Fan Favorite | Dental Block Schedule Training

Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:00
What I want you to remember is that pre-blocking allows you to control the schedule by providing the correct amount of time to complete procedures and efficiently utilize assistance. So another reason why we pre-block our schedule is not to just have enough time for the various procedures that we have to get done every day, but we also want to efficiently utilize our assistance. And I think that every dentist knows that if we’re going to be more productive,

00:29
Gotta be able to delegate more to them. And so our schedule has a lot to do with that. How long do you hold something open when you pre-block it? And when should you give in and give it away? I will give you a quick tip. I would reserve pre-block time 24 to 48 hours prior to the date. We are talking about pre-blocking. We wanna take a closer look at pre-blocking. We talk about it in the All-Star program. So we have none other than Larry Gazzardo, our head instructor, to help.

00:59
walk us through pre blocking. I like this topic about pre blocking because there just seems to be a lot of questions um about it. How would she be done? What would work in your practice? So tonight I’m going to talk about some different techniques of pre blocking. um All of them work. You know, it’s just a matter of how you practice and what you think would work best with your practice. So I’m going to share with you a few techniques about pre blocking.

01:28
I’m going to share with you the technique that I think would probably give you the most flexibility and work best in your practice, but you can decide oh what you think works for yourself. But the first thing that you have to do when you’re going to start to pre-block is number one, divide all of the procedures that you do into two separate categories. uh And so those two separate categories that I would recommend is the first one is what I call primary care.

01:56
And primary care are any procedures that require lab work or a tooth to be prepped, but it’s not a filling. So good examples of primary care would be crowns, implants, veneers, dentures, uh endo, if you do that in your office, an occlusal equilibration, inlay, onlays. Can you see how all of these procedures require a tooth to be prepped, but they’re not fillings? So we consider those all primary care.

02:26
uh The second category is just simply what we call secondary care. Just try to make it easier for everybody. And good examples of secondary care would be fillings, try-ins, crown inserts, shade checks, um removals, things like that. So two basic categories. We’ve got primary care and secondary care. So divide all the procedures that you do into those two categories. And then what we’re gonna talk about is how to

02:55
Pre-block your schedule so that you can provide adequate time for each category Every day now my recommendation is that you don’t have a lopsided schedule You know that we don’t just have one day for primary care and then maybe one day for secondary care ah It sounds like it would be a lot of fun just to do crowns all day But then when we look at the flow of lab work or even if you mill these things in your own office These are things that all have to be milled

03:22
It takes time. They’ve got to be stained. They’ve got to be fired. You get what I’m saying. It’s all of a sudden it’s like, okay, we have too much to do than what we can get done in one day. So I like a little bit of everything every day. Um, we, we do some crowns, you know, crown preps, we do some crown seats, you know, and so there’s an even flow. And so we want to provide adequate time for each category every day. So what I want you to remember is that pre-blocking allows you

03:50
to control the schedule by providing the correct amount of time to complete procedures and efficiently utilize assistance. So another reason why we pre-block our schedule is not to just have enough time for the various procedures that we have to get done every day, but we also want to efficiently utilize our assistance. And I think that every dentist knows that if we’re going to be more productive, got to be able to delegate more to them.

04:18
And so our schedule has a lot to do with that. So um how long do you hold something open when you pre-block it? And when did you give in and give it away? I will give you a quick tip. I would reserve pre-block time 24 to 48 hours prior to the date. The whole idea of pre-blocking is number one, you’re holding time open for certain types of procedures. So the time is available when you need it. And if you give it away too soon, uh

04:48
then you’re not gonna have it when you need it. We have to remember in dentistry, not only is there an emergency component ah that’s hard to control, but we typically see new patients every day. And so any time a new patient could walk in and say, you know what, Doc, I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m ready to go. And you might have some time tomorrow, but oh no, you gave it away because you got nervous and now the time’s not available. And this person who’s

05:17
Ready to get going is going to have to wait until some time opens uh But I would say that you want to reserve pre-block time 24 to 48 hours prior to the date. I like it. I like 48 hours. I find that that works best ah Of course, if you’ve got a policy in place already then then go ahead and keep that a Quick tip that I can give you is that if you get a lot of emergencies and what I mean by that is if you get two or more

