Do you keep your patients waiting?
This week’s topic is customer service – a huge responsibility for practices!.
For those of you in mixed practices, it is essential that you get your house in order as soon as possible. It sounds like the new NHS contract will be similar to GPs – you will get paid for meeting quality outcomes. Where GPs have the QOF you will have the Dental QOF (Quality Outcomes Framework).
.
It is suggested that the new contract will be a caption based scheme, whereby you receive additional ‘points’ for the patient experience (30%), patient care (60%) and patient safety (10%).
.
For today’s post I would like to focus on the biggest problem that practices encounter every day – Running late.
.
I find it unacceptable – unless you have a genuine emergency of course!
.
There’s a vicious cycle; you run late, your patients know you run late so they turn up late, you keep seeing them even though they are late and the cycle continues.
.
.
So how do you stop this?
.
1. Set a date to confirm when you will start running to time – e.g. 1st April 2012
2. Tell your patients in a newsletter and through signs or hand-outs in the practice
3. Stop seeing patients that turn up late!
4. If someone is late, call them, don’t let them arrive and then tell them they won’t be seen!
5. Roleplay verbal skills to overcome the objection of ‘you always keep me waiting’.
6. Communicate – introduce systems to ensure that if you are running late, the patient does not arrive without knowing in advance.
7. Introduce a TCO to the practice; they have a responsibility to outline to all new patients how the practice operates!
8. If you are late, pay up!
.
Here is what happened in one practice – in the first month they introduced this they paid out just over £800. The fee they paid out came from the clinicians’ pay. Dentist, hygienist, therapist – they all lost out financially.
.
How much do you think the practice gave to charity the second month? Just short of £200.
.
Guess how much they now pay out? Around £50 a month!!! That’s only 10 patients in one month that are kept waiting!
.
This practice has a huge NHS contract, yet they now see the majority of patients on time.
.
What’s stopping you?
.
.
.
.
Providing dentists and their dental team with training programmes to increase results with proven successful methods.
Photography training, Treatment Coordinator Training and wow factor examinations. Visit the website