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Quotes & Notes:
- If I could break down lean principles into two words it would be waste reduction. Waste can come in a couple of different ways; it can come in materials, but the biggest waste in dentistry comes from wasted time.
- Your team doesn’t like being behind schedule, that stresses everyone out.
- One of the things I find is longer appointments with patients if you can get them to come to longer appointments, which helps a lot in eliminating this waste.
We don’t offer this to patients with a history of no-showing. If a patient has broken appointments before, I don’t want to schedule them for a two-hour appointment.
- I didn’t always want to be harping on my team to support me to the extent that really was required. What really was important was keeping me moving through the day.
- Do we have a patient in the chair who is going to pay for their treatment, who has already agreed that they are having a root canal and not an extraction, who is going to show up for their visit in the first place. There is a lot of quality control that we can do to make sure the dentist is working on the “good Post-It.”
Once I realized that you could have a three day work week, be very productive still, still make a good income, and have a four day weekend every week, that became pretty appealing.
- Two barriers to working fewer days are the staff worrying about less hours, or patients worrying about fewer days to get work done on their teeth.
- Dr. Graham Dersley would suggest everyone read The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. He would also suggest everyone read Harvard Business Review on Manufacturing Excellence at Toyota.
If you would like to learn more from Dr. Graham Dersley you should go to practiceonfirelive.com and check out the event in Nashville on May 13-14.
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