05:45
Emergencies every day then it’s probably best to hold your pre-block time um up until 24 hours then the reason why I say that is because if you get that many Emergencies and let’s say they need to get a crown going or they need a root canal Then if you’ve got that time open within 24 hours, then you can say you know what we still have some time We can get you in tomorrow to get this done if you get fewer Emergencies and what I mean by that is less than two daily and I’m looking at this as an average I know some days

06:14
You know, you’ve got five emergencies and other days you have nothing. But on average, you get less than two every day. And I find that 48 hours is best. If you’ve got a good flow of new patients coming into your practice, I’m never afraid to recommend to somebody, hold the time again, because we see new patients every day. And because there is an emergency component to dentistry, there’s always people coming in who need to get something done. So we want to hold that time open for as long as possible.

06:45
And so that was the quick tip that I wanted to be able to give you. So remember, good scheduling control allows you to give patients what they want, which is for you to be on time, ah all while keeping the doctor happy. So pre-blocking helps everybody out. It helps patients and it helps the doctor. So it’s good for everybody. There’s a good win-win. So it means that you’ve got to forget things like telling patients, when would you like to come in?

07:15
Or saying things like, what’s convenient for you? When you pre-block, think of it this way, you want to be able to build your schedule. And of course, in dentistry, we’re very limited because we work eight hours a day. Most of us see patients four days a week, and that’s all I recommend that you would do. But because of it, we’ve got to make sure that our day is very well organized. And because of it, as much as I would like to let people come in whenever they feel like coming in,

07:44
We know if we did that, our day would not be as productive as we wanted it to be, and we might very well end up doing procedures when we don’t feel our best to be able to do it. So we can’t ask patients, when would you like to come in? And we can’t be asking them, hey, what’s convenient for you? We have to remember things like, so that you can be seen as quickly as possible and not be here longer than planned, the doctor, so this is what I’m saying to the staff, is that

08:13
You know, you don’t want to say, this is what I have available because patients might wonder, well, why don’t you give me that time? You know, or why don’t you help me out a little bit better? When we’re talking to people on the phone, we want to let them know that a doctor reserves specific time each day for the type of procedure you need. And I’ll look to find the first available appointment. That’s verbiage that I like everybody to learn. The doctor reserves specific time each day.

08:41
for the type of procedure you need, I’ll look to find the first available appointment. So doctors, can help the staff out by letting patients know, hey, I reserve specific time for the type of procedure that you need. The folks at the front desk know when those times are open and I want you to take the first available one. And so guide people into the time that you want them to take.

09:08
So when you start pre-blocking your schedule and you’ve determined how much time you need for primary care, for secondary care, your schedule sort of starts to look something like this. And in this example, I’m reserving two columns that the doctor is working out of, the two chairs. oh I’m reserving the morning time for primary care and then secondary care for the afternoon. So it starts to look like that. oh Everybody who ever listened to me knows that if you’re gonna see a new patient,

09:37
You can see them anytime you want to, but it’s got to be a time that you know that you’re ready and you’re on time. So again, most offices tell me, the only time I’m ready and on time is right after lunch or maybe first thing in the morning, but I don’t want to see a new patient first thing in the morning. So most doctors will tell me that they like to see their new patient right after lunch. So again, I’m just giving you an example here of what your schedule starts to look like.

10:05
You can see this primary care in the morning. We’ve got secondary care in the afternoon. And then we see a new patient right after lunch. So some people do like to see new patients in the morning, not many. Or some like to provide a variety. So they’ll say, well, one morning I’ll see a new patient in the morning. The next day I’ll see a new patient in the afternoon. So they’ll pre-block both spots uh in their schedule. But as they fill one, then they’ll remove the other.

10:34
is what they’ll do. And so one day in the morning, next day in the afternoon. And so they think it does provide a little bit of flexibility. Although I have to be honest with you, most doctors I know who try this combination end up saying, I still don’t like seeing a new patient first thing in the morning. I think it interferes with my primary care time. So I’ll just see the new patient after lunch. So you can see why it’s important that we guide patients into the time that we want them to take. And we do that by saying,

11:02
so that our new patients can be seen as quickly as possible and not be here longer than we’ve planned, the doctor reserves specific time just for them. And so I’ll look to see when the first available appointment is open. So another way that you can pre-block your schedule, the example that I showed you previously just showed I marked off both chairs all morning just for primary care. And so in this example,

11:30
What I’m showing you is just very specific time slots that I’m setting aside for a primary care procedure. And so what that means is we fill in primary care one and then two and then three and then we can put anything else that you want around it. We do some secondary care in the afternoon, specifically secondary care, and then we still see our new patient after lunch. I’m not a big fan of this model of primary care.

