Last year, we hosted a New Year’s Eve celebration with our friends and family. The celebration was filled with memories of the year and toasts to the upcoming year.
One thing I had all of my friends do was write down one thing that they were giving up that did not give them joy and one thing that they wanted to do more of that brought happiness into their life. Some people were quick to write down their thoughts and others took longer to come up with a thoughtful answer.
What will bring you more joy at your dental practice? Think about what will bring you more joy as an individual and as a team. This would be a great topic for your December or January team meeting … and then write things down that will help you have a more fulfilling year.
Here are some ideas to get the juices flowing . . .
- Do you want to create a paperless environment in your practice? If your day is filled with locating lost paper charts and not having access to the patient information, then this could definitely bring your team more happiness.
I remember the day when my office went paperless (we were actually paperless before we were chartless) and I didn’t have to go searching for a chart in my doctor’s office and rummage through piles of paper charts. Going paperless is a process and requires planning, preparation and patience. Let’s talk if you are interested.
- Maybe you want to clean up your database and be able to locate information more easily. There are many things in your Dentrix software that can be subject to duplicated data, incorrect information and inaccurate reporting. Some of these things can be pretty easy to clean up and some might require a little bit more time. Many offices I work with don’t even want to touch it and hire an outside contractor to take care of it. Let me know how I can help and we can work together to create a more organized system.
Some of the things that might need a little housecleaning include . . .
- Insurance Plans
- Account Balances
- Medical Alerts
- Fee Schedules
- Employers
- Appointment Book Set-up
- One thing I would recommend is cleaning up your Unscheduled List. When I help teams use the Unscheduled List as it is intended, it is a game-changer. This report is one of your best resources for helping you keep your schedule full and it is also one of the more underutilized reports in Dentrix. The reason it is underutilized is because it is full of duplicate appointments, broken appointments from three years ago and inactive patients. My recommendation would be to take the time to clean it up or just purge it and start from scratch. You will love it. Trust me.
Not sure where to begin? Schedule a team meeting and just start throwing out ideas or put up a white board where people can write down their thoughts. Get your team talking about what would give them more joy in the practice and then find a way to make it happen. You are in control of your happiness and we can help you with the logistics.
There are so many resources out there for you and your team. Reach out and we can help point you in the right direction with self-guided resources, training and consulting options.
We hope you have an amazing end of the year and your 2019 is filled with joy and happiness.
