About 15 years ago, I realized the attention we had placed on recall system management was not only contributing to hygiene department growth – it was also contributing to dentist chair productivity. I came to understand that recall system effectiveness directly contributed to overall dental practice performance and played a key role in dental teams being able to reach their goals.
From our experience, we also know that recall is often the last system attended to as far as office area responsibilities are concerned. This is not due to neglect but rather due to:
- A shortage of office staff resources.
- Day to day demands of serving patients and dealing with interruptions.
- Dealing with open and broken appointments requiring immediate attention.
- Lack of coordination and prioritization of key office systems.
- Limited systemization or tools to support staff to properly manage recall.
These factors lead to office teams continually being at the effect of their schedules. It is far too common to see schedules managing office teams versus office teams managing their schedules. For many dental office staff, it seems impossible to get ahead of their daily or weekly schedules.
From our perspective, it is possible to break free from this stressful way of working. An effective recall system can provide a fully scheduled hygiene department months in advance. Keep watching this space! We’ll be talking about the actions office teams can take to minimize this type of scheduling stress in our upcoming blog entries.