Is your practice patient- or production-driven? The answer should be purpose-driven. Kiera talks about how shifting your core values in a certain way can actually grow everything else.
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The Dental A Team (00:00)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am excited. This is a podcast built just for you by you. If you ever want me to make a podcast for you, just email in hello at TheDentalATeam.com or go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com and click on the podcast tab. You can submit topics for me to record for you. And today is a great one and I'm super excited about it. Someone asked production focus versus patient focus striking the right balance.
Does it have to be both? So is your practice driven by numbers or by people? And does it have to be a choice? I'm super jazzed. I'm super excited because this is the type of juicy stuff I like to get into because this is what offices talk about all the time. Oh my gosh, we're production focused. Well, that means you're not patient focused. Oh my gosh, you're patient focused. That means you're not production focused. Does it have to be? There's tension. It's tension. It's like, are you on the right side or the left side? Are you blue or are you Which side are you on?
Like there's tension here, production focus versus patient focus. Does it really have to be this debate? So I love this. Email me. You guys are love a good pen pal. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I like pen pals. You guys remember that? If you want to write me a letter, you can send me a letter. It's in Verdi, Nevada on the website, P.O. Box. I think it's 635 Verdi, Nevada. No clue what it is, but I will get it and I'll send you a postcard back. So pen pal for real, email us.
You guys, really do love a good pen pal. I will seriously send you a letter back. So ? write me. I would love to hear from you. But I'm curious, does it have to be production focus or patient focus or can it be both? Is it the chicken or the egg? I definitely think that there has to be a way because the most successful practices integrate production and patience. So the answer is yes, it can be both. And I don't care what side of the coin you're on. I'm gonna teach you that you can actually be on both sides of the coin and still maintain your ethics.
like your ethical integrity, all of that. You guys, this is the Dental A Team. I'm obsessed with dentists. I'm obsessed with dental teams. I'm obsessed with making you happy. I'm obsessed with positively impacting this world in the greatest way possible. And that's why we built this podcast free for you to give you all the tips and tricks. And all I ask in return is that you leave us a review and share this with somebody that can change their life. My goal is to have this podcast into the hands of every single dental office out there. And guys, you are crushing it. We are in the millions of downloads and I can't do that without you. So please today.
share, download, or leave us a five star review. That means the world to me and I do read those reviews. So thank you. Thank you for everybody who reads those reviews. I appreciate each of you. So today I want to talk about patient focused version of production focused because you know, I got a pen pal out there. production focused means that we're focused on high volume, goal driven, and we're going to probably have burnout. Like that's the drive. It is a lot of times ego. That's okay. So when I'm talking to you.
You can test yourself right now. Are you ready? I'm gonna say, hey, what is your production? Now, to answer that, what's your production? If you just told me your number in gross, you're a little ego driven and I love you for it. And I'm gonna tell you that that is one of the worst things to do because there's no way for us you to ever collect it. I was talking to a practice the other day and they're like, yes, Kiera, we are a $7 million practice and we had a million dollars worth of write-offs. And I was like, well, shoot. So.
You're actually, think they actually have two million. So you're not a seven million, you're a five million. That's a bit of a minute. So you're actually a five million dollar practice and I'd rather talk about real numbers because then I can actually truly get you to seven million rather than feeding your ego at this. So that tends to be the case where you're, if you, you might be a bit production. If you're presenting those in gross, ? present them in, it's okay to your buddies. You can present in gross. To me, to here, to this conversation in real life.
please, please, please present them in net, what you can actually collect. Now, if we're too patient focused, we tend to run at a slower pace, high trust, but we risk a lot of inefficiency and you actually risk the, like, you really do run a risk of you're not looking at the numbers and you actually can create a really, really, really scary spot where you actually are in like profit row where you have no money. ? And so you gotta have both.
We've got to have production where we're able to serve our patients and we've got to care about our patients. We've got to make sure that both of those come together because that's a true business. This is what we're looking for. So I just want you to look at yourself right now and I want you to audit you and your practice. Where do you lean more? Okay. So do you lean a little more left? Do you lean a little more right? Do you lean a little more production focused or do you lean a little more patient focused? It's okay. There's no right or wrong. I just want you to like really look at yourself and assess what route do you fall?
because it's gonna help you, okay? So where are you? We're not like all patient or all production, but which way do you lean? I want you to answer that. You can pen pal me. Remember, I got pen pals out there. So be another pen pal for me. And then step two is I want you to marry metrics with meaning, which isn't that cute? Yes, chat GPT helped me on that one. Marry metrics with meaning, I love that. I was like, that is such a good way to bring this to the table. So we want you guys to be like in the middle, we're not production, we're not patient, we're purpose.
