Episode 90 – New Year Planning

There is no silver bullet in dentistry. It’s all the little things you pay attention to that make you productive. Today, I’m going to walk through what I do at the end of the year in my practice that help me intentionally plan for the next year. Because if you don’t plan for next year, all you’re doing is hoping. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to hope, I want to make this next year not just survivable, but great:

• What I commit to 100% no matter what
• What production reports I look at and why
• What to adjust for given the disruption in 2020

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with The Productive Dentist Podcast. And today is episode number 90. And we’re going to talk today about end of the year and beginning of a new year. Obviously, this has been a tough 2020. And for many people, they might say it’s a nightmare. 2020.

However, the docs that I know that when the tough got going, you know when the when the going got tough, the tough guy going. And many offices have recovered. Amazingly, even though we’re seeing a major spike, right before the holiday season. So of the COVID-19. So what I what I’m really wanting to look forward to is today, they gave the first the first injection for the COVID vaccine from Pfizer, and I’m hopeful that more will be down the pipe and many of you will be able to get vaccinated.

Having said that, what are the things that we do at the end of every year to plan for next year. And to me, it’s critical for those who don’t plan for next year, then you’re just hoping things get better, you’re hoping you’re hoping, you know, and, and many times when things happen. The fact that you were hoping really causes even more stress than ordinary.

So what I like to do at the end of the year, is the first thing I do is I go back and I figure up to this date, if it’s the 14th of December, I want to figure out what production was from 14 December last year 214 or 15, December last year to 14 December this year. And I want to do it not only for that period, but I want to do it for another year previous to that I want to find out what was production. So I’m going to run reports in my software. I want to find out what was production. What was produced and what was collected, collected is the really important thing. But I want to know what that percentage is, I want to know my percentage of collections a year ago, over this past year was 97. And my collections the previous year were 100. Well, why did it drop 3% that gives me information to research.

\I also look at my own production per hour, and the production per hour of each of my other providers, meaning hygienists, associate partners. I want to know what everybody’s production per hour was this past year and the previous year. And I want to know if there’s a difference, and others did my production go up. And this is going to be a tough year because many people’s production went down. But that’s why I want to average it over the full 12 months. So if you’ve had a 10% reduction in your production per hour, you know, I would be concerned for this reason you weren’t working for a couple of months, possibly. So you really weren’t producing per hour during that time.

So you’re not going to figure those hours into your production per hour. So it’s actually when you’re working during that time. And how many hours did you work? Now? Why do I want to look at those things. Again, it gives me data, it gives me data that can be very critical to making decisions for 2021 and even for 2022. The other thing I like to look at is production by procedure reports and production by provider reports to see you know and what I’m pretty anal about it. I mean, I would put it on an Excel spreadsheet all of the maybe 50 different procedures that I like like to look at? And how many of them did I do this past year? How many did I do the previous year? An example might be crowns, maybe that one year you did 800 crowns. And it averaged out to be, I don’t know, 64 crowns per month during that time. And then this new year you were at, or the most recent year, you might have been at 80. What does that mean, you had a big jump? Well, you were probably very, very focused on productivity when you didn’t, weren’t able to work for a couple of months. But those are the things that you want to know what other little things?

You know, I know my team is trained. When I say tooth number 14 needs an se extraction. They always ask, and they’ve been taught to ask me, Dr. Bear, does that need a graft? And it allows me to say, Mary, let me explain to you what a graft is, you know, what we do is will we actually will draw blood or we can use a synthetic bone. But what we found is when we draw your blood, we’re able to produce super cells that grow new bone and it grows it fast, so that if you decided to have an implant, if you have to have a partial or bridge or a denture, that bone is going to be there, because you’re going to lose 70% of the width and 40% of the height, and in the next year, and so that’s going to be really important for you. And the patient will either say yes or no. Does it matter to me? If they say yes or no? Makes no difference? It’s not my problem.

If you’ve ever been to PDA, you know, it’s not my problem. But I’m going to give them every opportunity. Why should a crown that super ginger will that cost 12 $100 be the same price as one that is sub crestal? Because we didn’t diagnose crown lengthening, my team has said when I say crown, they say Do any of those crowns need crown lengthening doctor bear.

So in other words, this is part of my team training, it’s part of what we do. Indirect poke camps is that deep is at a deep restoration. Yes, tooth number three and 14 both need ipcs. Now, do I charge it if I don’t do one? No, I don’t charge it. That’s integrity. But I’d rather have it diagnosed and tell the patient Hey, guess what, we didn’t have to do that just saved him 32 bucks or 64 bucks or whatever it is.

But it’s not about one silver bullet. And I always tell people, there’s no silver bullet, I actually have one, it somebody gave it to me. So they say you now have a silver bullet. But there’s not one thing you do in dentistry, that’s going to increase your productivity massively. It’s all the little things that you pay attention to. And that’s what I want you to do. I want you to pay attention. I want you to run your business like a business.

