An effective morning huddle may be one of the most powerful tools to ensure an efficient and productive day.
First, it is important to understand what a morning huddle is and its purpose.
An effective morning huddle is a time for your team members to share details about the schedule, specific patients or procedures, and other important information with each other and the doctor. It is also a time for the team to highlight any changes to the schedule or alert the doctor to any other immediate issues.
The goal every morning is to quickly check in with your team about the day ahead to identify any potential speed bumps (or worse). It is not a “team meeting” where problems are solved. It’s about keeping the huddle short and on point.
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Watch Alex Nottingham, JD MBA, and Larry Guzzardo discuss morning huddles:
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Key Benefits of an Effective Dental Morning Huddle
The chief benefits of an effective morning huddle are ensuring clear communication between the different “teams” in the practice; identifying potential to add revenue through creating opportunities with the day’s patients; and keeping a look out to prevent lost revenue through preventable mistakes.
The morning huddle sets the “tone” for the day. A quick and efficient meeting that is “all business” establishes that the day will follow in the same way. A meeting that gets bogged down with too much discussion, debate, or problem solving often is difficult to set aside during the remainder of the day.
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Who talks?
Ideally, everyone in the practice should participate in the huddle. Each employee should share about their plan for the day – a quick summary of what they’re working on. This helps with engagement, commitment, and accountability with the team.
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What is covered?
Keeping in mind the nature of the huddle (quick and to the point), here are some topics that are important to include:
* An overview of the previous day – what went well and what did not* Current day’s staff schedule and any changes, including any potential hurdles such as absences by any team member for meetings or personal events * Alerting the team to outside factors (nearby construction or poor weather) that may affect the schedule* Alerts for patients that chronically no-show* Changes in clinical equipment* Specific patient issues or recent negative feedback * Scheduled openings for emergencies * Patient list for the day from the perspective of patients who may need extra time or assistance* Issues with outside partners or vendors * Anything else the team or the doctor think may affect the schedule
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Read more on efficiencies in the practice in a blog post: Improving Dental Front Office Team Productivity
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What are some obstacles to an effective dental morning huddle?
The biggest obstacle is just not having a morning huddle! It’s impossible to enjoy the efficiencies that come from a quick morning get together if you don’t get together.
We also hear about morning huddles that degenerate into squabbles, or where everyone babbles on and on.., and the meeting ends up taking far too long and patients start piling up.