Do your aspirations match your operations?

When you first become a business owner, your energy is high, it is exciting, and you finally have the opportunity to realise your aspirations and vision.  As a clinician running a business, your focus is on your patient and the business. Each of these areas requires your full attention and are both equally important. It is critical that you give each area your full attention or you run the risk of being swamped and not able to make good decisions that sadly can take you off course from realising your vision and fulfilling your aspirations.

To avoid this, you need:

1.    Vision, plan, strategy and goals

2.    Motivation, willpower and leadership

3.    Great people that share your vision and work with you in achieving your goals.

4.    Watertight clinical and business systems that are in synergy with each other.

You are a highly skilled clinician running a business and you wouldn’t be normal if you weren’t investing in the latest equipment and/or training to fulfil your aspirations of being the best, being a leader, being the provider of highly skilled treatments in your area.

As part of my work, I get my sleeves rolled up and get to know my clients’ patients and I receive the most valuable feedback, way more than bog-standard survey’s. A common question I ask them is what is your experience of your dentist that makes you feel comfortable with them. They list things like they listen, they take time, they are better than my last dentist, they have great equipment, a comfortable waiting area, nice coffee, friendly staff, etc. In one practice when I called a few patients to get some feedback – the patient was saying nice things in general but had been kept waiting and was messed about with an appointment. He concluded our call to say they were very nice, but he didn’t feel the ‘operations matched their aspirations’. So, this was a patient who was feeling that what the practice portrayed was different to his experience. This particular practice had gone through some staffing changes and it was a typical scenario that I see time and time again of systems and ‘way of doing things’ being diluted.

Now this is where it gets interesting

Every practice I have worked with has purchased the latest and greatest gadget or equipment at some point and although I’ve demonstrated patients are aware of you investing in equipment, the biggest judgement they make is on the service provided to them and how that has made them feel. It is about their experience. 

Digitising dentistry is very powerful to the patient understanding their mouth and oral conditions AND for it to be highly successful it needs to be designed into the whole patient journey, to optimise your case acceptance, gain optimum clinical results and to build the best patient experiences.

Now, the aspirations of many dental entrepreneurs vary, but a common theme is they want to be different in some way or do it better than their previous place of work. It could be to create a complete digital experience, or a boutique hotel feel and experience and within both of these, you could consider things like providing a relaxing patient lounge, have lovely coffee, fresh flowers, pampering treatments, excellent diagnostic tools, providing their patients with high-end treatments etc. 

Most businesses set out with the intention to fulfil their vision of the business when they begin their journey but maintaining that is a whole different story.

Whatever it is that was in your vision at the beginning or indeed is your vision now you need to truly understand what that means to your patient experience. You need to be able to walk the patient journey in their shoes to design the ideal patient experience and the key to ensure consistency is to keep working on it, refining it and continuously evaluating it.

So, how do you match your operations with your aspirations?

1. Map out your processes - you need to have maps of all your clinical and business processes. E.g., New patient appointment - How is that call handled? How does the schedule support the appointment? What information is sent to the patient? Do you send relevant blogs according to their interest? How are the clinicians prepared for this patient beyond their name and chief concern? How is the patient welcomed and how do they flow through the treatment coordinator and clinicians to ultimately receive their treatment plan? This has to be mapped so that it can be repeated with consistency.

There are around 20 or so processes like the above that should be mapped out.

When you are creating a 5* environment you should also map out little things so that the service is constantly 5*. E.g., How you serve your coffee or how you offer them extras such as music choice during their treatment etc.? It’s the little things your patients notice. You may be familiar with Paddi Lund who refers to this as the critical non-essentials. 

2. Nurture your people because they hold the key to all your business and clinical processes that support your business. You need a good onboarding process so that you attract the right people. Your team need to be lead and need to feel empowered to take responsibility. It isn’t good enough to teach your people the processes of your business; they need to care about every facet of the business for it to mean the same to them as it does to you. 

Patients often see many different clinicians in a course of treatment and you should map this process so that every clinician understands the whole treatment plan and can the patient see or feel no disconnect. If a new clinician comes on board they need to take the time to understand the history of the patient so they can maintain consistency as best as they can.

If you have a bonus or reward scheme, don’t base it on sales alone.

Rewards on the financial gain will encourage money as the driver. When businesses are designed well, focus on serving your patient within your designed systems and the money will follow! When you base it only on finance, what happens to the care and effort if they don’t receive their incentive? Reward on their effort, their care, the extra mile they go. Incentivising behaviours and attitudes are more aligned to encourage the desired behaviour and/or attitude.

What happens when you get new people? What is your quality assurance measure to ensure they uphold the quality of your operation?

3. Deliver the highest quality clinical treatment and care to your patients. Tell them everything you are doing, how you are pleased with the result and always build value into the next appointment. Always have full awareness of the business processes and make sure the advice you give your patients is harmonious with the business processes so you support the whole patient experience map. E.g. don’t tell a patient you will see them next week if you have no awareness of your schedule availability.  As the clinical business owner, you will be driven to do the best because you aspire to do so. You need to ensure your team replicate the same level of care to the patient that they have received from you.

I once had feedback from a patient that the Dr was amazing, but his support staff didn’t put in the same level of attention. The poor Dr was carrying all the weight on the success of this. 

4. Discuss service and patient experience in your team meetings – don’t only discuss statistics and goals, discuss the service you provide and how you can keep that at a level where your patients are having great experiences. How can you continue to meet and exceed patient expectations?

Are you new in business and keen to get this right?

Do you own a practice and have experienced the challenges that I shared?

#Dentistry #ForDentists #LoveYourDentistry #PatientJourneyDesign