Dr Phillip Palmer, January 2012 - Many people are saying 2012 could herald a new downturn in the economy in Australia. Among many people in-the-know, the CEO of The Commonwealth Bank Ralph Norris claims that GFC2 is on its way, and Gail Kelly, CEO of Westpac expressed a similar prediction.

How a downturn will affect dentistry in general is reasonably predictable. Despite many dentists thinking (…wishing?) that dentistry was a necessity, or essential for health, much (if not most) work that dentists do could fall into the classification of ‘elective’, and can be easily put off by a patient. When a decent percentage of your patients put off their dental work, sometimes even fairly basic work let alone sophisticated cosmetic work, then your practice will undoubtedly slide into a considerable downturn in busy-ness and income. If, as with most practices, this would be a cause for some concern, then there are ways to minimise the effects to your practice.

From 2008-2011, Prime Practice had a considerable amount of experience with American clients when there was a downturn in the US dentists’ busy-ness and income. For a large number of American dentists, turnover was halved and incomes decreased even more. Prevention is always better than cure and Prime Practice worked hard to ensure our clients did not become one of these statistics. The 6 tips below are ways to prevent becoming one of those statistics (and just make good business sense if the downturn doesn’t happen):

1. Service, Service, Service: Make sure that throughout your practice everything is being done at an optimal level. Especially during tough times, service levels to your patients need to be as high as possible to minimise chances of patients leaving you for any reason at all. Auditing your patient experience from initial phone call to post treatment recall is a good starting point to see where the holes are in your patient experience. How can you do this?

• Have regular periods when you ask patients to fill out an experience survey after their visit/ upon checkout.
• Ask your staff for feedback and suggestions. Staff members have a great vantage point to notice weaknesses in the patient service levels.
• The cost of mishandling phone enquiries can be thousands of dollars of lost income. The level of skill with which a phone enquiry is handled is crucial to converting phone enquiries to new patients. Check- in on your practice’s phone experience from time to time. How long does it take for your team to answer the phone? What happens when patients call outside hours? Have your team been trained in the best ways to convert phone shoppers into patients?
• Sometimes dentists become blind to the incremental degradation of their practice aesthetics. Ask trusted friends who don’t frequent your practice to have a look at it with fresh eyes and give you some honest feedback.

2. Maximise recall: You should be able to get 85%+ of your patients to attend your practice regularly (ie: 6 monthly appointments).However it will require your practice employing the right systems and communication with patients, and it will require your whole team to be on board with the same message. Each patient needs to know the importance of visiting regularly and, where possible, make an appointment before they leave the practice.

3. Get patient concern to the appropriate level: Having clinicians communicating effectively with your patients while they are in the chair about the conditions they are presenting in their mouths is crucial. This will ensure your patients are appropriately concerned about the consequences of their inertia. Once your patients have appropriate levels of concern, they will be more likely to accept the necessary treatment to fix their conditions without seeing the dentist as being salesy and pushy. At times like these there is nothing worse than seeming insensitive to your patients’ monetary situations and traditional sales techniques can come across as pushy and lead to patient attrition.

4. Increase your clinical skills: Make sure that not only are you doing work of the highest level possible (in order to minimise problems for your patients and warranty work for you), but that you are also increasing the procedures that you and your practice is offering. This way you are keeping much of the otherwise-referred business in-house, leading to increased work for you and your practice. Consider if you are interested in any extra spheres of dentistry that you would like to put the time in to become an expert in. For example: orthodontics, implants, TMJ, sleep dentistry, and endodontics to name just a few. Becoming an expert can be excellent not only for your patients, but can be beneficial for practice income, and very satisfying intellectually.

5. Understand your market and how to communicate to it:
Do you have your finger on the pulse of your local market?
What age groups, ethnicities are most represented?
Have there been any recent/ demographic shifts to the economics of your area that you need to be aware of? This is important as demographic shifts could change the demand for the service mix you provide.
Once you know your market you need to get to know how best to communicate with them. For a young demographic, you may turn to the internet whereas for an ethnic demographic, `you may want to communicate using a ethnic community newspaper.

6. Understand your numbers: In order to truly know how your business is going, you need to track and analyse your practices figures regularly over time. When you know your figures you are able to identify the cause and effect of changes that are occurring and make adjustments where necessary. Knowing your figures can prevent unnecessary stress, panic and rash decisions from being made. (For an article specifically about this, visit: www.primepractice.com.au/articles.php and search for “Hitting a slow patch”).
Additionally, tracking where new patients are coming from and weighing that against money spent on marketing will give you a clear indication of the effectiveness of your marketing efforts without which you will never know what to continue, repeat or stop.

No matter what you do in good times or bad, it is always good to invest in yourself, and your business. This can include learning extra clinical skills, communication skills, management, leadership and business skills. All of these will help you in any economic climate, but are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL when there is a downturn.