We’ve got 1000s of dentists that have been through Productive Dentist Academy and seven, a six or seven, five, had a budget that ran budget to actual numbers. And in real time, and that doesn’t take that much. And those are the things that we teach in the foundations courses, and then the courses at productive dentist Academy. And I’ll tell you, we’re starting at another foundations course on February 4. I mean, I’m sorry, on January 14, last eight weeks, a lot of peer learning. And we just you get to actually go through and take little tests during that period of time. But it’s awesome.

And you can go to productivedentist.com/foundations. Having said that now what we do is I’m going to look at the next year I’m looking at 2021 I want to know and right now is really tough. Where am I going? Well, I’m probably not going to do a lot of in person meetings still. until probably we’re hoping by May that we can start doing that. I know Productive Dentist Academy is planning a September real life seminar. I have a funny feeling. It’s going to be absolutely packed. Because we’ve had so many people that have just been waiting.

But why do I want to go ahead and look what am I working? The average dentists out there is working four days a week, that’s 128 hours a year, I’m sorry, 128 hours a month, and multiply that out about 1600 hours per year. Now I want to work this past year, how many hours I worked I worked 1600 The year before I work 1600? Well, this year, I want to work 1600 and my production because I’ve just looked at it. I figured out how many hours I worked in this last year. How many hours Oh 1520. Divide that into the total amount of your production and that’s going to give you a production per hour. You might think all that’s being pretty anal it is but it’s going to give you information to know that you’re going to grow your business every single year.

And if you’re not growing, you’re dying. And so over the years, my production grew every year, our overall office production grew every year. And the reason it grew is because I knew what I wanted to do, and I set goals for those things. So if I’m going to work only, let’s say you’re working 16 days a month, or 17, some months, 18 months depends upon how the month falls. What I want to do is look at that 18 days, and I have a commitment to my business. My commitment in our practice was 125,000, meaning I’m 100% committed to doing $125,000 worth of productivity, no matter what, if I had to work 200 hours, or if I had to work 40 hours to do it, my commitment to the business is 125. Now the average dentist is doing for 25 an hour, that’s 3200 bucks a day, you know, that would be whatever it is maybe 50 60,000 a month, it doesn’t matter what your number is just know your number. And then what I want you to do is I want you to say so we were at 550, or 600? Or were for 25. Or we were 375.

What am I going to do next year? And what am I going to be committed to? And what is my team going to understand? And what are they can be committed to. And so what happens is I look at every month, these are the number hours I’m working that month, because it might be March and there’s more weeks, or it might be you know, whatever. Or I might be gone on vacation for two weeks in July. Now I always try to take a vacation one week in one month and one week in the other and overlap. Why? Because I want to have plenty of hours to work that month to be productive. And to get my 125.

I hope that makes sense. So it’s what I will do. What if I’m going to rent a yacht in Greece like I did, seven years ago, for three weeks. I tried to split it as much as I could. But it turned out a couple of weeks were in September and one week was in August. I’m sorry, two were in September, and one was in October. And what did I decide to do? Well come July, I’m doing treatment planning, I’m seeing my new patients. And I see a patient that needs a big treatment plan. They need three, four bridges, they need a full mouth rehab, they need veneers they want whatever, I will then began to say, well, Mary, let’s do this, let’s get your teeth bleached. Let’s do some, let’s do some core bleaching. And then let’s let that settle. And then we’re going to do the new veneers that first week of September.

In order you need all on four, we’re going to do that the first week of September or the the second week of October, meaning I’m loading my schedule with high production items. There’s no such thing as an emergency buckle pit when I’m only working a few hours that month. Now this is from a person who’s talking right now that only works 64 hours a month. for 14 years, I work two days a week. Why because I played a game. Whereas as I increase my production, I could take more time off.

And so as my production continued to go up, and these are the things that we’re going to be working on with a with a new course that productive dentist Academy is going to be doing called clinical confidence. And it’s going to be peer to peer learning all of your other friends and Doc’s, it’ll be an open ability to be able to discuss all of these issues where I’m having trouble with this. I’m having trouble with that. And really going back and forth with doctors and learning. What is clinical competence? And what does it take for me to produce or to diagnose? 1000 hour or 500 hour or whatever it is.

And so this course is going to be available, I think starting q2 of next year. So that’s something I’d love for you to start looking out for because clinical confidence. You know, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re one year out of school, or whether you’re 30 years out of school. I know buddies of mine there 30 years of school are still doing exactly the same thing. But they want to grow their business. They’re doing the same thing they were doing 30 years ago. So clinical competence, what are the things that I need to do to turn turn, turn my business into a different direction. And we’re all in different places.

So I hope this has been been valuable to you for this new year. And for everything that’s going to be happening this new year, regardless of whether COVID comes back and hits us again hard in the in the dark winter as it’s been being described, which I’m I don’t believe, but even if that was to happen. You’re still going to have a plan. And now you’ll know if something did happen. What would it take for you to catch up to that year, we’ve had multiple docs through Productive Dentist Academy that have actually reached their goals that they set before this year. Even though they didn’t practice for two months. That’s a fact. And so, why because they had a plan. We worked with them. We we brainstormed with them.

And we brainstorm not with just one or two people we brainstorm with 100 clients on what to do and how to make this year be not just okay or not just survivable, but great.

So anyway, thanks for listening to The Productive Dentist Podcast.