Weekly Motivational Moments – Eric Vickery emphasizes the impact of punctuality on patient care and practice success.
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About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:04
Welcome to your weekly motivational moments with Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy. This week, I wanna talk to you about the power of being on time, the power of being on time. So you’ve all heard the saying, when you’re early, you’re on time. When you’re on time, you’re late. And when you’re late, you’re lost. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, you can’t really show up just right on time. You’re either a little bit early or you’re a little bit late. There is no such thing as on time. So timing, I’d rather be
00:34
early than late. I’d rather be early than late. Think about your patients. They have somewhere to be after their appointment with you. If you’re late and then you’re running late and keeping them late, bad reviews come from that. Frustration comes from that. Unspoken frustration comes from that. They stop referring people to you. Okay? So where does this all start? Well, this all starts at the morning huddle. So most practices have a 745 a.m. to a 759 a.m. huddle.
01:04
about 14 minute huddle. Well, can you walk in the huddle at 745 ready to go? No, you gotta be there at 744, sitting in your chair prepared and ready to go. So this week, I want you to think about as a team, you can have a conversation right now, you can push the pause button, have a conversation here at the end. You can say, right, where are struggles with running on time? Some people are habitually late, patients or team members, just late for everything. So how can you set up your life
01:33
so that you’re now an early person, not a late person. So I promise you this, my name’s Eric, I’m your friend. Okay, listen to me. If you’re running late on things, you’re creating unspoken frustrations for people. People don’t like to be taken advantage of when it comes to their time. And when you run late, the perception is that you don’t value them, you don’t respect them. And so…
01:59
This unspoken frustration is boiling under the surface. We wonder why patients don’t come back for appointments. This is one of those reasons. They just don’t return. They don’t tell you, I’m tired of you guys running late, I’m gonna stop coming. Okay, does not work that way. They just quietly leave, okay? If you’re running late all the time and your team isn’t talking to you about that, there’s a crucial conversation to be had, which we will talk about in a few weeks on these videos.
02:27
crucial conversation about, hey, we need your help running on time. So this week, I want you to set a goal. Get your patient in your chair one minute before their appointment time as often as possible. Can you do it? Okay, that means you got to dismiss your patient. So something you can implement, you say, well, we’re running on time because of X. Okay, what is it going to take to make it happen? What would have to happen for you to be early all week long all the time?
02:56
dismiss a patient early, dismiss a patient, seat a patient early, dismiss a patient early. For example, we have a 45-minute rule for doctors. Doctors are not allowed to come into a hygiene exam after minute 45 of a hygiene appointment. Think about that. Why would, if a doctor comes in to do a hygiene exam at minute 52, you’re now going to be late for your next appointment. It just is, it just is. So set up some rules, set up some parameters so that you’re always running early.
03:25
Start your morning huddles at 745 whether everyone’s sitting there or not when you show up late You’re gonna get it that hey, we gotta make sure we’re moving early So don’t be lost We hope you enjoyed this episode of dental all-stars visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
