Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

When you increase your treatment plan acceptance rate you prevent a small problem cavity today, from turning into a bigger problem root canal or extraction in the future. When you offer same day dentistry patients are very motivated to do it today so they don’t have to come back. If the patient fails to schedule and come back your treatment plan acceptance rate goes down and the disease continues on which is not optimum for oral health. The only secret to lower prices is lower cost so to maximize profit make every operatory the same so you can do any procedure, in any room, anytime. When 35% of cost is the dentist, 25% staff, 7-10% lab, 4-6% supplies, you can’t afford for your business to slow down or stop because of a constraint from the lower cost rent and facilities of 5-8%. When you have to move a patient from a hygiene room to a treatment room it cost time and money often times causing you to reschedule. Not to mention the front desk can’t schedule emergency patients or walk-ins. Extra operatories are not overhead, they are your means of production. When your over head is $1 and you produce and collect $1 then your overhead is 100%. Raise your production to $2 and now it’s down to 50%. Increase the number of your dental operatories until you never find yourself waiting for a room. In fact the biggest ground breaking technology in dentistry was the shovel when used to build a new, bigger and better serval office.

Welcome to Our Practice! We realize that when it comes to picking a dentist that you have many choices to choose from. We want to sincerely thank you for coming in today and choosing us to keep you smiling for many years to come. Please feel free to share the enclosed referral cards with your family and friends to bring in on their first visit. Share the care $10.00 gift card. Tell your friends and family about the great care you experienced at Today's Dental and give them this card. When they become patients, you will receive a $10.00 gift card and your referral will receive a new patient gift! The highest compliment comes from our patients when you refer a friend or family member to our office. Please let us know you passed along our card by writing your name below. Two $10.00 gift card limit per family. We look forward to seeing you soon! Today's Dental staff serving Ahwatukee since 1987.

Kudos and praise to all the Dental Public Health (PDH) specialists who were recognized as a speciality in 1950, focusing on improving dental health at the community level rather than the individual level with programs like Community Water Fluoridation, children’s dental health programs in schools, setting up coronavirus and HPV vaccination programs, and public health clinics, the PDH work is never completed. With unlimited demand and limited supply, finding ways to increase efficiency is key. A common problem in any healthcare delivery facility is patient cancellations and no shows. If you miss two appointments in a row you should have to pay a non refundable deposit to make another appointment which you lose if you don’t show. Vinegar that is free, is sweeter than honey. The proverb not to look a gift horse in the mouth is because the horse’s teeth are an indication of the horse’s health, but if the horse was a free gift it doesn’t matter since it cost you nothing. People always value something more if they paid for it and since oral health diseases are mostly preventable, our patients need to have skin in the game.

When hygienist pre-appoint their own patients to future continuing care they will instantly find out which patients are onboard who isn’t . If the patient bought in to do the right oral healthcare thing and schedule their next appointment in advance, you can monitor this vital sign of patient buy in or give a warning sign your back door is open and the patients are going down stream so you can decide if you want to fix the dam or spend the damn marketing dollars to replace them. The hygienist is most responsible for creating this value which is why they have to ask the patient to schedule to come back because when a patient says no they can see exactly when and with who, their hourlong appointment message did not work on in time to adjust w response to this tasks, hence the meaning of the word responseability. The hygienist needs to own it, be measured, and held accountable. How could you expect the front office to be responsible for preappointing the hygienist patients when you obviously can’t be responsible for something you don’t have the authority to change. Does the front office manager have the authority to trade your hygienist from the Jets for one from Tampa so your team has the right buccaneers to find the treasure? Or does everyone just blame Dr. Ignominy who is the only one with skin in the game.

Perception equals reality despite the world not being flat because trust has more value than logic. The time needed to make a knowledgeable decision reality means that most of us can only master one thing unless you’re Torakusu Yamaha who mastered both motorcycles and pianos. Trust is an investment when your infection control builds patient confidence and is being explained by long term staff the patient already knows and trusts providing an economic barrier in the marketing efforts from someone else they don’t know. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent has been the Scout Law since 1908 and will help you become more talon-ted and breaking it is ill-eagle.

