The Dentist's Network #53


	Hiring the Experienced Exam by the Patient New Management Software

Sally McKenzie, CEO
McKenzie Management
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Experience? What Exactly Does That Mean?

Experience. It’s a word that conveys different meanings to different people. When seeking employment, applicants naturally want to convince their prospective employers that they would bring necessary experience to the position. Meanwhile, dentists often are feeling the pressure to fill vacancies quickly and don’t typically need a lot of convincing that an applicant’s “experience,” whatever it is, will be just fine for the practice.

Just fine until a few months down the road when the hiring dentist realizes that the new employee’s so-called “experience” is not what the job really requires or the practice needs, particularly when it comes to computer experience. Even jobs that would not necessarily be described as “technical” commonly demand computer experience or technical skills that applicants often lack. Dental practice employees in general—both clinical and business—are often expected to understand and use spreadsheet, word-processing and database software that contains a goldmine of practice details.

The wealth of critical information at your fingertips is virtually boundless, provided that your team knows how to access and use it. Practice management reports that can be generated by sophisticated software will tell you almost everything you must know about your practice: if it is growing or declining, what procedures are your “bread and butter,” what other services or products you need to market, how many new patients are coming in and how many patients are leaving, how many children and how many adults you see, what percentage of your practice is insurance and what is private pay, what percentage of the insurance base is this company or that, and so on.

Although an applicant may bring some computer experience it doesn’t mean she/he has the knowledge necessary to access and interpret essential reports or compile spreadsheets. That would be an important detail to learn before your “experienced” applicant metamorphoses into your “not-so-experienced” new hire. Today, when hiring someone to manage the now million-dollar practice, take steps to discover if she/he has more than just basic knowledge of computer software or if computer skills training would be a benefit.

For example, if you’re hiring a new office manager, this applicant’s skills should be evaluated in a number of areas. Consider this approach: First, make up a “dummy” patient on the computer and ask the applicant to put together a treatment plan and then schedule the patient for multiple appointments. Next, ask the candidate to post from the treatment plan. From there, have the applicant gather insurance information on the dummy patient. Finally, ask the applicant to create a treatment proposal and a financial option sheet. These are the basics. You will be able to observe the applicant’s true skill level and how much additional computer training will be necessary.

Certainly current staff, if they are well-trained, can be helpful in familiarizing new employees to computer systems. But professional training is essential, so plan to make the most of that investment. Do not put your practice at the mercy of an inexperienced new hire. I can guarantee the results will be financially disastrous. Train your team.

Bring the software trainer in to teach the employee specific skills, and document each session so that the new employee, as well as others in the practice, can review steps for completing specific tasks and check the level of mastery. Keep the documentation in your Dental Business Training Manual along with a checklist of computer system skills (specific to your practice) that each employee should have mastered.

Each time someone on the team integrates a new technology or makes use of a new computer software tool, add the training steps to the training manual. This will allow staff to review procedures that they don’t use regularly and new staff to master new systems more quickly and efficiently.

In general, it takes three months of supervised training to get a new hire up to speed. Monitor performance during the 90-day training period and have a senior team member check the accuracy of the work with the intention of coaching—not criticizing.

Interested in speaking to Sally about your practice concerns? Email her at sallymck@mckenziemgmt.com.

Interested in having Sally speak to your dental society or study club? Click here.

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Louis Malcmacher
DDS MAGD
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The Complete Examination

Generally when dentists read a title about a complete examination, like the one above, they start thinking along the lines of a comprehensive examination, oral cancer screening, two bitewings, a full mouth series or panorex, diagnostic casts, articulators, periodontal charting, complete medical history and temporomandibular joint examination. Truth be told, if I read another article like the one I just described about telling me how to do a complete examination on a patient, I think I’m going to be sick. I’ve sat through full-day courses on doing a complete examination that taught me nothing more than I learned in dental school.

I am going to talk about a different kind of complete examination. This complete examination occurs every minute of every day in your dental office. I am talking about the complete examination that patients give you every second that they are in your office. Doctor, you and your staff are being examined completely by pairs of eyes and you are being scrutinized by the people who pay you. This is the complete examination that you have to pass in order to have a successful dental office.

