Your Questions About Scheduling

“My schedule is jam packed. How can I simplify my schedule so it’s not so “willy nilly.”

I recently got this question in my inbox. And, well, that’s a loaded question. I challenge you to go back and listen to the episodes about productive scheduling, because scheduling is an intentional activity. In order to really control your schedule, you have to have a scheduling philosophy. So today I’m dissecting this question so help you avoid some common scheduling mistakes that are costing you time, stress, and money:

• Intentionally scheduling procedures
• Scheduling based on productivity, not time
• Aligning your team to scheduling to productivity

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hi, this is Dr. Bruce Baird with the Productive Dentist Podcast. And this is Episode 97. We’re closing in on 100 episodes here over the next few weeks. And I’m going to share with you guys some ideas about over some questions that have been sent to us. And looking at looking at those questions kind of what what are my thoughts on it? And this is something that we get a lot.

And it’s my schedule is jam packed. And I’m booking patients out two to three months. How can I simplify my schedule so that it is not so willy nilly? That was their actual quote that the doc shared? Well, this is a loaded question. It’s a huge question last, on the last podcast, we talked about leadership and, and having clear clarity and our vision, those are all great. But you have to have a scheduling philosophy. When I first started, in practice, I told you guys go back and listen to early on. But you know, I spent an enormous amount of time frustrated about my schedule, we were seeing massive numbers of new patients, I didn’t know where to put them. You know, buckle pit was the next available appointment. You know, whatever the whatever we did in our scheduling, it was always the next available the next available.

Well, we’re booked into for three weeks now or three months. Our next available for x y, z is in June. And it’s May, or it’s it’s April, but what’s going to happen to you in that kind of environment is number one, you’re losing a massive amount of productivity. If you’re booking people three months out, you’re losing a massive amount of productivity. So how do we how do we deal with that? And I’ve heard so many different consultants over the years talk about so many different ways of scheduling, the way we scheduling. And I’ll challenge you to go back and listen to the episode that we did on scheduling itself. But scheduling has to be intentional scheduling is an intentional activity.

So I had a dentist, and it’s gonna affect your productivity with that question. You know, we’re booking patients out two to three months, I go back to a story about a very, very well known dentists that came through productive dentist Academy. And most of you know who it is. I’m not going to go into names. But he told me he said, you know, Bruce, I’d love to do this. And this is a September seminar that we renew, and he’s I’d love to do your scheduling stuff. But I’m already booked into January. So there’s no way that I can increase my production per hour, because I’m already booked till January. I say Really? You’re booked till January. That’s amazing to me. Because I will tell you my entire career. I was never booked more than a week and a half, two weeks out that I couldn’t see somebody if I needed to. I couldn’t see an emergency. I couldn’t see a big k i couldn’t. I’ve always well, I say always, once I learned how to schedule properly. I was never scheduled out that far.

And so I said there’s no way I don’t know anybody that scheduled out four months or five months can’t see anybody else. And he said, Well, you know, I’ll show Yes. Okay. Well, let’s print up. You know, let’s print your schedule. So we printed his schedule for me. I looked at it first. And then we printed up some blank schedule pages. And I looked at schedule and sure enough, the dude was booked all the way into January and I was just shaking my head. I can’t believe this. And so if you have somebody new comes in, you can’t see them till mid January. He was young. I can’t see him. I was like okay, well, let’s look first at productivity power and he was producing around the national Trouble average at that time about 375 an hour. So $375 an hour. That’s what he was doing?

Well, what I did is I took that sheet blank sheet and I said, Let’s take this patient and move them here. And I looked at a Tuesday and said, let’s move this patient to Monday here. And let’s look at this here. And so we just began moving patients around until our productivity now was at over 1000 an hour. And I did that for three consecutive days taking people that were already in the schedule, and putting them in a new schedule. And so he had gone from 375 an hour to over 1000 an hour. And his comment was, uh, he’s great. He’s good friend of mine. But he said, You can’t just move people around like that. I said, Yeah, you can. It’s your business.

This is your life, this is your business. What’s happened is, the cart is way out in front of the horse here. You know, you need to have an intentional activity of how you want these people to be scheduled. And so I’ve heard people call Rock, paper, scissors, they do all their big cases in the morning, they do their all their console’s in the afternoons, you know what, whatever you want to do is fine. But I like being productive. The whole time I’m at the office. That’s my deal. I like to be productive. I don’t want to be really productive one day, and suck the next day. Because you can’t make up for a bad day, you can all just make a bad day average.

So I like to intentionally position patients in larger visits, larger appointments. So in case a patient in many times, when I see somebody booked out three months, they’re doing, they’re doing the occlusal on 30, but not doing the mo l on 14 and 50. So I put all of that treatment together, I want to have longer visits I want to have when I sit down, I want to do more dentistry. And many times that dentistry is booked against other dentistry that I’m doing that I know is not going to take me as long we call that productivity per hour. How do we book it? It’s based on it’s based on cost or based on price, not based on time. So it’s productivity based on you know, on the productivity, not on how long it takes me to do something. So what ends up happening many times in scheduling that gets people behind they run behind at lunch they run behind at the end of the day, they just run behind is because their schedule is set up with the x’s and slashes meaning it’s doctor time assistant time, Doctor time, assistant time dentrix calls it perfect day scheduling. Well, I can tell you dentrix has no clue how to schedule. productively, neither does any other software out there.

