Athena Consulting: Dental Practice Solutions

Depending on how your office deals with schedule maintenance, the orthodontic scheduling template can be your biggest help or your worst enemy.

In contrast to general-dentistry offices, there’s no doubt in orthodontic offices that a template is needed. The problem comes in when that template is not maintained. Unfortunately more offices than not are ignoring the upkeep of the scheduling template.

To understand why, just mention the schedule to most any orthodontist. He or she will go on for at least 20 minutes about how the schedule isn’t working and scheduling “cheats” are constantly ruining their day. Mention the schedule to the operatory staff, and they’ll give you the same 20-minute rendition – with an added chorus about how horrible the front desk staff is at scheduling. Now, move on to the front-desk staff. You got it! It’s the same 20 minutes – with an addendum about how the operatory staff and doctor don’t understand the difficulties “the desk” has to deal with.

All this is a great reason to get together for a long staff meeting to hammer out a better schedule, right? But just try it.

If, after hearing all these complaints, you actually mention sitting down together and working on the schedule, you’ll easily clear the room out in less than two minutes. Everyone, including the doctor, will suddenly remember something they just had to do – right now – that precludes having that particular meeting. As they race out the door, they’ll all promise to get the meeting set up as soon as they have time.

If you happen to be their consultant, you know not to hold your breath waiting for that time to arrive. The thought of working on the schedule strikes fear into the heart of the entire office like nothing else you can mention. Let’s examine why that is and what we can do to take away some of that fear.

Waiting for the crisis

In most offices the template doesn’t get addressed until its inadequacy is actually becoming painful. If scheduling issues are ignored until patients complain that they are always seen late, staffers complain that they aren’t getting lunch and the doctor complains about no time to work up cases, you’ve created a monster that will take a whip and a chair to tame. Can you really blame anyone for not wanting to deal with that?

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Once you’ve done the initial – and somewhat daunting – job of creating a good, workable schedule, regular maintenance and moderate tweaking can keep it flowing smoothly forever. The key is planning the time to do that maintenance on a regular basis.

A nightmare of needs

The long-overdue scheduling meeting frequently becomes a nightmare of needs. Everyone in the office has something they need radically adjusted in the schedule so that their day can flow more smoothly. When their needs have been neglected for a long time, it’s difficult for them to be rational and cooperative. They need, therefore they should have – and this meeting is where they’re going to get it!

It doesn’t have to be that way.

To begin the process, the doctor and consultant or office manager should sit down with the template and work out how to schedule each day so that the office and doctor function most productively. Only then should they have a meeting with the full staff; present the schedule and give them the opportunity to tweak it to cover things that may have been missed. This process has a two-fold benefit. The core of the schedule has been created by the people most likely to be able to see the “big picture” and consider everyone’s needs, but the rest of the team has also had an opportunity to make changes and have input. They may not have gotten everything on their “wish list’ because that’s just not practical, but they have gotten a schedule that can make their day run more smoothly.

Aversion to the chore

Frequently after going through this long two-meeting process, the doctor and staff want nothing more to do with the schedule for quite some time. We have now come full circle back to the heart of the problem. It’s like the lady who hates cleaning house so much that she only does it once a month. She will always have a justifiable reason to hate house cleaning because it will always be a huge chore.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

If this new schedule is faithfully reviewed every six to eight weeks as a team and tweaked slightly as needed, no one will ever again need to complain about how much he or she hates working on it.

The orthodontic office consistently will have well-planned, well-organized days. By keeping the schedule tidied on a regular basis, its regular maintenance is now a quick touch-up instead of a massive housecleaning.