What are your patients looking for when they are performing their complete examination of you? It goes without saying that they are looking for quality dentistry in a safe, sterile environment. (I have seen, by the way, that line in many dental offices as a mission statement. Don’t you think that most patients take safe and sterile for granted? I am sure that patients are not looking for a dirty dental office that reuses its anesthetic needles.) The question is, then, what are patients looking for beyond the basic dental office and what are they judging you on?

The number one thing patients are examining is how you are going to treat THEM. They want to know that you are going to treat them as individuals, not as just mouths. When you come to the office, are you more concerned about you or the patients? If the answer is you, then you fail the patients’ examination and immediately. The dental office should be about the patient, not about you. In this day and age, when estimates range that 50% of dentistry is elective esthetic treatment, if you are giving every patient that walks in the door a cookie-cutter, full-mouth reconstruction worth $60,000, they figure out that it is not about them.

There is a second part of the examination that you must pass as well. Is your office a state-of-the-art dental office? Tomorrow you could go to a dental show like the Chicago Midwinter Meeting and spend a million dollars on everything from the latest in digital radiography to an in-office CT scan—things that may represent the state of the art to you but not necessarily to your patients. To them, state-of-the-art dentistry means that you have techniques or technology that will give them what they want: minimally invasive, relatively painless, injection-free (when possible) dentistry.

Patients determine the state-of-the-art by what they read and see in consumer magazine. The three most popular state-of-the-art techniques patients know about now are one-hour whitening, lasers and minimally invasive porcelain veneers called Lumineers.

From a practice management and a clinical point of view, it is time to get a Waterlase MD dental laser into your offices. More than any other piece of technology we have ever invested in, the laser impresses patients. When they go to the dermatologist, she/he is using a laser. When they go to the ophthalmologist, she/he is using a laser. When they walk into a dental office using a high speed drill that patients remember from their youth, they perceive you as an old-fashioned dentist. People see lasers everywhere, so if they see a laser in your office, too, in their eyes you become a state-of-the-art dentist and pass their complete examination.

Are you able to provide dental treatment faster, easier and better than ever before? Using the fastest carbide burs, like Alpen burs by Coltene Whaledent, will help patients get in and out of your dental chair in record time. Patients know who the slow dentists are and they don’t like sitting for treatment any longer than necessary. Alpen Speedster burs give you more control and induce fewer traumas with their sharpness and ability to cut teeth faster with less heat. Because the use of new, fast carbide burs directly reduces post-operative sensitivity, patients also judge you more favorably after their appointments.

Thanks to the very successful marketing by the Den-Mat Corporation, people these days ask for Lumineers by name, not for porcelain veneers, because they require no or minimal preparation and are relatively painless. If patients come in and ask for Lumineers and you don’t offer them, then in their eyes you are just another dentist that hurts people. When patients who don’t want veneers see that you offer Lumineers, even they immediately recognize the name because of its successful branding. Offering this product communicates that you are committed to minimally invasive dentistry and that you really care about patients.

(There are prominent esthetic lecturers who say that patients don’t care about the aggressive preparations as long as they get the desired result. I have found that given the choice between aggressive preparations and minimal or no preparation, people will opt for minimally invasive dentistry every single time.)

Patients surveyed by The Crown Council expressed that their main desire from their dentists was more information about oral cancer. Are you performing oral cancer examinations on patients? Have you instituted oral cancer screening like Vizilite Plus with Tblue in your offices? The mortality rate for oral cancer has not gone down in 40 years, so dentists need to raise awareness. I suggest going to www.oralcancerselfexam.com and learn to teach your patients how to do their own self-exams for oral cancer.

Finally, people also want nearly painless financial arrangements. That is where CareCredit financing comes in. Patients really appreciate the effort we put in to make sure they can finance their dental treatment.

Patients are looking at you and constantly evaluating you, your team and the entirety of your office to see if it is where they want to get their dental treatment. State-of-the-art techniques that patients care about like those mentioned above will help you get an A+ on your next exam. Good luck!

Dr. Louis Malcmacher is a practicing general dentist in Bay Village, Ohio, an internationally known lecturer, dental consultant and author, and consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. Interested in knowing more about how to truly enjoy dentistry? Click here.

Interested in having Dr. Malcmacher speak to your dental society or study club? Click here.

To reach Dr. Malcmacher, email him at DrMalcmacher@thedentistsnetwork.net or call 1.800.952.0521.

