Getting Started with Systems in Your Dental Practice

Episode #425 with Laci Phillips

If you're using Post-its as your training manual, you need a better system! And to help you create the best one for your practice, Kirk Behrendt brings in Laci Phillips, cofounder of Practice Dynamics, to shift your thinking and reveal how to get started. Systems give you organization, consistency, and predictability, and the way to achieve it is with an SOP. To find out more about SOPs and how to create them, listen to Episode 425 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

You need a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manual.

SOPs are living, breathing documents. Keep them updated.

It’s up to leadership for team members to follow systems.  

Great things will happen if you have great systems in place.

Creating systems will take a lot — a lot — of time.

Quotes:

“If you are a team member and you've ever said, ‘Oh, I had no idea that was my job,’ or, ‘Wow, I don't even have a job title or responsibilities,’ or, ‘I have no idea how to do that,’ or you're responsible for training somebody and you're not even fully trained yourself, these are the things that we’re talking about right now — systems, documented, actually organized and put into categories. So, no matter where you are or what you're doing, you know where to go to find any answers that you need. And it becomes an easy training manual as well. And I just find it’s something we don't have in dental practices. It’s kind of crazy to me.” (2:52—3:35)

“What I'm talking about is an SOP manual, a Standard Operating Procedure manual. And it’s a living, breathing, document. It changes as your procedures change, as your systems change. Maybe you don't accept all third-party financing anymore. Maybe you use different vendors for different things. Things change. Life changes. Procedures change. We have to document that and keep those up to date as well.” (4:43—5:15)

“It took us a good three years — I'm not kidding — to put [our SOP] together. This is not something that you just all of a sudden, on the weekend, or you send homework with your team to get this done. But there's a nice, concise, consistent way to get it done that we have found. And so, it does take a lot of time.” (6:18—6:39)

“Use your leads. You use your team leads. So, you have a business team lead, you have a clinical team lead, you have a hygiene team lead. And maybe even, now, you have a marketing lead. And so, you use those leads in the capacity in which we put them in that role, ‘Hey, if something changes, if something is different in your department, in your category, please let me know so that I can update the SOP manual.’ And, again, it’s digital. It’s a Word document, or you can lock it down as a PDF. But it’s digital so that it’s easy to do.” (6:58—7:36)

“Let's say I'm a sterilization assistant and I'm gone today. I'm out, and somebody else needs to pick up this pace for me, and they’ve never done it before. Oh — I can pull out the SOP manual, go to “Sterilization,” and it’s going to tell me exactly about the STATIM, the cold sterile, the hot sterile, where do things go, how do I use it, what do I do. It would even allow the doctor, if need be, to jump in and do some things maybe the doctor isn't used to doing. But it’s a leadership role in getting this together for our team.” (9:06—9:42)

“[When team members don't follow the systems] this is a leadership issue. It’s leadership. And look, I get it. Dentists go to dental school to become dentists. What makes them happy is being in the patient’s mouth and changing lives, and doing beautiful dentistry, making people feel healthy and whole again. But guess what? When you bought that practice and when you hired team members, you became a leader. Whether you like it or not, you are a leader by default.