Almost every owner-dentist that comes to The Team Training Institute believes they need more new patients to improve the financial performance of their practice.

But, here's an interesting story...

Dr. John Meis was once managing a group of practices in Georgia and working with the regional leader who running the local practices. The regional manager kept insisting they needed to do more marketing because he believed they needed more new patients. The thing is, their practices had new patients wait times anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months.

So Dr. Meis said, "Let's do a test. Let's not spend anything on marketing (and not tell the doctors that we were running this little experiment.)"

To the leader's surprise, the number of new patients coming in didn't change.

Almost 100% of doctors that come into The Team Training Institute tell us they're facing a demand problem. But after we dig into their practice performance data, we find that they are actually experiencing a capacity blockage.

The Myth of Ultra Productive Dentists

Throughout our years of working with practices, we've observed dentists who easily produce $200,000/ month and others who struggle to produce 20% of that.

What's the difference?

The myth circulating in dentistry is that ultra-productive dentists do a lot of big cases. But, the reality is that super-producers mainly do bread-and-butter dentistry. The reason for their high production is simply that they've eliminated capacity blockages.

It's our belief that practices will naturally grow until something stops them from growing. And what usually stops the growth is an out-of-date practice mindset or some condition of the physical space.

Here are some examples of common blockages:

• Inadequate investment in technology
• Inadequate number of equally equipped treatment rooms
• Too few chair-side assistants
• Room turnover inefficiency
• Lack of standard clinical protocols

Hyper-producers know the early symptoms of blockages and aggressively treat them. The problem is these blockages are often too subtle to be detected by a busy practitioner. If someone's plate is already full, it's difficult for them to get a sense of how much more they could be doing.

Capacity Blockages are Usually Silent

One frustrating thing about capacity blockages is that they are usually so subtle teams don't feel them. Even if a doctor notices, it's notoriously difficult to determine the cost of the blockage. It's a cost with no number and no obvious pain points.

Luckily, there is a way to get a feel for the practice's capacity. We look at one key metric to get a sense of capacity: the inability to accept emergency patients immediately.

If a new or existing patient contacts the practice with a dental emergency and cannot be seen today, there's no doubt a production blockage.

The symptoms don't feel significant, especially when a practice is capacity blocked, because the team is already busy. Worse still, when practices are overloaded, it can be a relief when a patient misses an appointment because it creates some breathing room in the schedule. But, all of this is damaging as it prevents patients from receiving immediate care and it affects practice's bottom line.

Just as Symptoms are Not Always Clear, The Solutions Aren't as Easy as They Seem

Eliminating production blockages almost always involves investment in people, technology, equipment, supplies and/or facility. If the blockage is correctly identified and the right strategy is used to solve it, the investment pays off quickly. If the blockage diagnosis is incorrect, the solution is less likely to be effective and the payoff is negligible or none.

The other problems is that when practices are experiencing capacity blockages, profit per effort is high. It's a "sweet spot" in profitability. And while there's nothing wrong with staying in that sweet spot, there's no room for growth or expansion there. Leaders must be willing to invest beyond that sweet spot to reach more revenue and greater practice value. When the capacity blockage is eliminated, the performance of the practice rises considerably, creating a brighter future for everyone on the team.

In the video below, Dr. John Meis talks about how to identify capacity blockages: