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
Make Routine Tasks Meaningful: the Mindset Shift
Unlock the secret to transforming your dental practice with a simple mindset shift from being task-oriented to goal-oriented. Wondering how a mere change in perspective can revolutionize your team’s performance and patient satisfaction? This episode promises to help you redefine the purpose of every action in your practice, much like Howard Schultz reimagined the coffee experience at Starbucks. Join Dr. Paul Etchison, an experienced dental coach and practice owner, as he shares insights and strategies that can elevate your dental practice to new heights, encouraging your team to focus on meaningful interactions with each patient.
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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.
- Live Monthly Webinars: Learn proven strategies for scaling your practice.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Get personalized help when you need it most.
- 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.
As practice owners, we ask ourselves questions all the time why is this happening? Why can't they just do what I say? Why don't my patients ever listen to me? Often, these questions cause us to think, to problem shoot, to try and figure out what to do next. But there is one question that is more powerful than any other when we are talking about what to do at the office, and that is what is the goal here For this specific task, whatever I am doing, no matter how big, how small, not what is the task, but what is the goal. In this episode, I'll explain how getting this mindset change among your team can be one of the most powerful things you can do as a leader. If you can train your team to think like this, you now unlock the power to perfect every single interaction at your dental 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 Etcheson, 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. So I want to open up with an interesting story.
Speaker 1:Back in the 80s there was a guy. He worked for a coffee retailer okay, and mostly they just sold beans and equipment, nothing special. And this was the 80s. When you bought coffee, you know it was about being fast, convenient, it was nothing more. There weren't millions of different types of coffee, it was just you got a cup of coffee, maybe they had regular coffee and they had decaf, nothing elaborate. So this guy took a trip to Italy and he noticed something different about the places in which he would buy espresso. Now there were people sitting around, they were talking, they're socializing, they're relaxing, they're reading books, reading the paper, and the baristas had a relationship with the patrons, often greeting them by name, asking them how their families were doing, asking them what they were up to, catching up. So these shops weren't just about selling a product, but rather having espresso was an experience. It was somewhere where someone could feel welcome and spend time with other members of their community or their friends. It was what he called a place between home and work in which someone could not only drink a hot caffeinated beverage but truly enjoy the experience of having it.
Speaker 1:So when he came back to the States he tried to get the company he worked for to go for the idea. But now this is the 80s. Americans don't really even know what espresso is and the machines are really expensive. They're hard to repair. Plus, the idea that anyone would want to hang out at a coffee place seemed foreign at the time and totally idiotic. So eventually, eventually, he couldn't convince these people that this was a great idea. So he left that company. He got investors and he opened up the first coffee house by himself. He named it Journal, which was named after an Italian newspaper, and it was a success. And eventually he had enough money to go back and purchase the company that he used to work for and now he had that brand name and he was able to grow a few coffee houses into this big chain. Now this man's name was Howard Schultz and the company that he grew was Starbucks. Have you ever heard of that? Yeah, of course you have.
Speaker 1:So what's important in this story is that he reimagined the answer to what is the goal of a coffee shop. He changed the mindset In the 80s. It was somewhere you could buy a warm beverage fast and efficiently. And after the reimagining, it became a place of community and belonging. It was the home away from home, and we went from selling coffee to selling an experience.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, we don't run coffee houses, right, but how does this apply to our dental offices? One of the most important things we can do as an owner is define the way we do things. This is how we do this, this is how we do that. But when we decide how we want to do things, it's so important for us to ask not what is the task we are to perform, but what is the goal of the task performed. We have to go deeper than surface level. For example, let's look at something simple like checking a patient in. What is the task? Well, to greet the patient, to check them into the computer and let the people in the back know that their next patient is here, right, but what is the goal? Let's go deeper. This is the first moment a patient walks into our practice.
