Is your practice patient- or production-driven? The answer should be purpose-driven. Kiera talks about how shifting your core values in a certain way can actually grow everything else.

Episode resources:

Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast

Schedule a Practice Assessment

Leave us a review

Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00 )

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and I am excited. This is a podcast built just for you by you. If you ever want me to make a podcast for you, just email in Hello@TheDentalATeam.com or go to our website, TheDentalATeam.com and click on the podcast tab. You can submit topics for me to record for you. And today is a great one and I'm super excited about it. Someone asked production focus versus patient focus striking the right balance.

 

Does it have to be both? So is your practice driven by numbers or by people? And does it have to be a choice? I'm super jazzed. I'm super excited because this is the type of juicy stuff I like to get into because this is what offices talk about all the time. Oh my gosh, we're production focused. Well, that means you're not patient focused. Oh my gosh, you're patient focused. That means you're not production focused. Does it have to be? There's tension. It's tension. It's like, are you on the right side or the left side? Are you blue or are you Which side are you on?

 

Like there's tension here, production focus versus patient focus. Does it really have to be this debate? So I love this. Email me. You guys are love a good pen pal. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I like pen pals. You guys remember that? If you want to write me a letter, you can send me a letter. It's in Verdi, Nevada on the website, P.O. Box. I think it's 635 Verdi, Nevada. No clue what it is, but I will get it and I'll send you a postcard back. So pen pal for real, email us.

 

You guys, really do love a good pen pal. I will seriously send you a letter back. So ⁓ write me. I would love to hear from you. But I'm curious, does it have to be production focus or patient focus or can it be both? Is it the chicken or the egg? I definitely think that there has to be a way because the most successful practices integrate production and patience. So the answer is yes, it can be both. And I don't care what side of the coin you're on. I'm gonna teach you that you can actually be on both sides of the coin and still maintain your ethics.

 

like your ethical integrity, all of that. You guys, this is the Dental A Team. I'm obsessed with dentists. I'm obsessed with dental teams. I'm obsessed with making you happy. I'm obsessed with positively impacting this world in the greatest way possible. And that's why we built this podcast free for you to give you all the tips and tricks. And all I ask in return is that you leave us a review and share this with somebody that can change their life. My goal is to have this podcast into the hands of every single dental office out there. And guys, you are crushing it. We are in the millions of downloads and I can't do that without you. So please today.

 

share, download, or leave us a five star review. That means the world to me and I do read those reviews. So thank you. Thank you for everybody who reads those reviews. I appreciate each of you. So today I want to talk about patient focused version of production focused because you know, I got a pen pal out there. production focused means that we're focused on high volume, goal driven, and we're going to probably have burnout. Like that's the drive. It is a lot of times ego. That's okay. So when I'm talking to you.

 

You can test yourself right now. Are you ready? I'm gonna say, hey, what is your production? Now, to answer that, what's your production? If you just told me your number in gross, you're a little ego driven and I love you for it. And I'm gonna tell you that that is one of the worst things to do because there's no way for us you to ever collect it. I was talking to a practice the other day and they're like, yes, Kiera, we are a $7 million practice and we had a million dollars worth of write-offs. And I was like, well, shoot. So.

 

You're actually, think they actually have two million. So you're not a seven million, you're a five million. That's a bit of a minute. So you're actually a five million dollar practice and I'd rather talk about real numbers because then I can actually truly get you to seven million rather than feeding your ego at this. So that tends to be the case where you're, if you, you might be a bit production. If you're presenting those in gross, ⁓ present them in, it's okay to your buddies. You can present in gross. To me, to here, to this conversation in real life.

 

please, please, please present them in net, what you can actually collect. Now, if we're too patient focused, we tend to run at a slower pace, high trust, but we risk a lot of inefficiency and you actually risk the, like, you really do run a risk of you're not looking at the numbers and you actually can create a really, really, really scary spot where you actually are in like profit row where you have no money. ⁓ And so you gotta have both.

 

We've got to have production where we're able to serve our patients and we've got to care about our patients. We've got to make sure that both of those come together because that's a true business. This is what we're looking for. So I just want you to look at yourself right now and I want you to audit you and your practice. Where do you lean more? Okay. So do you lean a little more left? Do you lean a little more right? Do you lean a little more production focused or do you lean a little more patient focused? It's okay. There's no right or wrong. I just want you to like really look at yourself and assess what route do you fall?

 

because it's gonna help you, okay? So where are you? We're not like all patient or all production, but which way do you lean? I want you to answer that. You can pen pal me. Remember, I got pen pals out there. So be another pen pal for me. And then step two is I want you to marry metrics with meaning, which isn't that cute? Yes, chat GPT helped me on that one. Marry metrics with meaning, I love that. I was like, that is such a good way to bring this to the table. So we want you guys to be like in the middle, we're not production, we're not patient, we're purpose.

 

Did you love that? Another P, we're not patient, we're not production, we're purpose driven. So what this is going to be is you can actually like increase case acceptance to outcomes, not quotas. So it's not like we need 20 crowns, we need to help this many patients. help team members see, like I love Tiff, she said this, she was like, production is the measuring stick to see how many patients we're serving. That feels so much better than like we got to hit 150,000.

 

No, 150,000 shows is how many patients were able to serve. Let's quantify that up to how many patients and now let's put that up to 200,000 and serve that many patients. So we'll help you guys see that like this is a reflection of care. It's not like just, I don't know, like a number on a scorecard. It's people. You guys, all that production was people that we were able to change their lives. That's what we do in Dental A Team. I literally like, when we talk about our numbers, for a while I put up numbers and it was just a number.

 

So you can tell it's a little bit more production focused rather than patient focused. And it didn't matter to me. And then when I was like, okay, we're going to go out and I want to serve, like I want Dental A Team to serve 500 dental practices. Like in one year, I want us to have that many that to me, like think of how many lives we're going to change. Cause my ultimate goal is impact to possibly impact this world in the greatest way possible. So I was like, all right, let's put an audacious goal out there. I want to serve 500 offices. Yeah, you can join us. Yes, of course.

 

And like now it became funds. Like the number is tied to people. Cause I ultimately care about people. care about impact. Money can have impact, but it doesn't drive me. What drives me is changing people's lives. Life is my passion, dentistry is my platform. So how can you help your team see that? So we have to help them see like for me with teams, case acceptance, I'm just saying like that's how many smiles you were able to like truly benefit. There's so many lives you're able to change. I believe the case acceptance is li