John Meis (00:02.161)
Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of The Double Your Production Podcast. I'm Dr. John Meis and I'm here with my partner, Wendy Briggs. Hey Wendy, how you doing?
Wendy Briggs (00:10.274)
Way good, it's a good day today.
John Meis (00:12.717)
Absolutely. I'm excited about our topic today. We're going through really kind of the pillars of what we teach and how we help practices double their production. And so we're going to talk about today is patient flow. So our main pillars are patient flow, case acceptance and efficient delivery. And patient flow is the topic for today. So, Wendy.
Wendy Briggs (00:39.116)
Yeah, I'm super excited about this topic because it seems to me that this is something that every single practice thinks they need, right? Just about every post it seems on social media forums, there's marketing groups, there's all kinds of groups that we belong to. And a lot of them are saying, what are you all doing to get new patients? You know, we've tried this, it hasn't worked. What are you doing here? We're really trying to grow. And so it's a topic that people really, I guess, have a hyper focus on.
How do we generate more patients in the office? A few episodes ago, we talked about our practice success formula and what that looks like. We said we'd be talking a little bit more about capacity and demand, generating more patient flow in an upcoming episode. That episode is today.
John Meis (01:07.409)
Yeah. All right. So here we go. So, you know, it's so interesting to us that as that so many practices are wanting more new patients. Yet when we get them and they come into our system and we do the analysis, we often find that we that they don't have enough capacity to take care of the demand they already have.
So in the practices that we work with, it's very frequent that they want more new patients, but they really don't have space or room for them. So one of the very first things we do with clients is really get an understanding of whether they have a balance between capacity and demand. So can they take care of the number of patients that want to see them? So when we talk about capacity, there's all different kinds of elements of capacity,
Wendy Briggs (02:21.346)
Right, there's so much more. And we hear also the comments of people right now, especially with the shortage of providers and the difficulty hiring, we hear practices that are still asking about new patients, but they don't have any room to schedule any current patients out past beyond three or four months down the road, right? They're slammed already. And that's exactly what we're talking about. There's still this desire for new patients, but there's also recognition that they don't have enough hygiene visits to serve their already existing patient base.
John Meis (02:50.769)
Yeah. So it's such a common problem. And when you have a capacity blockage within your office, it's very, very difficult to see when it's like being in the forest and you can't see it because of all the trees. So we have just some really quick ways to be thinking about whether you have capacity or not. And just a handful of questions. And one of them is appointment availability. You know, can you get patients in in a timely manner and in a timely manner?
It means soon. Really means can we get patients in when they want to get in? And often patients who want to get in want to get in soon or now. So when we see people practices that are scheduling patients months out and that's not for recall hygiene for this is getting people back on the schedule or this is restorative work. We see them being booked months out. We know they're out of capacity. So appointment availability is one of the tests.
Wendy Briggs (03:51.8)
It absolutely is. And I would say too, some practices think they're not out of capacity because they've got openings at 11 a or 10 o 'clock in the morning. But if I want a four o 'clock, I'm still waiting months and months to get that appointment time. So that's another thing to consider is, what is your appointment availability in general? But then also what is your appointment availability in those high demand appointment times? Because that also indicates we're out of capacity.
And certainly we should be identifying which are those high demand appointment times and addressing, you know, are there some creative solutions that we can do to open up more availability at those times? You those are things that we often talk about as well.
John Meis (04:27.079)
Yeah. So we have basically an analysis. We look at seven data points to identify whether there is a capacity blockage or not. And if there is a capacity blockage, then we try to figure out what is that blockage because it could be anything from not enough rooms, not enough hygiene hours, not enough doctor hours, not enough team, not enough phone lines, not enough computers, not enough, you know, on and on and on it goes. So that is, you know, really the first step in looking at patient flow is can we do more? And if we can, if we have the capacity to do more, okay, very good. Now let's go to the other steps of the formula. And so the next step is if we need more patient flow, the first place that we advise practices to focus on is retaining the patients they have. So Wendy, don't you walk us through the seminars and what are the systems that a high performing practice needs to have in order to have retention of the patients they currently have.
Wendy Briggs (05:32.47)
Yeah, you know, it's really fascinating because we often focus on retaining our patients, certainly pre -scheduling, you know, how much appointment availability do we really have? But ultimately, there's so much more to it. You know, we often envision the patients that belong to a practice as a bucket of patients. And some vital systems really indicate or a lack of these vital systems indicate that there's holes in our bucket and we're losing these opportunities. So these Rs are things like recall, recovery, reactivation, retention, referrals, reviews, reappointment. We talk as well about recruiting. We added another R a few years ago because as we recognize that team capacity does have an impact on our capacity, our ability to serve more patients, we know that we've got to always be recruiting. So those are some things that we have seen.
