Dear
Vikki
Happy New Year a’body!
Can you believe it’s February already? The nights and the mornings are getting lighter already, and we’ve seen the first new calves out in the fields around us! I’ve not managed to get out on the bike this year yet but I’m longing for warm Sunday mornings already - roll on summer!
It’s been a busy year for me so far. I spent the snowy weeks writing articles and preparing for meetings during the first few months of the year, then started travelling with a vengeance…I hope you enjoy and benefit from this first e-zine for 2010.
Sheila
I met a couple of new clients in January who had both failed to systematically review their capitation fees year on year, and are now facing a certain huge increase in order to stay solvent. I’ve not wrapped up both practices yet but I’m going to insist on detailed investigations of time provided to different bands of patients over the last two years in order to make a more sensible assessment in time for the 2011 fees request in July.
Please note; I’M GOING TO BE NAGGING YOU ALL to attend to this essential task during April/May/June this year, so we don’t have any more panics in the last days of July, or any more years scrabbling around trying to make up for inadequate plan fees! Last year I worked with five practices, which between them were ‘losing’ (not recovering) £350,000 worth of fees over 12 months. We addressed this from January – and the feedback so far is that only a handful of patients have left over fees. January income should have been much more useful! Please e mail me for details of how to collect the data for a scientific analysis and for a spreadsheet to complete, to be one step ahead for this project.
Please note; I’M GOING TO BE NAGGING YOU ALL to attend to this essential task during April/May/June this year, so we don’t have any more panics in the last days of July, or any more years scrabbling around trying to make up for inadequate plan fees! Last year I worked with five practices, which between them were ‘losing’ (not recovering) £350,000 worth of fees over 12 months. We addressed this from January – and the feedback so far is that only a handful of patients have left over fees. January income should have been much more useful! Please e mail me for details of how to collect the data for a scientific analysis and for a spreadsheet to complete, to be one step ahead for this project.
In January I was invited, at relatively short notice, to present to a huge meeting of more than 420 practitioners in Dublin, after the Irish government had basically whipped funding from under the rug at three weeks’ notice. (It was a bit like the UK government reducing NHS funding for fee paying adults to one exam a year only, and curtailing funding for exempt patients.)
Irish practices hastily encouraged all their PRSI patients to apply for their final treatment plan, and now have a three month run-on period before they start work on seriously encouraging all patients to keep up regular visits as fully private patients. One positive thing about the situation is that all practices are now ‘competing’ on a level playing field – there is no staggering of decisions, or slow hemorrhaging/slowly rising stresses before making the decision to go private, as so many UK practices did.
But the bad news is that the recession and the economy are much more challenging in Ireland. It’s going to be an interesting time – but I’m chuffed to be going back to Ireland in the next couple of months to do a few one-day meetings and a couple of practice visits. I hope to help practices make good decisions about practice organisation, pricing, patient care, and help them grow despite the threats apparent. And a special welcome to quite a number of new readers of this newsletter from across the water…
I was also really pleased to present a session on ‘teamwork’ at the Young Dentists’ Conference in London this week.
But for me, the highlight of the day was meeting Deputy Chief Dental Officer, England, Sue Gregory, and hearing her session on the evidence behind and the development of the toolkit ‘Delivering Better Oral Health.’
If you’re not an NHS practitioner, you won’t have been sent the toolkit, but you can download it and share the findings with the team – particularly those who provide any advice to parents and children, or who are charged with developing promotions to adults and children regarding improving dental health.
Are you spending a lot of money on marketing at the moment?
I’ve met with two practices lately, both of which have been spending in the region of £60,000 per annum on advertising and promotions. One of these practices is gaining patients and new work – to the tune of around £5,000 per month – and the other still falling a little short of its targets. I’ve advised both to exercise caution (and some restraint), as I believe much of the expenditure of both is wasteful (and I’m qualified in marketing!). The trouble with both of these practices is that they’re promoting cosmetic work very heavily, and building an image of a ’10 years younger’ practice. And that seems to be turning off existing patients, and reducing the interest, attendance and loyalty of originally regular patients.
Rather than chase after new cosmetic patients – whose expectations can sometimes prove to be just a little too hard to meet, I’ve advised both to refocus on proving their preventive philosophies for new and existing patients, and to consider health based campaigns that appeal internally and externally. Within a strong health-based philosophy, there is still a great deal of cosmetic work to be found – if only you can organise to seek this without incurring the wrath of the 80% of patients who are NOT interested in the glitz of cosmetic treatment.*If you must organise promotions for such treatments, please make sure you emphasise health first, cosmetics second!
*My 2009 questionnaires showed that existing patients’ interest in cosmetic treatments had halved to around 20% in most practices since the ‘recession’ started. This compares with almost 80% of patients telling us that care and treatments to ensure or maintain the ‘health’ of teeth and gums is ‘very important’ to them.
I’ve been meaning to highlight Beth Duff’s Equine Assisted Learning programme for some time now, but keep running out of space. Beth is an internationally acclaimed leadership coach with a passion for horses. She offers day programmes for teams and individuals anywhere in the country, where the intuition of horses can help all of us learn a little bit more about how we interact and affect those around us.
Her case studies are fascinating and the delegates usually become all dewy eyed about their day with the four legged coaches, as well as enlightened about their own styles, observation skills and reactions to others. If you’re serious about addressing what patients tell us is the most important ‘thing’ to them when choosing and using a dental practice (trusting ‘the dentist’) you’d find a day with Beth, Chelsea and Susie, or with a selection of other horses, fascinating.
Following so much positive feedback from clients she is doing a PhD at Edinburgh Napier University to measure the impact of horses on humans, so her workshops are backed up by research and solid science. Check here for more details: http://www.theredhorsespeaks.com/home/welcome.asp
Following so much positive feedback from clients she is doing a PhD at Edinburgh Napier University to measure the impact of horses on humans, so her workshops are backed up by research and solid science. Check here for more details: http://www.theredhorsespeaks.com/home/welcome.asp
Read an article by Beth on my website
Please note: I’ll be out of circulation between 7 – 17 th
April, 2010. I’m off with the Gorgeous One, canoeing down the Zambezi. The guide books say the trick is to avoid the sleeping hippos and the crocodiles, although there is some particularly useless advice on what to do if I fall in the water and meet the latter. Apparently, if you lift a crocodile’s tongue, it drowns, and lets you go. Aye right! as they say in these here parts. Hopefully see you again afterwards!
Getting in touch