Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
No More Pissed Off Patients
Have you ever wondered if setting firm boundaries with patients might actually backfire? Join me, Dr. Paul Etchison, as I recount my personal journey through the tumultuous waters of patient management in our dental practice after deciding to go out of network with Delta. This change was intended to empower our team and eliminate disrespectful behavior, but instead, we faced an overwhelming surge in negative interactions and one-star reviews. Reflecting on these challenges, I question whether our previous, more accommodating approach was better at preserving patient loyalty and harmony.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
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- Supportive Community: Connect with practice owners on the same journey.
- Editable Systems & Protocols: Standardize your operations effortlessly.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
Upset patients truly have the power to cause a lot of damage, not only to the reputation of your business, but also to the psyches of you and your team. Today, I'm going to teach you the super simple process that will guarantee the next time you have an upset patient one you're not even going to be phased by it, and two you're going to turn this patient into a raving fan that's going to send more patients to your practice. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. Hi, I'm Dr Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:So I had a pretty big epiphany recently as you know and heard me talk about on the podcast is that I felt that ever since COVID, people have just been mean, just downright rude and mean, and maybe you've noticed this at your practice as well. Patients' expectations seem more and more impossible to meet, and it seems like they're always yelling at my front desk. Just lately it's just been this constant thing where it's like man, why is everybody yelling at the front desk? Now, we've always bent over backwards for people. That's just always been part of us. We just humble ourselves and we do whatever it takes to make the patient happy. And we've operated like that for years, you know, since we opened.
Speaker 1:But when we decided to drop Delta about a year ago, I really wanted the team to understand that what we provide as a dental office is special. The way that we take care of people as a dental office is special. The way that we take care of people, how we make them happy, how we go above and beyond, it's special. And since we're going to be out of network our patients, they can go down the street to an in-network provider, sure, and they can go get a two-surface filling for less money, but they cannot get the same level of service that we provide. Nobody can replicate our level of service and I wanted my team to really understand and believe that, because it's necessary If I want my team to be able to look somebody in the eye, look at a patient and tell them that, hey, we provide better service than our competitors and nobody can provide the level of service that we do. It's just not possible. You know, I want them to believe that the patient can go and network, but they're not going to get the same thing that we do here at our office. So I want to share how this mentality in retrospect brought some unintended consequences.
Speaker 1:So over the year we dropped Delta. A little bit over a year ago we dealt with a lot of upset patients and my front desk team was just constantly getting yelled at and eventually I, as the owner, got sick of hearing about it and I said to the team I said you know what, we're better than that and if you've got anyone being rude to you, you let me know and I will go tell them they can go get their dental work somewhere else, because we are way too good to be dealing with that. We try way too hard to be treated like that. We don't deserve it. You girls don't deserve it. We are Nelson Ridge Family Dental and if they think they can talk to us like that, well, they've got another thing coming. So if you and if they don't calm down, hang up and you can even tell them that you know what, you don't need to come here anymore, or that you know we're not gonna miss you. And I didn't want to tell them that we didn't. We're gonna miss, we're not gonna be mean, but we're gonna be polite. But what I wanted them to know is that I will back them. We don't deserve to be treated like that If someone's being a jerk, because we are established and we don't need that BS.
Speaker 1:So over the next few months I realized it was almost like we started dealing with more and more upset patients. Like there were just more big things happening and I was having to call upset patients, like they'd be pissed off and they'd yell at my team and then my office manager would talk to them and then they'd be like I wanna talk to the owner and then I'd have to talk with them and I'd have this posted on my desk just looking at me like this person wants owner to call back and I would delay it. I didn't want to have the conversation. Then I would have it. I'd be on the phone for like 20 minutes and that kept happening. Like it happened like three times in like a month and more and more people were leaving one-star reviews. Now we got three one-star reviews in one month. Now, mind you, at this point we had only had five one-star reviews in the 11-year history of the practice.
Speaker 1:So what the hell was going on? Why do we keep getting these reviews? Is it that the public is just getting so freaking mean? Is it the election driving everybody crazy? Are people like literally losing their fricking minds? Sure, I mean, we're sticking up for ourselves now, right, we feel good about that and we're not taking crap from anyone. But part of me wondered was this approach better? I mean, what were the results Before? We would apologize and we would do whatever it takes to make the patient happy, and the patient would leave happy, and then we would have a patient that would be loyal to us. And I would hear about it. My team would tell me about hey, this person was upset, but I took care of it and they're happy now. And I'd say, oh good, that's good to hear that they're happy, I'm really glad that they're happy now. And then I would never think about it again. It was just like okay, they tell me. I'd be like okay, move on, now that we decided that we're not going to bend over backwards for people if it's not our fault and we're not going to tolerate their tantrums and we're going to stick to our policies and we're going to kick them out of the practice. Here's what happened Instead of someone just being upset for like five minutes and then leaving happy, instead of getting that result, what we started ending up with was patients that would then invest the next two weeks of their lives bashing us on the internet, calling us over and over again, asking to talk to the manager, again asking to talk to the owner again.
Speaker 1:We had someone write like multiple bad reviews on different sites. We even had somebody write two Google reviews from the same person and then we called her out on it and she wrote us another review because we called her out on it. So it's like I would just steam on this. I was pissed. I mean, instead of having, instead of me, just hearing about my team telling me that somebody's upset and then they took care of it, and I'm like, okay, cool, I started spending day after day just getting pissed off. I'm laying in bed, I'm thinking about it Like F that person, f people, f society, everyone's so screwed up. I'm so sick of this crap and I became the most cynical and angry that I've ever been, but hey, I mean, at least we stood up for ourselves and we got to be right, right, so which one of those two results sounds the best to you? Which is what brought me to the epiphany that my team doesn't know how to properly resolve conflict and deal with difficult patients.