And certainly there's more because we talked about, okay, reappointment for hygiene, but reappointment for restorative too. We have something called the 222. So we want patients that leave without an appointment to have a two week follow -up, two days, two weeks, two months contacts to follow up and get them rescheduled. And we thought, well, gosh, you know what? That's really another R, isn't it? Reappointment rescheduling for those who leave without a scheduled appointment. So there's so many vital systems that can really help us understand where the blockages or where the problems are, where the holes in the bucket may exist, it could be just not having a really great process for pre -scheduling patients for hygiene. And pre -scheduling them is only the first step of that process.
Then it's all about the communication cadence. How far in advance of their appointments are we contacting them? When they schedule that appointment, we tell them if it doesn't work with their schedule, we know no one can predict their schedule six months in advance. If it doesn't work, we'll give you plenty of time. Well, are we really doing that? Or are we only reaching out the day before to confirm? And when the patient bails the day before, how effective are we? Do we have systems for recovery that will help us fill that unscheduled time? We consider recovery being the day before or the day of when a patient falls out of the schedule. So all of these systems are really vital to help us keep the bucket of patients full in our practice. We often hear from practices that they're having a really difficult time keeping the schedule full. I think I've heard that probably close to a million times since I started working with practices, you know, it seems to always be a complaint. You know, people have nicknames for entire months of the year because in their mind, that's when patients fall out of the schedule. And, and I understand we may notice that more in certain times of the year, but in reality, these systems are what are going to keep us flowing all throughout the year. So schedule.
A schedule being full is one thing, but we really focus in on schedule efficiency, which means what's the reality at the end of the day? How much of the schedule was truly efficient? If we had last minute churn, which we will have, how effective were we at recovering appointments to go in those unscheduled appointment times? Are we utilizing things like our ASAP lists? What systems do we have in place that really helps us become efficient with the schedule? So all of those Rs are really vital systems that keep us flowing, keep the patients flowing all the time.
John Meis (08:42.715)
Yeah, absolutely. And what we find is very, very few practices have these systems in place that are functioning well, that they're measuring, that they can identify how well they're doing. Very, very few practices. And so this is often a really great opportunity because the activities on the seminars are free. It's a little team time, but it's free. Much of it now can be automated and can be done with technology and AI. So it's not even as much team time as it used to be. But most practices can dramatically increase their patient flow just by focusing on the retention and the seminars. So some practices. Go ahead.
Wendy Briggs (09:33.334)
Yeah, would agree. I was just gonna add, you know, I would agree with that. we may, you know, as we have churn and as we grow, often find practices will say, you know, this used to be working really well at one time, but it's no longer working well. And we really dig in and we're like, gosh, you know, we have some new people up front, they don't understand how the recovery systems work. And so we could have systems in place, but they're not actually being followed. And so sometimes it's important to just do a quick check in and figure out, okay, are we really utilizing the systems is what's working, what's not within the system that we have and making sure that everyone's aware of the goal and aware of the fact that every minute or every hour or every appointment block that goes by unused is a lost opportunity. And that's what that represents. And so that's why it's all hands on deck and everybody really needs to understand that yes,
Filling the schedule is everybody's job, but the reality is there need to be key people within the team that understand it's their top priority and they're the ones making sure that these systems are followed. And that's key as well.
John Meis (10:34.749)
Yeah, absolutely. So if we have our retention systems in place and we still need more patient flow, then the next step is our patient flow generator. And it's basically a 17 step algorithm. You do step one, do it well, then go on to step two and then go on to step three. And I don't think anybody gets past maybe step eight or nine before they have all the patient flow they need.
So I'm going to just walk through a couple of these steps and I'll start with the first one. I'll start with the first two because they're so critical because it's such a big lever point and that is to fix the phones. So we know that the average dental practice only answers about 60 percent of the incoming calls during normal business hours. So that is a really low percentage and we have that from multiple sources. That is the number.
And so if we can raise that number up, and the other thing about the 60 % is most practices have no awareness of it, right? There's a performance perception gap. They perceive that they're answering 90 some percent of them and they're only answering 60. So if we can improve the answer rate and conversion of a call to an appointment, we can improve those. many practices, we can double the new patient flow. So to be able to, go ahead.
Wendy Briggs (12:03.938)
I was just going to say, it's funny, we've done meetings on this very topic before and we had our own members, we had someone survey their phones and see how many of those calls were missed. And these are practices that we felt would be performing at a very high level. And many of them were, but there were a few huge red flags that we discovered by this exercise. And so it's fascinating when you really dig into the reality of what's happening, not what we think is happening, but what is really happening. You'll often find some surprises.
