The 4 key processes for achieving high standards of success in your dental clinic

The goal of most dentists is the constant search for a successful dental practice through the continuous improvement of dental clinic management. Many of them have tried everything: classroom and online courses, consultancies, management software, miraculous techniques to triple revenue in a few days, among others.

The greatest difficulty reported by these professionals is to translate the concepts learned into consolidated practices within the clinics that actually generate results. This is because the faculty does not adequately prepare the dentist to run a business, but opening the clinic itself is the dream and the path adopted by most dental professionals.

It was with this in mind that we gathered in this post the 4 key processes that you must put into practice and control in your clinic to ensure constant growth and the success of your business.

The Clinical Pipeline

A pipeline is nothing more than a process map that allows a better visualization of the whole and of the steps that comprise it. Bringing it to the scene of a dental clinic, it allows us to see the stage that each patient (client) is in, as well as having a more strategic view of the business as a whole.

Every clinic, whether dental or not, has a pipeline formed by the 4 steps above. But before going into detail about each of these steps, let's discuss the importance of understanding and managing the pipeline in your clinic.

The importance of the pipeline for the successful clinic

As previously mentioned, the pipeline serves to give a strategic view of the business, in this case, your clinic or dental office. Having this strategic vision allows you to better allocate your resources (money, team and time), focus your actions and make better decisions. This will allow you to be able to build the success of your clinic.

It doesn't matter if your clinic has one or ten chairs, two or twenty dentists. If you do not have the ability to get out of the operational routine (see patients, pay bills, send reports to the accountant, ...) it is practically impossible to achieve good results. You will end up falling into the comfort zone and leaving the success or failure of your clinic at the mercy of the tide.

Fully delegating business administration to the secretary or a manager is the same as signing the business failure sentence.

The 4 key processes for success

After analyzing hundreds of dental clinics in detail, we built an extremely simple and powerful 4-step pipeline, so that it applies to clinics of any size and is easily understood and implemented by any dentist.

We call each of these steps a key process, taking into account the fact that executing and controlling each of them increases (and greatly!) Your chances of achieving the success of your business.

Process 1: ATTRACT

The first key process that a clinic should be concerned with is attracting patients to the clinic in order to carry out a treatment plan (budget). Without potential customers conducting the initial assessment every month, your business is bound to die.

This stage concentrates all the clinic's marketing planning, such as advertisements on facebook or google, distribution of pamphlets, television or radio advertising. Whenever we publicize the clinic, the goal is to place a patient in the chair for an initial assessment.

We have an ebook on marketing in dentistry that covers all the concepts, techniques and how to put this key process to work in your clinic. Below you can download it.

Process 2: SELL

The second process is to sell the treatment plan to the patient. That's exactly what you read. Dentist MUST know how to sell! It is useless to spend a fortune on marketing if after presenting the treatment plan to the patient he does not close the treatment with you or only approves what is urgent.

Here again it is evident the lack of preparation of the dentist for the administration of the clinic during college. Not knowing how to sell is the reason why patients often find the plan expensive and prefer to do the treatment in the competition because “there is half the price”.

And it is useless to get angry and think that your patient must understand that you studied for years during college and after that too to be a competent professional and that the price charged is the right one. You won't want to pay more for a FIAT car just because the engineer there studied more than Chevrolet. Not your patient either!

Selling well is related to showing value to the patient and not the price. It is a process that can be learned by anyone and has nothing to do with gift. The ebook below is a complete guide for you to improve this redesign and improve this key process in your clinic.

Process 3: ANSWER

The third process or stage that your patient goes through within your clinic is care. Here is concentrated everything you learned during the 4 ½ years or 5 years of college. The objective here is to assist the patient in the shortest time possible, ensuring quality of care.

Now it must have been very clear why you are lost in administration when you decide to set up your clinic, right ?! The entire dentistry course addresses only one of the four key processes.

In short, the college prepares dentists to be employees of dental clinics, but most of them own the business.

Process 4: LOYALTY

Finally, we reach the last step or key process in our pipeline. Loyalty to the patient means ensuring that he continues to return to the clinic to take care of oral health and also refer friends and relatives to you.

This loyalty can only be guaranteed with a unique service experience, which consists of the moment when he sat in the chair for the first time, even in the post-service period between the period between the last consultation and the return for a new evaluation.

Like selling, this is a process that is overlooked or misguided by most clinics. Many dentists believe that using quality material, modern equipment or advanced technique is sufficient to guarantee patient satisfaction.

Maximum satisfaction is only guaranteed with a set of good practices and a constant relationship with your patients. The ebook below addresses in a practical way how to prepare your clinic to retain patients.

Concluding

I hope that the clinical pipeline, the 4 key processes that make it up and how it will contribute to a successful clinic have become important.

Now you need to understand how you can put it into practice and assess how well each of the key processes is performing using key pipeline management indicators.

Source: LaudOnLine. Available at: http://laudonline.com/blog/os-4-processos-chave-para-ter-uma-clinica-de-sucesso/. Access on: 12/18/2020.