Dr Michael Sernik, April 2002 - When a business person goes to an office, they expect the receptionist to be a person who simply answers the phone and passes messages to someone who has the authority to deal with the matter. In other words, the receptionist in the business world does not command a lot of power and is a conduit to people in authority. If you were at a lawyer’s office, it would be unheard of to expect the receptionist to help you decide what the best course of legal action to take. However in a progressive dental surgery, we expect a whole range of skills from the receptionist. In fact, the more evolved a practice becomes; the more responsibility is shared by the whole team. It is quite common for the dentist to have a long conversation with a patient and finally ask, “Do you have any questions?”

The patient dutifully says, “no doctor I understand”

Then as the patient leaves they ask a staff member at the front desk, “Could you just go over what the doctor said?”

It quickly becomes clear that the patient hasn’t got a clue!

So now its up to a staff member to explain complex treatment, scheduling times, financial arrangements, health insurance issues. This is not the job of a ‘receptionist’ in any industry but dentistry.

Perhaps we should re-think the title?

How about Scheduling Coordinator, or Scheduling Manager, Scheduling Administrator, Patient Liaison Officer, Financial Manager, Financial Coordinator, Front Office Manager, Client Relations Manager, Patient Relations Manager. Get the picture? You could brain storm all sorts of titles.

The point is, if everyone in the practice has an executive title, it gives everyone the ‘right’ in the patient’s mind, to handle what he or she are probably doing to some extent anyway. Most dentists and most staff I talk to want exactly the same thing. They want the staff to have more responsibility. Having executive titles will help.

Now it’s important that I make one point very clear. If you are currently working in a practice where you hardly ever get a proper lunch break, where the dentist is usually running late and you are under stress, the last thing you need is ‘more things to do’. That’s a whole different topic and it means your systems might need to be analysed so that the practice runs smoother. The reality is, if a practice is under a lot of stress, it’s usually because the dentist is interfering with the job of the Scheduling Manager. (“Just squeeze them in tomorrow,” Sound familiar?) I’ll cover that topic in another article.