A lot of my clients are not even able to completely do a program like that anyway. So, we just have multiple touches. We’ll hit a patient several times trying to get them to refer a patient to us in just very soft touches. We tell them how much we appreciate them. We actually have a script the assistant says. We’ve got a script that the front office says, and we have cards to give them.
We actually have an offer if you want, free exam, free x-ray card that we give folks to give out. We say, if someone is like you in our practice, then, we definitely want them here, too. Now, be careful. Anything you do like this and I believe somewhere in Canada that is not culture, but this is a very specific template that we follow. It just seems to work out overtime, and overtime it has gotten better and better. Like I said, our direct referral numbers have never been better, and that has caused me to spend less and less on external marketing.
If you’re getting the same amount or better production out of fewer patients and you’re not having to spend extra marketing money, then, that’s just extra money in your pocket, right? That’s just money you did not have to spend.
Dr. Lavine:
Yup. Now, what about your staff? Obviously, this system probably works very well. If your staff promoted? What are you doing to promote your staff? Do you have some type of bonus system, or what are you doing to be effective?
Dr. Griffin:
You know, we’ve had a lot of promotion systems over the years. I’ve tried them all and failed at most of them and settled in on a few. A few years ago, we did a complete team bonus, and that was great at first. I mean we got huge bumps. We were getting $50,000 a month, and then, when we bumped up to $80,000 or $90,000, everybody was so happy. As we crossed over $100,000 and got up to the hundreds per month, the people in that bonus got to be making a lot of money. It wasn’t that I hated to pay them, but the truth of the matter was it was not equitable because when I would hire new people, there was no extra money to pay them anywhere where the original people were making. It just wasn’t fair.
So, then, we went to a different bonus system, and people rebelled on that. Now, unfortunately, Lorne, to tell you the truth, I have a different bonus system for every single person in the practice. We try to attach a statistic to each person that keeps them engaged in the practice. It keeps them focused on their particular area. I wish there was just a magic formula for that. Unfortunately, the truth is actually have to manage each person individually to get the best out of them. That’s probably not what everybody wanted to hear, but that’s just the way it is these days.
Dr. Lavine:
Okay. Yeah, I agree. That’s the reality of the situation. I just want to make sure we get to a couple more questions before we have to wrap things up here. For someone that wants to know a little bit more about lean management, is there a specific one book that they should check out that helped you in your practice?
Dr. Griffin:
I don’t think there’s one book, but just go to Amazon and type in “lean management”. There’s a couple that were written that are really good on lean management applications to health care, and it really is not dentistry. It is application into how the hospitals or big medical groups use lean management. So, I was reading that, and I was like, “Well, certainly, if you can figure out how to make a car manufacturer work in the industry. It’s a lot easier to figure out how it’s applied to a hospital or a medical group and apply that directly do dentistry.”
So, absolutely go to that. Just go on Amazon and type it in. Buy a couple of those if you want to, and there’s another concept about value string mapping. You should get a good book on that, and you know what’s better? You can go to Wikipedia, my gracious, and you could probably read all you want to on Wikipedia about this. Go to Wikipedia and read about value string mapping and lean management. That’ll take you a while.
I actually blew up my account. Do you have an Evernote account Lorne?
Dr. Lavine:
Of course.
Dr. Griffin:
Yeah. So, gee, I was on a frenzy left and right. I was just taking stuff off the internet left and right, throwing it on Evernote and about maxed out my iPhone doing that. So, yeah, I think you can find on the internet however much you want to mess with. Then, if you want to go further, yeah, get those books off Amazon.
Dr. Lavine:
Okay. Can we keep you on for a couple more minutes? There’s a couple more questions I want to try to get to.
Dr. Griffin:
Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Lavine:
Than you. We appreciate it. What if I told you I really had a small practice, two chairs, one hygienist. I’ve got one assistant, one front office person that basically does everything. One of those rooms is for the hygienist, and the other is for the doctor. Can they overbook? Can they do what you recommend, doing that third column, or is that not going to work for a practice that small?
Dr. Griffin:
That is not going to work for a practice that small with two chairs and one hygienist. Please don’t try this at home. Don’t do it. You need at least three chairs to make it work, and three is pushing it. Four for sure would work good, but no. I wouldn’t do it with two.
Dr. Lavine:
Okay. So, you’re only working three days a week. You have no associates. You’re not available for four days. What happens if someone needs to be seen?
Dr. Griffin:
You know, that goes back to the defect slide. It’s against my nature to think about bragging, but I just think you need to take your trade seriously enough that you can go in and do that there doesn’t have to be mishaps on the weekend. Things should be coming off, and teeth shouldn’t be breaking off. Of course, people are going to get a toothache on the weekend.