Speaker 1:Our goal is to help the patient feel welcome and to project positive energy and enthusiasm so that the patient feels appreciated as to set the tone for their upcoming dental experience. So when your front desk understands that their job is not just merely to say hello, but to set the tone for the entire visit, it shifts the energy in the way they will perform the task. The job has more meaning now in the grand scheme and hence it's taken a lot more seriously by the employee. So I want you to take a moment and think about how your front desk greets patients right now. Are they always projecting that positive energy and if not, what needs to change? Discuss this with your team. Make sure they understand what the goal of the interaction is. Chances are you've never discussed this, and that's okay, but you can now. But you've got to decide. What is success in this task? A success is not merely that the back knows the patient is here and the patient is now sitting in the waiting room, but that the patient immediately feels welcomed in your practice, cared for, and they begin their dental experience as positively as possible.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk about after we're done with a procedure. We're going to give the post-op instructions, right. What is the task? Well, we got to tell the patient what they need to know about what was done and how to care for their new dental work. But again, same thing. That's just surface level.
Speaker 1:Let's go a little bit deeper here.
Speaker 1:What is the goal? Well, one, have the patient feel cared for. Two, have the patient understand what was completed. Three, have the patient understand what the next step in their treatment plan is, so they're not confused about what to do next. Four, have the patient understand what to expect over the next few days or few weeks, so that when symptoms such as, maybe, soreness or cold sensitivity happen, they don't feel like something's wrong because we told them that it's normal. Five, give the patient the opportunity to ask questions. And six, we're sitting up giving the patient our undivided attention to let them know that they matter to us and that we care about them. So now, when we think about it that way, do we approach this small task a little bit differently? Do we choose the way that we communicate and what we communicate to the patient about when we look at what the deeper level goal is of the process? Of course we do. Now, if you're looking to teach your team the communication skills like this to provide the absolute best patient experience possible, join the DPH Hero Collective and get all the trainings and tools you need to run a team-driven practice that allows you to relax, do less and make more money. Go to dphpodcom for more details. All right, let's do one more example. Let's talk about insurance verification and the plan entry into our practice management software. What is the task? Well, we've got to transfer the patient's coverage into our computer system. But what is the deeper level goal? Let's go deeper.
Speaker 1:We are trying to do it as accurately as possible so that we don't have an upset patient with a surprise balance. We're doing it so that we don't have an upset patient with a surprise balance. We're doing it so that we don't have someone yelling at our front desk, so that we can collect the correct copay, so that we don't have to send a statement. And if we're going to send a statement because we collected the wrong copay, we're going to have to audit the chart and make sure it's correct. You know, we want to do this right, so that we don't have to make a collection call, so that we don't have to make a collection call, so that we don't have to send a patient to collections and possibly lose a patient, or so that when we collect this patient portion it's correct, so that we don't have to do an additional transaction to take care of the unpaid portion so that we can save ourselves time. We want to present the correct out-of-pocket so that we can be true to our word and our core value of integrity, meaning that when we tell the patient their out-of-pocket is this, we mean it. We want to know that we entered it into the computer correctly so that we can confidently present treatment because we know the insurance was done right. We know the person that did it did it correctly, which will lead to a more confident financial presentation and leads to better case acceptance, which now leads to our patients getting healthier because more people are saying yes. So when we go deeper, we can now change our mindset about this task and then we change the way we perform it. It now becomes much more important. It becomes so much more meaningful and our employees' jobs become a lot more important and meaningful as well.
Speaker 1:So next time that you're looking at your processes, I want you to think about going deeper. I want you to challenge your team to ask what is the goal here? By focusing on the purpose behind each task, you can really cultivate a culture where every single action has big meaning and you can turn these routine activities into opportunities to create this perfect, seamless, patient-focused, growth-oriented practice. So here's your action item for the week. I want you to share this concept with your team. I want you to encourage them to ask this question daily, of every single task that they perform, and see how it shifts your practice culture and your patient experience over time. And remember intentionality drives progress, not just busyness. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time.