of large and small stones. When the participant placed the small stones first, no room was left in the jar to place the large stones. But when she placed the large stones first, the jar easily fit all the stones, large and small. The lesson: Do the important things first. You will be able to fit more work into your schedule, and your team members will enjoy their work. They will be more productive and less tired.
So, what are those important things when it comes to improving productivity? After decades of research and trial and error, I found some simple, easy to apply principles:
Improve the layout to reduce patient movement inside the practice
When we began dividing treatment among dentists, hygienists and assistants, patient movement inside the office increased. Reducing this movement considerably improves productivity. You will invest much less time and money in training employees and in writing manuals or supervising execution – just create a functional layout.
In case you are building a new facility, sterilization and supplies should go in the center, and the chairs around them. If you have an existing facility, hopefully you can get around remodeling it by keeping patients in the chair, and have employees come to them for treatment. This increases employee motion, but it is more efficient than patient movement.
Give the work to those who have the skills to do it efficiently
This greatly reduces treatment time and becomes important when the schedule is busy. In slow times, however, and within the limits of patient comfort, you might want to give the work to an assistant who needs training.
Get everyone to help in patient treatment, all the time
Everyone should give precedence to treating those patients who are in the chairs over such activities as cleaning rooms and instruments, or making a phone call. That is a big factor in productivity improvement, and a major reason for continuous cross training.
Perform same day, total treatment
We call it “One-patient flow.” Once we start treating a mouth, the most efficient and economical treatment method for both practice and patient is to finish all the treatment in one appointment, then move the patient to the hygiene recall cycle.
Those are the important factors in improving productivity, the big stones that Steven Covey recommends doing first. Although important, things such as creating systems, training for sales and customer service skills come second to the factors described above. We all try to speed our specific treatments. However, using everyone’s help to distribute the work load over a greater number of people, and “One-patient flow” have a greater impact.
