Cliff's Notes

“Bad Medicine” & “Marketing 2014”

Cliff’s Notes for January 13, 2014

Cliff Marsh, Henry Schein ……Cell: 201-321-7494……Fax: 201-262-2210

E-mail: cliff.marsh@henryschein.com

http://www.cliffsnotesblog.me

http://www.youtube.com/cliffmarsh100

The reason we do what we do, is so that we can to do what we want to do, when we want to do it!

It’s a tongue twister, but working as a team and making informed decisions, will get us there.

 

  

“Don’t blame the marketing department.    The buck stops with the chief executive.”

John D. Rockefeller

 

This Week’s Feature on the Cliff’s Notes Channel

“IMS Time Saving”

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Over 180 Dental Videos

http://www.youtube.com/cliffmarsh100

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In This Week’s Issue

• The Root of It Commentary:

Marketing Your Practice, The Offence & The Defense!

• Product Review:

Instrument Management!

• The Dentrix Office Manager Blog:

Year End Clean up – Part #2!

• American Association of Dental Office Managers:

AADOM Names New Executive Director!

• Dentistry Beyond the Mouth:

Bad Medicne!

• The Disney Magic of Management:

Insights from the Mouse!

 

• This Week in Dentistry:

DOS More Effective!

• The Henry Schein Outlet Store:

A Basic 4 Hole Handpiece!

• Cliff’s Closing Notes:

The Root of It Commentary………………………………………….

  Marketing Your Practice, The Offence & The Defense!

 I often wonder if dentists and their teams really know what marketing is and how many piece there are to the puzzle. I realize that I am not smart enough to invent the wheel, nor do I want to try to reinvent it. I look in detail to what attracts me and then I listen to the people that do it right like the Disney’s and Stu Leonard’s of the world.

Stu Leonard owned a dairy farm in Connecticut that he turned into a food and Wine empire. I read his book and watched his video. Every time you engage with other’s ideas and thoughts you pic-up something. I learned a lot from Stu Leonard, but the one statement that stuck in my mind was “retail is detail”.

The detail is the presentation of your marketing program, the coordination of multiple formats, and the consistency of the presentation. For the rest of this commentary, we will call the marketing program “The Presentation”.

First, what is the presentation? It involves everything from the moment you turn on the lights when your alarm goes off until the moment you go to sleep. It begins with the culture you create with your personality and have that overflow to your team so they can better understand what you expect. The way you treat your team will be the way they treat your patients. It’s the presentation.

You also need to know what your patient’s think about you. They tell your team members and they post on line and you always need to respond, whether good or bad. Responding in a positive attitude being genuine and apologetic goes a long way. Dave Kerpin suggests responding to all internet comments. That tid-bit was brought to my attention just this past week.

A good presentation involves the coordination of mail, internet, team scripting, phone protocol, effective patient communication. A website is necessary because it is your overall presentation to the world. However, you need the programs to bring people to your presentation. Today, that involves the e-mail and text messaging for your internal programs and the social network for new patients.

One thing to be careful and detailed about is the culture of the practice. I have a lot of clients that are very successful, but the atmospheres of the offices are very different. Although everyone is friendly, some office cultures and personalities are all business and some are very warm and comfortable. This is healthcare, warm and comfortable is what you want.

For further discussion, questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me at any time @ 201-321-7494 or e-mail cliff.marsh@henryschein.com.

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Product Review – IMS……………..…………………………………..

HU-FRIEDY’S INSTRUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (IMS^®)

IMS is your total solution for instrument management and reprocessing.

IMS standardizes your procedural set-ups into cassettes that allow you to quickly and safely move instruments from cleaning through chairside without touching the instruments — that means increased productivity, efficiency, and safety for your staff. And, IMS adds to your bottom line by saving you 5 to 10 minutes per procedure and reducing the chance of lost or broken instruments.

Introduce your practice to the total solution that IMS offers — start saving valuable time and money today.

Chairside

Patient Preview & Presentation

Systematically organizes instruments according to procedure type, allowing for more focus on patients and less time spent looking for missing instruments

Neatly organized instruments offer more professional appearance and can help enhance referrals

For more information, log onto: http://hu-friedyperformance.com/home/ims-office-setup-tools/

For more information, log onto: http://hu-friedyperformance.com/home/ims-office-setup-tools/

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Dentistry Beyond the Mouth……………………………………….

Bad Medicine

I was watching TV the other night and a commercial came on for an oral appliance that will stop snoring. Let’s call it “Dr. StopSnore” for no other reason than there are a lot of them on the market. This commercial infuriated me because it never pointed out the ramifications or side effects that an oral appliance can cause. It never addressed the root cause of the sleep disorder or that maybe the appliance is masking a more serious condition.

Dentistry and Oral Health Medicine are slowly taking charge of identifying multiple systemic disorders and directing patients to the appropriate specialist for testing and diagnosis. In the case of sleeping disorders, the dental practice is on the front line. The industry is training oral health care professionals in treating and managing OSA conditions. Granted, some of the training does not address patient communication, but it’s getting there.

As a dental professional it is your obligation to train your team and bring them up to speed on systemic conditions that can be masked by organizations that capitalize on public trends and “hot topics”. A snoring appliance that can be purchased at Walmart for $20.00 should not be sold under the same pretense as a whiten strip. A whitening strip is a cosmetic product that has no real side effects when Dr. StopSnore can cause multiple jaw and muscle dysfunction. Patients that receive oral appliances to treat a sleeping disorder need to be monitored with an effective re-care and evaluation program. This is a big deal!

If you have any questions or concerns, or wish to discuss the total health concept, please feel free to contact me at any time @ 201-321-7494 or cliff.marsh@henryschein.com.

