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Howard Speaks: Your Team and Patients Are Your Responsibility by Dr. Howard Farran

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Categories: Practice Management, HR and Accounting;
Howard Speaks: Your Team and Patients Are Your Responsibility 

by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, publisher, Dentaltown magazine

Editor’s note: Dentaltown founder Dr. Howard Farran is answering questions submitted by Townies who post questions on Facebook or Twitter using the hashtag #askhoward. You can find his video answers posted on Dentaltown’s social media feeds and on the Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran blog on Dentaltown.com.
This month, we’re excerpting part of Howard’s answer to the question: “What would you say is the most important part of owning a practice, but often gets overlooked?”

Two aspects of ownership are essential to your practice success, and both are things most dentists give short shrift and little attention to:
  • Human resources and team cultivation.
  • Your doctor–patient communication skills.
First, to build up a successful practice, you need to build up a successful and steady team. If your team members have been with the practice for an average of five years, that’s about as long as your average patient will stay too. Dentists love to think that their clinical skills alone will be enough to keep patients coming into the practice, but that’s not true—especially for patients who are there just for regularly scheduled cleanings and exams. At a typical hygiene appointment, how many minutes does a patient spend with a hygienist versus a dentist? I’d even say that many patients spend more time with the front desk team—checking in, paying balance, scheduling their next appointment—than they do with an actual doctor.

So what happens if, every time they come in for a cleaning, they end up with a different hygienist? “Oh, but I loved Megan!” they’ll say. If they had a connection with her—maybe they had kids about the same age, or their spouses went to the same college—they now have to start from scratch with a new person on the next visit. And they’ll wonder what you did to make Megan leave. You have to remember that dentistry is all relationship-based, because in so many ways, we’re selling the invisible—everything we do is based on the patient trusting us.

Straight talk, times two

Which brings me to the second point: Patients won’t trust you if they can’t understand and connect with you.

When you’re talking to patients, are you tossing out terms like mesial and occlusal? Anterior and posterior? In case you forgot, here’s what “posterior” means to most people: their butt.

Imagine going to the mechanic for an oil change and having them talk about your vehicle’s lifters. (I don’t even like it when they ask if I want 30-weight or 40-weight oil: Who’s the pro here? Why are you asking me?) You need to speak to patients in language they understand. Clinical language can be nonsensical outside of the clinical environment—show me one person besides a dentist who refers to their mouth as an “oral cavity.”

Straight talk also means being honest with patients. I’ve had people in the chair and I forwarded my contact information straight from my phone to them, saying, “If anything goes wrong, I want to be the first to know. I’m only going to know if you tell me—I need you to be straight with me! And if you aren’t, that’s not going to help the next patient.”

I can’t tell you how important it is to make your team and your patients feel welcome and respected in your practice—but if you don’t already make it a priority, you absolutely need to.

Ask Howard your own question!

For a chance to have your question answered, post it on Facebook or Twitter and use the hashtag #askhoward.

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