Why the Traditional Method of Running an Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Practice is no Longer Effective and Competitive When it Comes to Dental Implant Services

certain turnover, and hiring someone new early on so they can become properly trained. This also means to offer a competitive or slightly higher wage to ensure you hire someone who is truly suited for the tasks at hand.

Next, see if there is a challenge or problem for patients to connect with the right person for their specific needs at your practice. Patients do not want to be put on hold or leave a message, especially for an elective procedure such as implant therapy that requires noticeable out of pocket financial and time commitment. If they cannot get the help that they are looking for on the first call, you can bet they will move on with their search to an office who can talk with them right away and places a higher value on being reachable to their patients. Do your patients complain about busy signals or long hold times? What about referring dentists complaining that they can’t get through? Or people are getting through, but your staff members spend too much time searching for answers for the callers or redirecting them to many different people at your offices? If any of these are true, your telephone answering protocol must be reviewed to find the non-value adding activities and optimize productivity and service.

A final aspect to consider in this step is recording everything seen, heard, and said while mapping the value streams.

Examples:

• What patterns do you notice among all the data collected?
• Are there many calls coming in asking about scheduling?
• Do all the receptionists have an unfriendly or unhelpful demeanor on the phone and in person?
• What kinds of complaints come through the office?
• Are they repetitive in nature and it was just never known until it was recorded?

Collect this data and analyze it to use it to your advantage when mapping out new systems using Operational Excellence.

There are so many situations like the telephone issues mentioned above that can severely impact the perception of your practice, simply because the surgeon has never gone through his/her own process first-hand.

That is why it is so crucial to go through every step as if you were a patient with their key values in mind all the way through. The takeaway from this process should revolve around improving the entire process for the patient for a world-class experience they would do again and recommend to others, rather than simply optimizing one miniscule aspect and considering that enough of an improvement to call it substantial for the patient experience. Just think
of
the
word “experience.” This
means
from
start
to
finish,
not
an
individual
aspect
of
the
process.

SROMS

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Volume 22.6