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The Office Manager Blog:……………………………………………

  Year End Clean Up – Part #2!

Has your office been using Dentrix for a long time or you just went through a conversion and you are finding that there are several duplicate insurance plans? This situation is very common and creates extreme inefficiency for your administrative team. Your team must search through a long list of insurance plans only to find three or four that all have the same group number … and then you don’t know which one is current. Let me show you how to clean this up.

First, from the Office Manager, go to Maintenance > Reference > Insurance Maintenance. Here you will see the entire list of all your insurance plans. This is where you will do your clean up. Highlight one of the insurance plans that is a duplicate and click on Ins Data so you can edit the name. In the screen shot below, I added the line “do not use.” This way I know which ones are not good and I am going to get rid of them.

To read the rest of Dayna’s blog, log onto:

http://thedentrixofficemanager.blogspot.com/

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Tips from the AADOM……………………………………………….

  AADOM NAMES NEW EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR!

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Red Bank, NJ:  January 6, 2013

The American Association of Dental Office Managers (AADOM) has named Kim McQueen the new Executive Director of the association. In this role, Ms. McQueen will oversee membership growth campaigns and be actively involved in the planning and promotion of the AADOM Annual Conference. Furthermore, Ms. McQueen will serve as leader and liaison for AADOM on joint projects with other dental associations in the industry.

Ms. McQueen brings with her 25+ years of experience in the dental industry, most recently as the Marketing Manager at Patterson Dental’s Office Supplies Division, where she also oversaw the Diamond Sponsorship of Patterson and AADOM. She is passionate about dental office managers and is a strong advocate for the professional development of this position within the dental practice. She has developed many resources over the years for dental office managers  such as the Patterson/AADOM Conference Scholarship Program, sponsored training sessions for local study club chapters and facilitated the development of a patient referral program product line.

Ms. McQueen also serves as the chair for Oral Health America’s (OHA), 2014 Gala & Benefit in February. She is the founder and president of Common Sense Dental Advisors (CSDA), which specializes in developing and executing marketing plans specifically customized to help clients achieve their business goals.  Ms. McQueen is also a dental speaker who focuses on the topics of effective dental practice marketing and personal & professional development for the dental practice management professional.

To read the rest of this article log onto:

http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/obsessive-management-disorder

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The Magic of Management…………………………………………….

In-Sight From the Mouse!?

January 09, 2014 by Bruce Jones, Programming Director, Disney Institute

If an experimental Audio-Animatronic Tiki Bird was breathing, and 99% of the audience would likely never notice, would it make a difference? It did to Walt Disney.

A half-century ago during the development of the Disneyland® Park attraction, Enchanted Tiki Room, Walt watched his Audio-Animatronic birds blink, move and sing — but wondered why they didn’t breathe. Imagineers had a good answer: The soup of circuits, valves and pumps made it difficult to add an element that hardly anyone would notice. Legendary Imagineer, John Hench, said to Walt, “People are not going to get this. This is too much perfection.”

Walt listened, and that’s when he shared a lesson that’s become a timeless pillar of The Walt Disney Company: “People can feel perfection.” 

Quality is in the imperceptible things that guests might not even know they see.
http://disneyinstitute.com/blog/2014/01/success-is-in-the-details-how-disney-overmanages-the-customer-experience/230

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This Week Dentistry: ………………………………………………….

Economist Finds Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) More Cost-Effective Than Average Independent Dentists

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Sept. 24, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ — An in-depth study of state reimbursement claims data conducted by economist Arthur Laffer shows that Dental Service Organizations (DSOs) in Texas are providing more cost-efficient and conservative dental care than the average Texas dentist – while providing much-needed services to underserved patients, many of whom are children on Medicaid who have not previously had access to any dental care whatsoever.

The research concluded that DSOs are “filling an important void in dental coverage that Congress has specifically incentivized dentists to fill, and at least in Texas… are actually treating patients more conservatively than non-DSO dentists.”

DSOs are individual companies who provide comprehensive administrative and other support services to dentists or groups of dentists. Through group buying power, electronic medical records, centralization and the use of dental best practices, DSOs create efficiencies that allow dentists to provide cost-effective care to low-income children and families on Medicaid.  Even though Medicaid has increased reimbursement rates in Texas, many DSO and non-DSO dentists still do not accept Medicaid patients, given that reimbursement is much lower than what private insurers pay. Before DSOs were created, this left many families on Medicaid with nowhere to turn for dental care.

This comprehensive study effectively refutes some perceptions that DSOs engage in overuse of high-reimbursement dental procedures, with the goal of maximizing income, when in fact, just the opposite is occurring in Texas.  The data shows that DSOs are actually the more conservative providers of such high-reimbursement procedures, which included tooth extraction (removal), placement of crowns and pulpotomies (removal of infected pulp in a tooth).

To read the rest of this article, log onto:

http://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2012/09/economist-finds-dsos-more-cost-effective-than-independent-dentists.html

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Henry Schein Outlet Center………………………………………..

Overstock – Reconditioned – Demo

For the Special of the Week or More Outlet Store Offers, Call Cliff @ 201-321-7494

Handpiece Headquarters
STANDARD CANISTER MANUAL CHUCK HANDPIECE
Condition: Overstock
Part Number: HSH0004  Manufacturer Part Number: HSH0004
Catalog Price: $129.00  Outlet Price: $79.00

Warranty: 6-Month

• Standard Head
• Non-Optic
• Manual Chuck
• Single Spray
• 4-Hole Connection
• Ceramic Bearing

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Cliff’s Closing Notes…………

Most important is your time management. Don’t miss one day of your family growing up. Don’t let life get in the way, because when today is gone you can never get it back. It is important to find the balance.

January 21, 2014 - Posted by Cliff's Notes Blog | Uncategorized