Summer is the traditional time for last minute panic decisions over capitation plan fee increases.   And it’s too easy just to accept your plan provider’s recommendation, or to increase fees by a nominal guess at inflation.   Please don’t do this. You have to live with your plan fees for all of 2010 – and your costs have probably increased.  

In my experience many practices are ‘losing money’ on their capitation fees, and you should check every year to find out just what capitation patients SHOULD be paying each month to cover the costs of your care. This year, one of my practices has discovered it has been 'losing' over £70,000 annually because of wrongly categorised patients and plan fees that were set too low.

Please call or email me for details of how to check you are setting fees correctly, to prepare for increasing fees, if you are considering re-banding or even changing plan types to solve this problem.

Let’s hear it for the great cleaners  out there.

Did you catch this article by Caroline Holland in the spring Vital recently? She dashed out to interview brilliant cleaner Jan Sherwood after I let off some steam about how Jan deserved to win ‘Practice Cleaner of the Year Award’.   I did actually say that the floors in Jan/Chertsey Dentist, Phil Marsh’s practice were so shiny you could see your knickers in them as you walked across the floor, but somehow that line never made it to hard print…

It’s great that the BDA conference is back in the best small country in the world again, and if you’re coming to Glasgow on 4 ^th – 6 ^th June, I look forward to seeing you there.   I’m on stage at 9.00 am on the Friday (Forth room) talking about what patients really want, and how practices can engage their patients and gain full appreciation.   I’ll be presenting some good, bad and average statistics from all of 2008’s questionnaire results for the first time – so if you want to find out how your results actually compare against some of the best practices I’ve worked with recently – come along.

1. How well is the practice performing right now?
2. Any problems or concerns?
3. How happy are you and the team?
4. Are patients loyal/appreciative?
5. Are you meeting patient needs?
6. Are you profitable enough?
7. Is fee income matching the fee levels you set?
8. Are plan fees set at the right level?
9. Is the team happy and working well as a team?
10. Are team members doing what you need them to?
11. ...to the standard you expect them to?
12. Do we need to recruit or train a manager?           
13. Any other symptoms need addressing?

Talking of Questionnaires …

Most of you have completed questionnaire exercises in the past to discover just what your patients judge you on, how they think you’re doing, and what the great opportunities are in the practice to a. boast about or b. improve!   Well, maybe it’s time to repeat the exercise and see how much you have improved. The 2009 questionnaires have some added questions that are helping to perfect the shape of practice communications, and add to the 9/11/13/16 … point Dental Health Checks that patients really respond to.

Dental Health Reports

A number of practices are finding that a quick summary/report after the Dental Health Check is impressing patients, and I’ve seen a couple of impressive written versions (either on computers or paper based).   I think this might be particularly useful in terms of keeping patients impressed and attending regularly throughout the recession.

Hayley Bloodworth, of Proactive Employment Lawyers and I, ran two totally practical and interactive workshop on effective people management at the BDA on 29 ^th April and at Newcastle Racecourse on 13 ^th May. The response from delegates was great! This course is designed to keep you all ‘safe’ within the law when it comes to directing, guiding and managing your team members, and to give you a working framework and practise of using the skills necessary for effective teamwork and management.

Suzanne Allen of Heritage Financial Advisers (sue@hfadvisers.co.uk) joined us for one day and later sent an e mail to me saying, ‘Thanks for a fantastic day yesterday.  I came away feeling really positive and energised, so watch this space! In our next team meeting we will be discussing our core values, golden rules and also constructive feedback… ‘  

Next dates are 22 ^nd Sept (Glasgow) and 24 ^th Sept (London).