Performance Improvement – Set Goals with Your Team
You may have a great team of dental caregivers, but no dental practice does it all perfectly. Whether your practice has new or seasoned, experienced employees, there is often room for improvement and potential for growth for all of us.
When errors or mistakes happen, we need to use them as learning experiences to improve outcomes in the future. Setting new goals can help you and your team redirect and come together for the greater success of your practice.
Why Set Team Goals?
Setting a performance improvement goal involves developing a plan of action to motivate and guide a person or group. It is intentional and gives your team a level of importance to elevate their behaviors or actions for a better result.
Team goals can motivate, increase job satisfaction, help build more effective working relationships, and improve communication.
No one person is singled out when you make it a team effort. Those with more experience or who are more comfortable with the process can guide and encourage the one who struggles more with the goal.
Choose and Set Your Goals
Ask your doctor(s) and your team for their input.
Are you introducing a new procedure or treatment to your patients? Is there a service you provide already that you want to offer more consistently to all your patients?
You may have hired new employees who still need consistency with the systems you have developed and the best ways of completing procedures or tasks. A team goal could help support their training and development.
Setting Systems
Look at your past mistakes and evaluate if there is an opportunity to prevent errors in patient care, improve communication with patients or fellow team members, or improve a process.
There was a period in my practice when we struggled with having lab cases back for the patient’s appointment. It was awkward and uncomfortable to have to reschedule the patient on the date of their appointment. We set a goal for all lab cases to be returned one day before the patient’s scheduled appointment.
After looking at how things were being done, we needed to develop a better lab tracking system. It starts with the clinical teammate who assisted during the procedure; they are responsible for sending the lab case. It continued with the hand-off at the front desk to alert them to add a lab tracking symbol to the next appointment.
Finally, clinical and office members are responsible for checking the schedule two days before the appointment so we know the case is already back or will be delivered on time.
How to Say It
Do you have some employees who have been deviating from the best wording script you desire?
Setting a goal with the team to monitor the verbiage in use begins with reviewing why you must say things the way you do.
For example, how to collect payment from the patient. “Do you want to take care of that today?” needs to change to “How will you be taking care of your balance today? We accept cash, checks, or credit cards.” You will be more effectively collecting payment and reducing your clinic’s outstanding accounts receivable in the process.
Hopefully, a few reminders from other business teammates will help point out the frequency of incorrect verbiage and help set a habit for stating it better.
Return Appointments
As a team, we set a goal for every patient we saw in a day to have a return appointment.
Each team member who had contact with the patient had their part in conveying the importance of taking care of their dental health to our patient:
- The front office warmly greets the patients, relaying they value them and are glad they came to our practice.
- The hygienist will express important dental health reasons to schedule their next appointment.
- The doctor will affirm the reasons to return and ask them to get it scheduled.
- After a restorative appointment, the assistant hands off the patient to the business team and restates the reason for the next appointment.
- The business team will schedule the treatment, remind them of their next re-care appointment, and show them their next appointment date on the walk-out statement or card.
If a patient refuses to schedule, a clear note of their rejection must be entered into the patient’s chart. This information is valuable for team members who will follow up with the patient.
Concentrating on this goal showed the team each of us had a responsibility to that patient. This goal has become a habit and standard operating procedure for us.
When to Implement Change
When you strive to provide the best patient care, it makes sense to evaluate your progress periodically. We typically reflect on New Year’s Resolutions in December and January, and it may be fitting for your practice to set some new goals around that time. For some practices, implementing change at another time of year could be better for you.
My practice is located in the rural Midwest of the United States, and many of our patients are engaged in farming or farming support businesses. When it is time for spring fieldwork and planting or fall harvest, we may experience a lull in our busy schedule due to the nature of the agriculture industry.
We choose to implement our change around this time of year when it is less rushed and hectic. We have found that we tend to have more patience and can better focus on changing our behavior to implement a new goal.
Sometimes, however, change needs to happen right away.
When three lab cases went missing in a two-week period, we took immediate action to evaluate why this was happening, how to prevent it, and what we could do as a team to correct our lab tracking system.
What Are the Results?
All goals should be evaluated for the desired outcome.
Sometimes checking for results may be as simple as running a report in your practice management software for the number of procedure codes that were completed in a specific time frame or running the analytics for the dollar amount of payments made at the time of service, or the number of days your insurance claims are outstanding. Compare these reports with the period before you started your performance improvement goal.
It is essential to share the results with your team, whether they are positive or still need improvement. Acknowledge and celebrate your successes! Brainstorm together to adjust your processes to keep striving for better outcomes.
Hopefully, the numbers will improve as you concentrate on your goals, leading to greater success for your team and your practice.
About the Author
Narla Hulstein, MAADOM
Narla Hulstein began her career in dentistry as a Certified Dental Assistant in 1982. She transitioned to office management in 2001.
She has held the practice manager position for Shetek Dental Care in Slayton, MN, since the clinic opened its doors 20 years ago. Under her leadership, the clinic has grown to a team of 14 and eight fully scheduled treatment rooms.
Narla received her AADOM Fellowship distinction in 2017 and her Master distinction in 2024.
