Dr Phillip Palmer, February 2014
Practice: Coopers Plains Dental Group
Joined Practice Management Program: July 2007
When did you join Prime Practice?
In 2007 Coopers Plains Dental Group signed on to work with Prime Practice. One of our partners had heard a lot about it through word of mouth having never attended a workshop. After visiting a seminar explaining Prime Practice, he brought back information and we signed on as clients. There were four partners at the time.
What have been your best achievements since joining Prime Practice?
When we joined Prime Practice, Coopers Plains was a 6 surgery practice and we would periodically visit Longreach and Barcaldine to service the rural communities. We are now a 10 surgery practice at Coopers Plains and have opened a custom-made 7 surgery practice in Emerald, Central QLD (about an hour and a half by plane from Brisbane), while still servicing Barcaldine and Longreach.
Prime Practice has been instrumental in getting us organised for this massive growth. They really helped us to focus our goals and grow with a certain amount of structure. Also, and probably most importantly, Prime Practice has helped us create a highly effective self-managed team. And with a team of 64, that is no small achievement.
How does Prime Practice work with such a large team?
We are a large team of 20 dentists, hygienists/therapists and the rest of the team being auxiliary staff. It is really no easy task working between two practices a plane ride apart. Prime has helped the whole team of 64 to speak the same language and provide the same quality of service. Especially with our remote new practice in Emerald having opened, it is really important that everyone follows the same vision and protocols to run a smooth practice.
So, how do we train a team of this size and complexity? Well, luckily for us, actually luck has very little to do with it, but we have a lot of long standing staff members that have gone through the majority of Prime Practice courses. What this means is that all our team are incredibly well-organised and each team member knows their responsibilities on a day to day basis. Because of this, new team members absorb the protocols and attitude, and we are able to train them in a timely fashion. But we certainly also make an effort to send all our team members to relevant Prime Practice! courses and events.
When we set up our new practice in Emerald, we sent the team to Prime Practice events in Rockhampton, which made it a lot easier to train the team there rather than sending them to Brisbane.
Our General Manager, Paula, has also been incredibly valuable, as she has gone through a lot of Prime Practice training on much of the HR and leadership sides of running a practice, so the dentists can primarily be providing dental care (and running the business). The training and her own natural abilities has seen her shine in this role.
