Who is responsible for filling openings in your schedule? Many dental teams respond by motioning toward a stressed-out member of the front office team who has regular nightmares about cancellations.
But if you ask the same question to high-performing teams, they answer by raising their hands. When empowered appropriately, the entire dental team can make something happen, meaning the clinical and front teams both play a role in filling the schedule.
I work with many practices where the team regularly reviews upcoming openings in the schedule. Then if a current day’s patient needs to get scheduled for treatment, the dentist and team can guide that person toward a specific day.
And if the current day has openings that never filled, the team can potentially guide a hygiene patient in need of treatment to get it done after the cleaning. Also, alert teams look ahead and remind people about unscheduled family members, which often results in scheduling overdue patients.
Since the schedule affects the entire dental team, doesn’t it make sense to empower everyone to keep the schedule healthy? Empowered teams focus less on problems and more on solutions. And without question the team approach is the solution to keeping your schedule as vibrant as possible.
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