Do you reward your new patients with a gift?

Profitability begins with the Financial Arrangement and ends with increasing account receivables, sending statements, then resending again with scary ‘Past Due” messages stamped on it with red ink made from a single drop of blood from your CPA, collection agencies, bad debt, negative cash flow, and high overhead. The Financial Arrangement at McDonald’s begins with clear prices so you can decide exactly what you want to order, and then you pay in full or you will not get your Happy Meal with McVodka. If Doc Ronald McDonald did give it to you first, and you never did pay for it, assuming they had average dental overhead of two-thirds, then they would have had to buy the all natural ingredients, which I assume was the human hair, from the profit dollars of two previous sales. This is why financial arrangement impacts profitability more than price. If you want to boost profitability i'm lovin' McDonald’s order, pay, food. If you prefer lovin' the Profit Hamburgler use Dentistry’s order, food, and pray.

If you want to keep your promise you should Underpromise and Overdeliver. The First Law of Customer Service is Satisfaction = Perceptions – Expectations. The Second Law of Customer Service is it’s hard to catch up once you are behind! When you over promise and underdeliver you are raising your patient’s expectations which is setting up a trap that you could eventually step in. If you under promise to lower their expectations and then over deliver with a fantastic experience you will satisfy your patients by successfully managing their expectations. You should always keep your promise but if in doubt, under promise and over deliver. When a patient breaks their front tooth off and asks you if you can match it, why would you say absolutely! I tell them God made the tooth next to it and you want me to match it?!? I will try my very best, but no one can perfectly match your natural human tooth. Their expectations have been lowered and then they are delighted when they see the final result because I exceeded their lowered expectations. The same with post-operative pain; will I feel any pain afterwards and can I go back to work? I say, “When the anesthetic wares off you’re probably going to want to jump off a cliff.” When they come back in, they are all happy saying, “I was fine afterwards. That didn’t hurt at all.” Then I tell them they’re probably married with children and they’re used to pain and suffering, they chuckle and we’re all good. At the Fortune 500 level they almost never pick an extrovert salesperson for CEO because that person has spent their entire career over promising and underdelivering and that never works from the top. They always want an introvert because they listen, think, and then methodically set out with a doable plan.

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I’m sorry, we can’t see you today. Please wait in line and give us your money another day. Having your customers wait in line to give you money is an idea that given enough time will make your business obsolete and dead as a doornail from some competitor dentist who doesn’t have lines. If I can’t come in today and give you money then hit your gas pedal to add capacity, operatories, associates, hours, or buy the technology that allows you to work faster. Or, you can hit the brakes and raise your prices. This will shorten the line by making the people who value you less and are unwilling to pay you more to see you today, to get out of line, so the people willing to pay more are allowed the freedom to pay you more money for the extra value of being seen today. Same day dentistry is the fastest way to increase your case acceptance. If you sell a bottle of water for $1 and your profit margin is 10 cents (represented by the bottled water cap) then your profit margin is 10%. If you raise your price one dime (which would add another cap) you just raised your price 10% and doubled your profit margin from 10% to 20%, reduced the number of people waiting in line, and now have more profit to take home or reinvest in your business as retained earnings. Another way of raising your price is to drop your lowest paying dental insurance PPO. I don’t care which pedal you hit as long as you do something. What is not acceptable is to do nothing. Shit or get off the pot but don’t sit there all day while your customers are looking around to see if someone else can see them today. When your patient does find another dentist who will see them today they are not going to take the time to call you back and cancel their appointment with you, they will most likely extend the same curtesy you gave them and just not show up without notice known as the “No Show” which comes from you telling them “No” so they give it back as a “No Show” known in my 30 Day Dental MBA as “No Shit, Sherlock.”