Dental CE: Division of Duties in a Dental Practice, Part 2—The Scheduling Coordinator by Sandy Pardue

The scheduling coordinator is integral to a successful dental office team. Here’s how to define the job and set expectations for the role

Abstract
Time is every practice’s most valuable asset, and one of the most important systems in the practice is scheduling. The success of every dental practice starts with the schedule. It can create stress, or it can create great success.

Practice owners would like to avoid roller-coaster production numbers, broken appointments, poor patient retention, and growing unscheduled treatment lists, yet they often fail to appoint someone to remedy these issues.

Dental teams tend to be robotic when it comes to their schedule, putting patients on it without a plan and even without financial arrangements. When the team starts the day and learns there are holes in the schedule, it leads to the doctor having nonproductive procedures. As patients cancel and those slots are not refilled, production goals are not met.

There will always be chaos and unpredictability when everyone on the team is overscheduling and no one person has been appointed to be the scheduling coordinator. Most practices have never set up security levels in their software, so anyone on the team can undermine the efforts of the scheduler and call patients to come early—or even cancel them as they see fit.

Even after appointing a scheduling coordinator, the practice may still struggle if that person wears other hats and is unable to focus on actions that align with the position, putting the schedule on the back burner when it should be the most important front-office function. Nothing else matters if the schedule is not full and productive.

Course description
This course details how to establish a productive scheduling coordinator position in the dental practice. It explains the importance of having a designated person, a job description, key attributes to look for when hiring, suggested performance monitors, how to calculate production goals, and suggested system protocols.

Educational objectives
Upon reading this article, participants should be able to:

1. Recognize the benefits of having a designated scheduler.
2. Hire or appoint the best person for the job..
3. Know the successful actions of the position.
4. Create a job description.
5. Figure production goals.
6. Implement key scheduling systems.

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