Speaker 1:I've never trained on it. I've never trained on it, I've never talked about it, I have never provided them the tools, and myself personally, I've always been really good at this, but I never really thought about how do I do that? What is my process? I've always been that person at the practice that whenever we have a pissed off patient that doesn't want to see a certain dentist, or they're upset about something my associate did, that I'm the one coming in there and making them feel better and I'm fixing it and taking care of it. And sometimes I would get pissed like why am I always the person that has to do this? Why am I the only one that's capable of handling upset people? So I sat down and I thought about what do I do? What is this magic sauce that I have that nobody else can seem to replicate? And I wanted to put it into words. So it's two things, okay. One, I tell the patient I understand how they feel, and then, two, I immediately tell them that we're going to take care of them, and that's usually the end of it. That's all you need to do. One, acknowledge and validate their complaint and two, let them know that you're going to take care of them. But what do we do instead? We tell them that they're wrong. We defend ourselves and we give reasons for the miscommunication or the misunderstanding, and this just breeds more and more resentment from the patient. Misunderstanding, and this just breeds more and more resentment from the patient.
Speaker 1:I had my office manager get called out in a review for her telling a patient who was complaining about my hygienist named Gina. She told the patient that I'm really surprised no one's ever complained about Gina before, and this is what the person wrote in the one-star review. Like I can't believe, the office manager said this to me. Now I know what my office manager meant. She was like saying oh my gosh, I'm so surprised you had an issue with Gina. Nobody ever complains about Gina. Gina's so nice. I'm just really surprised about this, you know. So she was like just making I don't know if it was like conversation, but she didn't mean anything bad about it, but what did the patient hear? The patient hears, if you look at it from their perspective, they're saying you must be crazy, because no one ever complains about Gina. You're the first person that's ever complained about Gina. Everyone loves her, but for some reason you don't. So you must be crazy, mr Patient. Which brings me to my next point.
Speaker 1:What is the result that you want, regardless of who is at fault? What is the result that you want? Do you want to have a less than five minute conversation and the patient leave happy and you never have to think about it ever again? Or do you want to be right and then you have a pissed off patient to get you all riled up every time? You think about them for the next two or three weeks? What is the result that you want? Because I've realized through all of this I want the first result. I want to do whatever it takes to make the patient happy. So when Mr Jones is all pissed off because his insurance didn't cover something and now that he owes money, instead of me telling him how it's the insurance fault and there's no way we could have predicted this, it's not our fault, it's the insurance fault I just want to say hey, mr Jones, I'm so sorry that this happened. I get why you're frustrated. I would be too. I'm going to take care of this for you. I'm not sure how, but rest assured, we're going to figure something out. And guess what? It's over? I validated the way he was feeling, I let him know I was going to take care of him. Step one, step two, and now it's just a matter of finding something that the patient feels is fair and it's over. That is the result I want.
Speaker 1:So through this whole process of going out of network and deciding that we were better than any other office, I think I projected and created a culture of entitlement where we really believed that no one will be upset with us, no one will treat us poorly and we're not going to take shit from nobody. And it wasn't generating the result that I wanted. It was generating a much more painful and harmful result. So that's why I created a 40-minute masterclass on dealing with difficult patients. It's available on the DPH Hero Collective. If you want to train your team on how to best handle conflict with patients, join the Hero Collective and for a monthly payment of about half of your cell phone bill, you can get all the trainings I ever created. So go to dphpodcom for more details.
Speaker 1:So ask yourself what result do you want? If my team is trained on how to handle these things? These situations then become predictable and hence they don't worry about them when they happen. And that's how it is. Now that my team has been trained on this, they're now comfortable dealing with these situations because they're just predictable and instead of losing a patient and harming the reputation of the office, we're creating raving fans that sing our praises because of the level of service that we provide. So I really hope that resonates with you.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't just go with dealing with upset patients. It goes with all conflict. Ask yourself, what is the result you want and of course, we all want to be right, but is being right going to get you the result you want? And I would guess the answer is no. Being right is not going to give you the result that you want. And train your team on how to handle conflict so that they know what to do in these situations.
Speaker 1:Right now, as a team at my office, we're keeping a complaint log so that we can look at it and say, okay, what are the common complaints and what are some common responses and what we do in these certain areas and what we realize from sitting down and thinking about all the things that people complain about. It's not more than like one or two things for each position. Like most people that will complain to the front desk, it's because we told them they owed something and then we told them they owed something different or we didn't call them back. I mean, there's not that many situations that people are upset about. So if we can keep this log, we're going to create a handout and it's going to have a bunch of different responses on it. So I'm really excited for getting that together with my team.
Speaker 1:But my point is think about the result you want. Train your team, give them the tools they need to be able to handle upset patients so that it doesn't bring everybody on your team down Because, let's face it, we're going to have these situations happen. They're just going to happen. There's nothing you can do about it. You can have the best systems in the world and you still will have people that are upset because you might not meet everyone's expectations, and that's normal. But if you knew how to handle these, they wouldn't even faze you, they wouldn't even bother you. So thank you so much for listening, if you liked what you learned today. No-transcript.