Did you love that? Another P, we're not patient, we're not production, we're purpose driven. So what this is going to be is you can actually like increase case acceptance to outcomes, not quotas. So it's not like we need 20 crowns, we need to help this many patients. help team members see, like I love Tiff, she said this, she was like, production is the measuring stick to see how many patients we're serving. That feels so much better than like we got to hit 150,000.
No, 150,000 shows is how many patients were able to serve. Let's quantify that up to how many patients and now let's put that up to 200,000 and serve that many patients. So we'll help you guys see that like this is a reflection of care. It's not like just, I don't know, like a number on a scorecard. It's people. You guys, all that production was people that we were able to change their lives. That's what we do in Dental A Team. I literally like, when we talk about our numbers, for a while I put up numbers and it was just a number.
So you can tell it's a little bit more production focused rather than patient focused. And it didn't matter to me. And then when I was like, okay, we're going to go out and I want to serve, like I want Dental A Team to serve 500 dental practices. Like in one year, I want us to have that many that to me, like think of how many lives we're going to change. Cause my ultimate goal is impact to possibly impact this world in the greatest way possible. So I was like, all right, let's put an audacious goal out there. I want to serve 500 offices. Yeah, you can join us. Yes, of course.
And like now it became funds. Like the number is tied to people. Cause I ultimately care about people. care about impact. Money can have impact, but it doesn't drive me. What drives me is changing people's lives. Life is my passion, dentistry is my platform. So how can you help your team see that? So we have to help them see like for me with teams, case acceptance, I'm just saying like that's how many smiles you were able to like truly benefit. There's so many lives you're able to change. I believe the case acceptance is life changing. I was the patient on the other side of that coin.
who literally had my life changed by identities. So when we shifted like KPIs are metrics, yes, but metrics have meaning and their purpose. So what does this case acceptance actually reflect? What does this production actually reflect? What did these new patients numbers actually reflect? And when we look at it as this like patient centric, it becomes so much more fun. I did this in a team meeting the other day where, gosh, we were sitting there and I was like, all right, rattle off to me like why you guys go to Chick-fil-A? And they're like talking about it. Not one of them said price.
Not one of them. Not one of them when I talked about McDonald's said Bryce. So when I looked at this, I thought, okay, people go to Chick-fil-A for the experience. And I thought, how can we become a more patient centric practice that uses metrics to see how we're doing of serving those patients? That's what it is. That's how you marry metrics with meaning. These numbers on a KPI scorecard are telling me the vitals of how good we're serving our patients.
So when I look at our hygiene, I wanna know, are we diagnosing perio or are we doing bloody profies? When I look at Florida, you guys, I'm a huge proponent of Florida. If you're not, that's okay, we can still be friends. I'm here to also teach you holistic. I love Florida. Florida changed my life. It prevented so many cavities for me, like truly was life-changing. So I'm like, absolutely, give it to patients. So when I look at your hygiene numbers, I'm not looking at like, did you get your eight out of eight today? I'm looking at like, did you help proactively prevent decay on all of your patients today?
Of course, if they don't want it, that's fine. But like, let's use our words, words are free. Let's set it up in a way to help more patients say yes. I am patient centric with production numbers and using words to get the results I'm looking for. I'm looking for outcomes, not effort. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite lines, and it's probably gonna become like a core value. My team doesn't know this, you guys, is we measure our, we measure by outcomes, not activity. ? we measure it by outcomes.
not activity because I can sit here and say, I served this many patients, but if I didn't close any cases, I did not get the outcome of helping truly get them the smiles and the health that they deserve. Bottom line. So then step three is you got to change your culture. You got to have a culture that supports both. It's got to be efficiency and empathy. It's got to be production and patient. It's got to be like truly driven. And I've got so many offices like Kiera, I don't want to my team about the numbers. That's fine. You don't have to.
But can't we also help them see that the numbers are helping more patients? Every team I've ever gone into has told me the reason they're in tennis tree is to help change patients' lives. That's why they're here. So when I look at this, I'm like, okay, if that's why we're all here, how do we know that we're actually helping the number of patients that we could? Like genuinely somebody tell me, how do we actually know in a tangible, non-emotional way? How do I know? So we've got to help people see that like, okay, fantastic. We have a culture where when we hit our numbers,
We know we serve the patients that we're set here to serve. Period. You're not gonna go away from that and helping people see that numbers equate the outcomes we're looking for. Numbers help us serve patients. And on the flip side, when we, like you guys, there's a book called Unreasonable Hospitality. Have your team do fun things like that where we celebrate the birthdays, the weddings, the anniversaries, the celebrations. We have like a little gift basket on the side where we can quickly go and have some fun with those people to make this magic moment for our patients.