Occasionally, we have a protocol for this. Do we have a standard operating procedure protocol? Absolutely. We have a chain of command that a call goes to an answering service. The answering service goes to a full time manager here at the practice. They, then, sort through the call, and once or twice a month, I get a call, and I need to come up to the office. I will either call in a prescription or come into the office, and then, that’s the way it works.
I have a lot of clients who have a problem. They have stuff that goes wrong on the weekends, and I just tell them, “Try to think ahead. I mean, if you’ve got a necrotic tooth, if the last day that you work on a week is a Thursday, let’s try not to put a filling on a necrotic tooth on a Thursday afternoon.” How about that? That’s not thinking. I mean, you’ve got to use your head. Think again, guys. If you’ve a tooth that if you prep that thing, that’s going to have a resident adhesive cement to hold on there. If you prep it before you go into town, the temporary’s obviously going to fall off. Use your head when you’re [01:32:14].
This is simple stuff, but I mean, you just need to be thinking ahead. Don’t do crazy stuff the last day you’re in the office in the week. I’m all about same day dentistry, but there’s smart ways to go about it that you’re not going to have all these problems blow up on you during the weekend.
Dr. Lavine:
Yeah. Okay. So, last question. I’m going to wrap it up as well. What would you recommend if someone has a high volume practice, and there are a lot of cancellations? Is there one or two things that you would say to the person right off the bat like, “Here’s the case. You really need to focus on this concept to take care of this issue”?
Dr. Griffin:
Okay. Two things. Doctor’s side cancellations, I solved that problem. How did I solve that Lorne? Before a patient gets an appointment, they have [01:32:57]. Either they have a deposit, they need to pay for their treatment. They have a deposit pay. They need to pay for their treatment, or they have a first payment of some kind of pay. They have financial arrangements. They already have their money or credit. Whatever it is, they have something in the game, absolutely.
So, that solves the problem. That’s why we don’t have doctor’s side cancellations anymore. So, if it’s on the book, they’re coming. Why? Because they already paid something. On the hygiene side, we didn’t feel that we could do that because of my terrible experience when I was trying to devote a practice, we tried something like that and lost a lot, a ton of patients. So, no, I’m not doing that. I’m not doing that again. That’s how we came up with the book and the extra column more than the amount of hygienists that you have and have a system.
If you have four columns booked, three hygienists, if that person shows up, either have your assistants take the x-ray to start the flow up and then have somebody in there, or like I said, once every two months, I will actually have to do the hard tissue probing and scaling myself. Big whoop. I’m not too good to do that every now and then. So, that’s the solution we came up with, and we just rarely have a day when we don’t have much to do.
Dr. Lavine:
Chris, I want to thank you so much for tonight’s presentation. We had a great turnout. I’m hoping that you’re not going to be talking about doing something in a few months because this was just great material. We had some people that were commenting that they looked at other types of systems to be more efficient where they’re looking at $50,000 bills in order to implement those systems. The fact that you came on to the webinar and gave all this great information for an unbelievably low price of $397 that you have found effective.
So, speaking to individuals like you and learning from your expertise and going to the BB13 event and bring their staff and really get up to speed on this, really, I think that’s so generous. I just want to thank you again for taking time out of what is very obviously a very busy schedule to be with us.
Dr. Griffin:
Well, Lorne. I did. I have to be honest with you. I did give up half a practice with my kids 13 and younger. I coach a little league 13 and under baseball and I did have to give up half a practice. It hurts because I love coaching that team, but it was such an honor just to be with you tonight. I can’t thank you enough for inviting me, man, and anything I can do for you in the future, I’m there for you.
Dr. Lavine:
Well, I hope the team doesn’t lose because of their lack of coach, but I thank you again. I encourage people on the call, please feel free to go to chrisgriffindds.com. You can sign up for this excellent package, 60 day money back guarantee. We know people who work with Chris that have raved about him, and that’s why we brought him on. I don’t know anybody who would ever think of returning the product, but you certainly have that there.
For those of you who do want information about the recording, that will be sent out sometime tomorrow. We’ll also resend the link that Chris had on his presentation, the Digital Dentist link, so you can go and get those screen shots as well.
Most of you know that we do these webinars on a regular basis. We’re going to be switching gears tomorrow evening and talk about class II composite restorations. We’ve already got 600 people signed up for that. I think it’s going to be a great presentation as well.
I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us this evening. Thank you, Chris, again, and we look forward to seeing everyone on future webinars. Good night, everyone.
Dr. Griffin:
Good night.