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38 Dental Tribune Middle East & Africa Edition | March-April 2015practice management Eniko Simon Dr Roze & Associates Dental Clinic Dental Business Manager Consultant eniko@dradubai.com Contact Information important as the patient feels we do care about them – a little extra effort that makes a differ- ence. I believe the treatment coordi- nator greatly helps to reduce the dentists ` non clinical time with the patient, helps to provide an outstanding patient care in your clinic and by this achieve in- creased treatment acceptance and increased profit. If you wish to implement the role of a treatment coordina- tor or would like to get to know more about how a TCO could help your clinic, please contact me – I am happy to answer any questions. In the centre of attention – How to run a patient centered dental clinic By Eniko Simon D uring my work advising dental practices, many practice owners com- plain about not having enough patients, or that patients do not return for treatment. It is a com- mon problem in any dental busi- ness. In this article I wish to share some tips to help to reduce these problems and explain how could a patient centered clinic management approach and en- hanced patient journey aid the success of a dental business. Treatment Acceptance Whenever we decide to buy a product or a service we do it for one simple reason; we decide to buy as it offers a solution for our problem- we buy a laptop as we want to work on the go, we buy a mobile phone so people can reach us anywhere. Dentistry is no different – your patient will buy the treatment as long as it provides a solution to her/his problem and the deci- sion has to be your patient`s. The following simple steps can aid the treatment acceptance in your clinic: • Focus on the “Why” - Why has the patient decided to come and visit the dentist. I have learned as a “treatment coordinator” that the patient is not buying the dental implant; he/she is buying a solution to not having a re- movable denture, or a solution that closest to a natural tooth to replace a missing one. • Don’t talk but listen – Ask open questions to gain a good under- standing of what causing the concern to the patient. It will be much easier to provide a solu- tion when you understand the problem. • Offer solutions – as soon as you understand the patient’s concern offer a solution that is clearly solves the problem by highlighting the benefits of the treatment. “ By having a dental implant we achieve a fix, stable, long term solution to replace a missing tooth/teeth”. • Reassurance – To reassure your patient show before and after pictures to allow them to visualize the potential outcome of the treatment. Provide them with testimonials from other patients who went through the same procedure. • Make the treatment possible – Here we are talking about the financial side. This is the most challenging part; you should not provide your services too cheap- ly as by this you as a dentist un- der value yourself, however we need to make sure we can help the patient afford the treatment. We can do this by offering dif- ferent payment options to the patient. • Implement the role of the treatment coordinator in your practice – It can be one of the nurse or one of the receptionist who is trained as a treatment coordinator or has some experi- ence. The treatment coordinator plays a vital role in increasing treatment acceptance. The Role of the Treatment Coor- dinator The treatment coordinator role has grown steadily in the US and UK in the past 10 years. The treatment coordinator is not only there to assist the dentist in preparing and presenting the treatment plan but also increas- ing the treatment conversion by providing an enhanced patient journey / patient experience in the dental clinic. New patient consultation The first consultation with the treatment coordinator is an in- formal chat between the patient and your treatment coordina- tor (TCO) when the TCO asks questions to find out the dental concerns of the patient and in- troduces the clinic to the patient. It is really the first step to build rapport and make the patient feel comfortable in your clinic. This consultation should be a free consultation to your new patient that you can schedule before the clinical consultation. Build rapport The treatment coordinator as- sists the dentist in preparing the treatment plan and in present- ing the treatment plan to the pa- tient. He or she can spend some more time with the patient after the treatment plan has been presented to answer any further questions the patient may have and discuss payment options. This discussion can also help to overcome any objections or doubts the patient may still have. The treatment coordinator should be a trusted contact who is there to support the patient all the way through the journey within the clinic. Keeping in touch The treatment coordinator should be the person who fol- lows up with the patients – after treatment planning, making the to make sure the patient goes ahead with the recommended dental treatment plan. If this does not happen we might lose the patient and all the effort was wasted. The TCO also follows up the patient after treatment to make sure they are ok and satisfied with the outcome. This is very Preparing for the worst By Fiona Stuart-Wilson E ach year some practic- es have to deal with an emergency – not a medi- cal emergency but a business emergency. Although most of us buy insurance, we do so on the basis that we hope that the risks we are insuring our practices against will never actually hap- pen. Of course the likelihood of the sort of risk occurring which would affect our ability to oper- ate as a dental practice is low but there is no getting away from the fact that the unexpected does happen, and insurance is really not enough for your prac- tice to continue to operate, keep patients happy, pay the staff and earn some money yourself. Dis- asters can take a long time to recover from and patients need to be seen and cared for during this time. All this means that a practice should always have a plan should disaster strike. You might this sort of thing could never happen to your practice but it could. Your practice should have a business continuity to enable it to continue to function and sur- vive a disaster, so here are some things every dentists and man- ager should consider. 1. What could go wrong? Disasters by their very nature are usually unexpected but that does not mean we should not try to forecast some of the greater risks that we face. Think through some of the risks to your practice and what these might mean for the practice. This could include accident, such as fire, natural disaster, loss of key members of staff or crime. 2 .How safe is practice property? Make sure your practice is as prepared as it can be to survive a disaster. Carry out a regular check on how secure your build- ing, equipment, computer sys- tems, records and website are. For instance how many people have access to the burglar alarm code or keys? How often is the code changed? Are valuable documents in a fire proof cabi- net or left in a desk drawer? If you haven’t already, consider photographing all of your valu- ables and equipment for insur- ance purposes, and take copies of key documents such as insur- ance policies. Make sure these are in a safe place that more than one trsued person knows about. 3. Where else could we work from? If disaster strikes your patients still need care and you still need to run your dental business. You should have arrangements in place now for an alternative location to treat patients or at least send them to in the event that you cannot see them in your own practice. It’s not just the clinical side of things either. You also need to think about where you will carry on the non-clinical business of your practice, such as contacting patients, arranging or cancelling appointments, administration, and paying bills and staff. This might of course be your home but if your information and data are not on the Cloud, make sure your backup operations site- has critical equipment and data (computer, telephone, headed paper, back-ups etc ) and essen- tial information such as contact numbers and e-mail addresses for all of your team, suppliers and of course your insurance company. Copies of insurance policies, debit and credit cards, and copies of passwords are also useful to have, and it is also a good idea to make sure that you and at least one other key per- son has this information. After all disaster could strike whilst you are on holiday on the other side of the world. 4. Do our staff know what to do? Make sure that your team knows what your practice’s disaster plan is and when and where they should relocate to work in the event of an emergency. 5. How will we pay the bills and keep going? If you have to leave your prac- tice premises you won’t know how long it will be before you can return. If you have to leave them in a hurry , take the prac- tice cheque book and credit cards and keep enough cash on hand to meet emergency cash- flow needs. 6. How will we tell the patients? You will need to let patients know quickly in the event of an emergency or disaster, as they need to be reassured, told what to do and where to go. Make sure for example you have an arrangement in place with your website provider so that they can put this information on the home page of the website as quickly as possible. Save time later by writing that information copy now! It should include your emergency contact information, details of your backup surgery premises, and what to do about appointments. You can also use social media to get the word out about your emergency arrange- ments. Just as we buy insurance hoping we will never need a to make a claim , so we hope that our busi- ness continuity plan is one that we will never have to imple- ment. However going through this process does mean that you will have done the best for your practice and that you are pre- pared should disaster strike. Fiona Stuart-Wilson is Director of UMD Professional, a leading provider of management quali- fications in dental practice and a consultant in dental practice management. fiona@umdprofessional.co.uk About the Author