have magic moments that produce results. Team training, we gotta do patient and production language. We've gotta be empathetic. So for me to say like, my gosh, I'm so excited that you don't work with Dr. Jones. Dr. Jones is incredible. They're gonna take great care of you. Let's get you scheduled for this appointment. I know Dr. Jones definitely wants to get you back. I've got Monday or Wednesday, which works best for you. That was patient and production centric, both in the same exact equation.
when I talk to them about case acceptance, it's like, perfect. So here's the treatment that Dr. Jones diagnosed for you. This is your total out of pocket. This is your insurance estimate. This will be your total when I see you on Wednesday. What questions do you have for me? I want you to be rock solid moving forward. Again, production and patient focus. I want them to be so solid. I'm genuinely so concerned about them. I really want them to be solid. If they tell me they got to talk to their spouse, absolutely, 100%. I want you to talk to your spouse.
Help me what questions they're going to ask. That way I can make sure you're fully prepped when you chat with them. That's production and patient focused. A cancellation calls in. my gosh, what's going on? Tell me, like, ? I've been so worried about you. Like help me understand where you at, what's going on. Like, are you okay? Tell me like, you're sick. Like, my gosh, what's going on? I know there's been a bug going around. Someone says I can't make it from work. my gosh. Like, I'm so sorry to hear that. Tell me what's going on. Let's find a solution. I know Dr. wanted to see you.
I can't wait to see you and I know there's gonna be a solution for us. Production and patient focus. And I think when teams see that you don't have to be one or the other, production focus can come across aggressive, patient focus can come across non-aggressive and very like twiddling my thumb sometimes. And so I'm like the true win is the middle ground. The true win is where we see that patients need to feel loved.
and important and that they're humans. And they also need to see that we love them so much. And we're going to make sure that they get the treatment that they need to get done. And we're going to help use our words to make sure it's easy for them to say yes. Both are doable. Both are right. Both are necessary. This is how you guys are able to have it. And so I think you guys can have conversations with the team. How can we be patient and production focused? How can we marry the two because we know the best practices are both.
They are, there's not one lever that's stronger than the other. Both are married together as a perfect whole, two perfect complete whole. How can we be more, if you know from, remember we did an audit, if you know you're a little more production focused, how can you be a bit more patient focused? Have that come up in the team. If you know you're a bit more patient focused, how can we be a bit more production focused? And I know you might be bristling on both sides. Production focused people might think that, my gosh, it's a complete waste of time to be patient focused.
Patient focused people, they're like, my gosh, you'll maybe be aggressive and like force these people into treatment. The answer is no to both of those. Us treating people like human beings, production focused teams will actually make those patients want to be here more. Our teams that are more patient focused, turning more production focused, it's gonna help us make sure that we're not missing things on the patients, that we're not doing inadequate care. And that actually that patient's not leaving confused and that they truly know what they need to do. And it's very clear of next steps for them.
Clear is kind. Being direct is kind. Loving people as people is kind. So I'd really encourage you to adopt this into your practice. And if you struggle with this, if your doctor is like, ? I am not having that team meeting, I'm not having that conversation, great. That's why we have a job. That's what we love to do. Our job is to align doctors and team members to help team members see that production is patient focused and to see that patient focus is production focused. Both sides are necessary.
You need both of them. And so to be able to help you and your team get there, I think is a beautiful thing. So I would really, really, really encourage you to be patient and production focused, both of them. Look to see where you could be a little bit more on whichever side you don't naturally lean to. I know you can already do more on the side that you naturally lean to. Go the other side. I want you to think about it. I want you to bring that into your culture. And I'd really encourage you. And if you struggle with this or you're like, I don't really know how to do this, reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.
It's not just about this. It's about other goals. It's about other spaces. It's about other awkward conversations that you just don't know how to navigate. It's about getting your team and you doctors rowing in the exact same direction. And that's what we're here to do. So reach out. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. And as always remember, patient and production is purpose driven dentistry. And that's what you're here to do. And I know that you're here for that. I know that you care so much about your patients and that's why I wanted to really bring this up. So thanks for the pen pal. Thanks for writing. I'd love to hear from more of you. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.
Go to our website, give me some more topics and reach out. I'd love for you to be one of our 500 practices. We get to help love serve and have that be the purpose to positively impact and change your life for the better. Not just your practice, but you as a person. Because at the end of the day, I care about you as a human being. I care about you thriving. I care about you having the practice of your dreams and having the team of your dreams because I care about you as a human. So reach out and as always know that I'm rooting for you. Know that I care about you.
Know that I adore you as always. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time on the Dental A Team Podcast.