12:00
Although it does work, it just depends on how you practice. I don’t think it provides you with a lot of flexibility because what I see happening in this type of example is let’s say for instance, uh we put something in uh right after this primary care one slot, we put something in there. And it turns out that maybe we put something before the primary care one slot. So we’ve got the primary care one slot is locked into that timeframe.

12:30
But the doctor comes along and says, well, I’d like to do a crown and a couple of fillings and a buildup. But I need a little bit more time than what we’ve got available in the primary care one slot. So what you can see is if you start filling things in around the primary care slots, you might unintentionally lock yourself into those spots when you find, geez, I need more room. So that’s why I like when you just reserve

12:58
particularly the home warning for primary care, then if you’ve got a combination type appointment, then you can schedule off as much time as you need to get it done. But this is one way to do it. It does work and it does assure that you do have time for your primary care. You might have to play uh with some of these time units. Maybe one would be for an hour, another one might be for an hour and a half. uh The third might be for two hours, depending on the types of procedures that you like to combine together.

13:27
ah And so you want to make sure that you always have time for those types of procedures. ah Another way that some offices can do it ah is they’ll just reserve one whole column and say this is my primary care column or treatment room and then here’s my second treatment room and it’s for secondary care. And so you can put any primary care procedure in the first column and then any secondary care procedure in the second column. For a lot of offices,

13:56
I find that this also works well. um I don’t think it works as well as when you have the flexibility of having the entire morning, both columns, both with primary care. The reason why I like that is because the primary care procedures um usually are procedures that also involve your assistant, where they do a part of the procedure. Maybe they’re making the temporary, maybe they’re packing the cord, um maybe they’re taking the scan. And so it frees up the doctor,

14:26
while the assistant is making the temporary in one room, then the doctor can leave and go into the other room and start a whole nother prep. And so it gives the doctor a lot of flexibility to get a lot of productivity done in a short period of time. Whereas secondary care tends to be procedures that are all doctor time, like fillings. And so if you’ve got a filling going on in one column, well, we really can’t start another procedure in the primary care column till the doctor is done.

14:55
Whereas if we had two primary care procedures next to each other, depending on the doctor and assistant time, we may find that we could overlap them by 20, maybe even 30 minutes. And so anytime we can do that, we’re gaining productivity, but we’re not working more hours by the end of the day. I find that this one column for primary care and one column for secondary care works best with newer offices and maybe uh dentists that are just starting out.

15:24
ah That’s a good way to get things done. But again, I don’t like I don’t like how it reduces your flexibility But but it is a method and I wanted to introduce it to you So, um know, you’ve got hygiene checks that have to be done um Some offices like to pre-appoint all of their hygiene checks um in all-star we teach the interruptible model where we look to see where the doctor is during the day and when we see the doctor is free uh

15:53
then we send the doctor over to do a hygiene check. um However, some offices find that they don’t like that ambiguity. They would like to know when all of their checks are going to be scheduled. So here I’m putting up an example where we have two columns for the doctor and then we have this purple column for the hygienist. And in yellow, I went to the doctor’s column and I just put in the hygiene checks so that we can see exactly when the doctor should go over and do a check.

16:23
Again, I don’t like this model as much, but when a doctor finds it difficult not knowing when he’s going to be doing checks or finds that he doesn’t enjoy going in at different times during the procedure, oh this works very, well. What I don’t like about it is that the doctor’s schedule already has something in it that isn’t very productive before we even start the day. And so we’ve got to make sure that everything that we do fits in between all of these checks.

16:52
And of course, if you have two hygienists, then you’ve got two checks that have to be done. And what I always recommend in those situations is that we lump the checks together so that when the doctor gets up to do one check, he’ll also do the check for the second hygienist oh as well. So we do two checks at once, and then we do the second checks and the third checks and so on and so forth. Again, what you can see, oh

17:18
is that this limits where the doctor can get things done during the day because there’s already procedures that are already put in the schedule. But it does work, it does work depending on how you practice and it does give the doctor a lot of control over exactly where they’re gonna be at given times. And so we just put the checks right in the schedule for you.