A Practice Management Parable
My sister loves puzzles. She’s a puzzle fanatic.
The more difficult the puzzle, the better.
She loves the challenge of mastering the puzzle so much that
she hides the jigsaw puzzle box so
she won’t see the picture.
And for a real challenge
she turns the puzzle pieces over and assembles them just using the shapes of the
pieces.
That is practice management. Putting the puzzle pieces together (your
practice systems) even when you’re unsure at first what your picture looks like.
Practice management is analyzing systems and managing those systems
so the pieces fit together to provide exceptional patient satisfaction and
practice profitability.
How are your pieces fitting together?
Practice Success
Practice success means different things to different practitioners;
it might be increased profitability, reduced stress, or empowered and
productive staff members.
Regardless of your definition, practice success is a direct result of
patient satisfaction. When patients are satisfied they:
- Say yes to treatment.
- Schedule their appointments.
- Pay for their treatment.
To achieve patient satisfaction Odell Consulting Group emphasizes
the ongoing relationship between the practice and your patient.
This approach is proactive vs. reactive.
Is your practice constantly reacting to patient issues?
Our Consultants
OCG consultants distinguish us from other consulting groups.
They have strong business backgrounds. Their education and training
focused on business management, and they have extensive consulting
experience in corporate America as well as in dentistry.
This is critical because
in order to be successful all practices must implement
basic business principals.
Our consultants concentrate on processes, relationships, and results.
We teach our clients how to
develop and maintain successful relationships with patients and staff.
How would you rate your current practice relationships?
A Training Parable
Imagine that your practice is a bus moving 100 mph. All of a sudden
the bus starts to pull to the left. You think you have a flat tire!
Now imagine trying to change the tire while going 100 mph.
That’s how most practices try to fix their systems.
Our training system teaches you how to pull your bus over
to the side of the road,
tinker under the hood, and change your oil and tires.
You learn to be your own mechanic.
How do you fix your flat tires?
Consulting
Each practice has its own unique characteristics.
Because of this, we understand the importance of
identifying and incorporating your practice’s unique success points
into a customized action plan for success.
Each action plan is based on the fundamentals of process re-engineering.
We begin by conducting
a practice assessment to determine your baseline system effectiveness.
This ensures that we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water or
discard the positive characteristics of your practice.
After the assessment we establish performance benchmarks
that will measure the implementation and success of your action plan.
Finally we develop a consulting and training plan designed to
achieve your practice goals.
Do you have an action plan for success?
The Effectiveness Parable
When I was a child I liked playing with dominoes.
I’d spend hours
lining them up: under the table, through the chair legs, and over the
rug so when I knocked over the first domino, they would all
fall down sequentially—the "domino effect."
This is like the process of effective practice management!
Every action you take is like a domino.
The goal is to have all your "dominoes" lined up
so they fall down sequentially.
Too often practices have their dominoes bouncing off the walls.
They don’t recognize the relationship between
individual actions and practice effectiveness.
To achieve the results you
want you have to understand the interrelatedness of your
actions and make appropriate changes to ensure that the "domino effect"
occurs.
Do your dominoes line up?
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