What I can tell you is how do you how do you schedule productively is you look at how much are you treatment planning? And how long is it? How long? Are you scheduling for different procedures? I don’t mind. I’m going to use the example. If I have a goal of 1000 an hour. What is that? That’s 1000 a day. So if I have, oh, let’s, let’s say I’m placing four implants. And that’s $1,000. Literally, I know I booked that day in 1000 an hour. So I will put one chair with those four implants. And theoretically, when I first started, which I did do, I would book that chair for eight hours. Now I know that for implants isn’t going to take you eight hours.

And people would say, Bruce, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I understand that. But what was your goal? I always tell people, I only have two goals. One is to reach my goal. And the other is to take great care of my patients. If I’m running behind, and my schedule is full, and I got two to three months in between times, how do I simplify my schedule? I treatment plan, I may treatment plan a little differently, because I’m wanting more to do more comprehensive dentistry. But more importantly, the way that I schedule is going to become differently, we can easily I can easily look at your schedule, spend 45 minutes to an hour and show you exactly how to schedule my 1000 an hour, you know, or I can show you why you’ll never be able to do 1000 an hour the way your diagnosis and treatment planning.

So that somebody who’s booked out three to six months or three to four months or two to three months. I can guarantee you I can look at that schedule and I can get you producing double what you’re producing now. With an understanding that I’m going to also need to train your team to train your treatment coordinators to train your front office, all to have the philosophy of scheduling to productivity not to turn And so when I look at that eight hour day putting in for implants, how long does it take me to put in four implants? Well, it just depends. But let’s say I’m laying flaps and doing maybe doing some grafting and some other things and put four implants and maybe a couple hours. And I’ll have people say, well, Bruce, did you schedule that the rest of the day? I mean, did you just go home when you finished?

No, I knew and my team knew that it was only going to take me two hours to do this procedure. So they began to put in, they’re not going to put anything next to the time that I’m placing the implants and doing the grafting. But all of the crap stuff that I have to do, the buckle pits, the occlusal holes, the just the little unproductive procedures that dentists do that we all do. That’s all put in the rest of that day. Why? Because I know I’ve reached my goal at 1000. You know, for the day, 1000 an hour, and 1000 an hour, if you’re working the average 128 hours a month, which is four days a week, you You’re now producing $128,000 a month, you’re a $1.4 million producer, can it be done? Yes, it can be done. Now, we’ll have a whole other conversation about PPO and all of that we’ve had plenty of those podcasts, but the opportunity for you and your team to put people not in an emergency type situation.

You know, when you have this, you know, when you have a patient that comes in, that wants to get their three fillings done, you’re gonna put them strategically in a space like we just talked about, where it may take you. You know, if I’m prepping, let’s say I’m prepping veneers in the interior, how long does it take me to prep veneers, if let’s say it’s a $10,000 case, I prep the veneers. I get them done. My team scans my team does everything else. And and, you know, we do the same day smiles. But even if I was provisionally sizing the case, I’ve trained my team to provisional eyes. So and I’ll bond them or put them in for those provisions. But my total time involved in those types of procedures that I call highly leveraged procedures, usually doesn’t take me that long. How long does it take to cut a three unit bridge or a four unit bridge or four, four units or crown and bridge or five onlays? In one, quad, four and on laser one quad? How long it really comes down to how to your diagnosis and treatment planning if you’re doing that comprehensively, and then how it’s being scheduled from there. So I hope that makes sense. Because when do I run through lunch, when would I ever run through lunch? Well, I only run through lunch, if I have somebody to work on. And I’m behind my goal, or possibly an emergency patient, I’ll take care of them.

But most of the time that’s writing a script or, you know, maybe doing a pulpotomy or pulpectomy on our on a hot tooth. So I can get that patient out of pain usually though, that’s just giving us antibiotics. So in looking at how to do this properly, that’s the I think that’s probably the strongest thing that we teach a productive dentist Academy is this is how you schedule effectively if you’re doing that, that, that scheduling with the slashes and the axes, who one of my good friends was the one who developed that years ago, it’s really non productive. Because what happens is you have your X’s I can’t be I can’t be in more than one place at one time. And you know you’re griping at your team because the way they schedule it. Well, those days are gone.

Those days are gone when you schedule based on productivity. And because the other way as soon as you you clip a poll porn or their decay goes deeper than you thought. And now you’re doing endo as well as doing the crown. Now what you’re doing is you’re running behind. And let’s say you have two or three chairs that you use, now you’re running behind, you have two people waiting in the waiting room, you also have your hygiene waiting for checks, that just continues to increase stress. And what I can promise you is there’s no reason to practice that way. None, zero. And we can show you exactly how to schedule, how to schedule a property, how to communicate with patients, how to have great financial arrangements, so they can do more dentistry, not less. But what you really want to get away with, away from not away with away from is where you book people out two or three months and it’s a bunch of little crappy little procedures.

Now if you love doing crappy little procedures, then keep doing it. If you like being frustrated by your schedule and having a jam packed and having patients complain, well just keep doing what you’re doing. But what I can promise you is what we teach will change your life. And the sooner you do, it doesn’t matter if you’re 55 or you’re 25 I just know that somebody’s 25 I’m just going to reap the benefits of that for the next 40 years, you know, and that’s going to mean millions of additional dollars that you’re going to be producing. So anyway, I hope this has been a good podcast great questions. And I’m going to, I’m going to answer some more questions on the next podcast.