One that I can recall, they missed 100 % of the calls. And we tried to call them 30 times over a period of a couple of weeks and they didn't answer one. And we came to find out they didn't even know this, but they only had two phone lines. And if both of those phone lines were in use, the patient would get a busy signal. So patients were trying to call them and they were getting a busy signal at all various times throughout the day and they were just giving up. It was really fascinating. And this doctor was mortified that this was happening. They had no awareness that it was happening. And when we fixed it, when she turned it around, amazing things happened. It was like the flood gates had opened and all of a sudden we had more patients we could handle. But we would never have known that had we not actually looked at the reality of what was happening.
John Meis (13:14.513)
Yeah. Yep.
John Meis (13:19.239)
Now, most practices have no awareness of this because most practices don't have the technology in order to measure it. And there's a variety of companies that do this that will measure answer rate, will measure conversion rate to an appointment, and will also identify where there were mistakes made. So that's step number two is get the technology in place so that you can track it and measure it. And so you will hear on pretty much every single system that we talk about that there needs to be a way to track it and there needs to be a way to monitor it and there needs to be a way to compare it to a benchmark so you know whether your practice is performing well or not so well. So those are the first two and those can have a profound, fixing those two can have a profound effect on a practice.
Wendy Briggs (14:11.884)
there, Dr. John, before we move on to a couple more things on the generator, we have a couple upcoming podcasts scheduled. So stay tuned if you're wanting more information on world -class phone systems and what that might look like. If you're wanting information on the analytics and the data and using AI to help drive that, we'll have that on as well. So I'm excited. We've got a couple of those in the works and there should be some really great resources coming your way in the next few months here on the podcast.
John Meis (14:35.599)
And of course, we have our opportunity as calling course, which is a great course on phone skills, managing phones, technology, the whole works. So.
Wendy Briggs (14:46.188)
Yeah, I think that's another thing to note too, Dr. John, is often we might even when we're answering the phone, we often don't have a very clearly defined path to conversion. And that's one of the biggest gaps that we see as well is we can have a lot of patients calling, but if the team doesn't know how to convert that caller into an appointment consistently at a high level, we're missing opportunities there as well. So that's one of things that they really talk about in that opportunity is calling phone training.
John Meis (15:12.977)
Yeah. And I'll throw out one more idea on the patient flow generator. And that is if you have each team member, before they clock out, write a handwritten note to a patient that came in that day, thanking them, telling them what a great patient is and how they would love to have more patients, how the practice would love to have more patients just like them. That simple thing is so profound because it comes from a place of gratitude for the patients that we have, not from a place of need, but from a place of gratitude. And patients appreciate it so much. When was the last time you received something handwritten in your mailbox? I mean, it's almost a lost art. And so it stands out so tremendously. It's a very, very simple thing to do and that will generate more new patients for sure.
Wendy Briggs (16:16.888)
Yeah, we love that. And as we go down the list, there's so many great ideas and strategies on that 17 step patient generator. And as you mentioned before, very rarely does somebody get to the end of the list, but there's a lot of really great strategies on that list. And Dr. John, probably, you know, occasionally we'll mention, hey, we've got an upcoming retreat. And for those of you that are members, you can look forward to our October retreat that the topic for this retreat is all things new patients.
So we'll be doing a deeper dive on demand and capacity analysis. We'll figure a lot of those things out. And then we're gonna have a lot of really innovative ideas and strategies for growing the demand in your practice. If you need more demand, if you truly need more demand, we're gonna lay out a lot of different pathways that can help you get there. And one thing that I love about our retreats is we get to harness the collective knowledge of the group and the room. And we have some really creative practices that we work with. And so we always take away so many more ideas than you and I deliver, but that's the whole point of our retreats. And so we actually do have in October, I believe it's in Denver this time, we have a few guest spots for every retreat. And so if you feel like that would be a good thing for you on the show notes, on the homepage, we'll go ahead and put a link in there so you can get a little bit more information about that. Watch the video about how you become a guest and start that ball rolling because it's gonna be a great opportunity to really dive in on patient flow and learn some of these tactics and strategies really at a deeper level.
John Meis (17:46.503)
Yeah, awesome. Very good. So that's a little taste of, you know, really how we drive patient flow and practices and get adequate patient flow so that we keep everybody's schedule filled, everybody busy, everybody doing great dentistry and taking great care of their patients. So that's it for this episode of the W Production Podcast. We'll see you next time.
Wendy Briggs (18:11.33)
Thanks everybody, bye bye.