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Dr. Lorne Lavine
Dental Technology Consultants
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Choosing New Practice Management Software

With all the latest gadgets and high-tech systems that are the rage in dentistry, many offices lose sight of the fact that the most critical component of a modern practice is the practice management software. This is the “glue” that holds everything together. If yours is one of many offices using outdated programs that are no longer supported, it is time to choose a new one. But how?

Features

The choices that face the dentist are almost overwhelming. Although recent consolidations have reduced the number of major players in this arena, there are still dozens and dozens of programs from smaller companies. Comparing systems reveals how certain features are handled better on one program, while other features work better on different programs. In other words, there is no one perfect program for any particular dentist. I recommend that you review independent studies and comparisons and ask colleagues for their opinions. Here are a few things that I recommend that you keep in mind when you are comparing products:

1. Every program has dozens of bells and whistles, but most dentists end up using only a very small portion of offered features. Focus on certain areas of practice management programs that almost all offices use. These include (but are not limited to) patient registration, scheduling, treatment planning, insurance estimation and processing, recall patient management and reports of practice parameters, such as production, collections, etc. Make a list of what’s important to you and compare every program you evaluate using your list.

2. It is prudent to focus on the main features of the software, but do not discount the ability of the software to add new innovations over time. It has been my experience that the average practice uses about 10% of the features of their software. With proper training, most offices can master the untapped and underutilized features of their software to improve the practice’s profitability and efficiency. To take just one example, Dentrix has a direct link to patient financing built into their software. Rather than spending a considerable amount of time having the patient fill out forms and calling in information, the office now has quick and immediate access to information that will determine if the patient is eligible for financing.

3. You must involve your staff in this decision. With the exception of the reports, it is your staff that will be handling all of the administrative functions of the software. If they find the program difficult to use, it will be disastrous to your practice. Many new dentists are fortunate enough to hire an office manager who has experience with dental software; someone like this can be an invaluable resource for determining the advantages of a particular program.

4. Although most dental software today includes both administrative and clinical features, it is the administrative component that will, in most cases, be the most important part. This does not mean, though, that the clinical functions are not important. The topic of integration of clinical data with practice management systems is outside the scope of this article, but make sure that the software you purchase today is capable of working with the software and hardware of high-tech products.

5. One method that I have found effective is to input either an existing patient or an imaginary patient and see how the software tracks her. In other words, create a patient record, schedule her, create a treatment plan, post treatment to her account, create an insurance form, re-schedule the patient, etc. In this case, you can compare apples to apples when evaluating how software handles this process. Keep in mind to test how well the software can adapt to your preferred methods of seeing and treating patients. Poorly designed software will force you to change how you practice and process patients; you should avoid this at all costs.

Training, Service and Support

It is very unfortunate that the factors that are probably most important when choosing a software package are usually given the least amount of consideration. Most dentists will spend hours evaluating software, choosing features and reviewing the price of a program, but will barely even think about the need for training and ongoing support.

Let’s start with training. There is no better way to ensure that your staff never adapts to a software program than to bypass proper training. Unfortunately, many dentists will try to save money by justifying their decision to not spend money for on-site or classroom-based training. Don’t make this mistake. Training is one of the best investments you can make. Dental management software programs are complex; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Having everyone in the office (and, yes, that includes the doctor) up to speed on the software is crucial to ensuring that it is rapidly integrated into your practice.

Service and support is the other part of this equation. Many dentists make the mistake of looking at the price of the software and do not factor in the costs of ongoing support. I have seen support packages that are as low as a couple of hundred dollars per year to packages that are over $5,000 per year. When choosing a support package, you need to ask a number of questions:

Is unlimited telephone support offered as a part of the package or is it charged per minute?
What other means of support (i.e. email, web-based, fax, etc.) are offered?
What are the hours for customer service and support?
Is on-site support offered?
Are different levels of support plans offered?
How often is the program updated?
What are the qualifications of the support staff?

One important question to ask is how soon your call will be answered. Time is money and the sooner your software vendor can get you off the phone with your problem solved the better. Ask to see performance statistics, such as the average on-hold time and average length of call. This information will provide you with an insight into what’s in store for you. As I mentioned earlier, independent surveys that rate customer support for many different systems are available. Also ask your colleagues about their experiences.

Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provide dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.

Dr. Lavine can be reached at drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net.

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