Step One: STOP THE DISEASE PROCESS

First, you must acknowledge when disease exists.  If your practice isn’t healthy, you begin to feel the negative effects but you may not know exactly what is going on.  Your practice analyst helped you to see where some of the problems may be.  Then you attended Retreat 1 of the Management Program at The Schuster Center and that began to help you see more clearly. You began to sort it all out.  You looked at each of the engines that drive the practice and produced step-by-step policies and systems to begin the change process toward health.  You started to look at what health is relative to your dental practice.  You decided to stop doing things the way they have always been done and start reflecting on a better way to practice. 

Step Two: THE HEALING STAGE

This is where Policies and Systems are put into place and the implementation begins.  The dental practice embarks on a journey of healing.  This healing process in most cases will require the entire management year and sometimes beyond that year.  Healing requires change. 

Step Three: THE CORRECTIVE STAGE

Once healing has occurred, the stress level in the dental practice will be reduced and the team can now begin to focus on the goals set forth for the future of the practice.  This requires the commitment to continue working on your practice even after the management year is complete.  It is important to continually review your Policies and Systems and make revisions as you change and grow.  The statistical data collected monthly can be utilized to determine where change is needed.  Corrections are made based on objective data.

Step Four: THE MAINTENANCE STAGE

It is far easier to maintain a healthy practice than to correct one in the disease process.  Once the doctor and team have created the practice they desire and are reaching their goals, the ability to maintain them is dependent upon their commitment to the doctor’s vision of the practice.  Continuing education through advanced development will assure the practice maintains growth.  Maintaining health takes the effort of all involved.

Practice wellness takes life-long dedication just as your patient’s dental health and wellness requires commitment for a lifetime.

Happy New Year to everyone!

–The Schuster Center offers top practice management education for the dental industry. For more information, go to www.SchusterCenter.com

There are plenty of dentists whose very lives are coming unglued because of their BLIND FOCUS ON PRODUCTION.

We all need revenues. All businesses need revenues. The question is HOW DO YOU GET THEM? Do you get them by seeing 75 new patients a month, running them through your practice like cattle and manipulating them in the hygiene room to get a crown?

Or…

Do you establish rapport, trust and a caring and sincere relationship with your patients to co-discover what the person wants and needs? Do you co-diagnose their existing condition with care and do your very best to help them get what they want and need?

The production and money-based ways of dealing with people is to manipulate them. In contrast, relationship and trust-based dental professionals seek to help people. They make good decisions and form a long term relationship with each patient.

THE PRODUCTION BASED dentist eventually becomes an IDIOT. Staff isn’t motivated by anything other than money. Dentist isn’t motivated by anything other than money. Instead of creating a ‘professional environment’ of high trust and low fear, the environment becomes a nightmare.

I fully realize we are in the most severe recession we’ve seen in nearly 100 years. But those practices that have focused on QUALITY, TRUST-BASED relationships are sailing thru this time and in many instances, having their best year ever.

There is only ONE MODEL that creates FINANCIAL FREEDOM, TIME FREEDOM, RELATIONSHIP FREEDOM and PURPOSE FREEDOM…and it is the model that we teach at The Schuster Center.

The one and only model.

Dr. Michael Schuster

–Call us about how to integrate proven models and strategies into your dental practice for higher profitability and personal satisfaction… 1-800-288-9393 or visit www.SchusterCenter.com

There are great causes, great books, great music, great films, great
baseball teams, great buildings and there are also great organizations.
 
We know a great dental practice in the same way we know a great sports team;
by the way the individual performers work together, play the game, and consistently
achieve their goals.
 
We know great teams by the ’spirit’ they express, their level of aspirations,
and the values they live by.  We know them because they not only enrich themselves, but they enrich everyone they touch.
 
A great organization, a great dental practice, takes a stand for its values and its dreams. So it must have real values that are truly lived, not simply expressed and real dreams that are brought to life, not just spoken about.
 
KEY ELEMENTS OF GREATNESS
 
*   Power is distributed widely and equally
 
*   Relationships are soundly managed with overall interests in mind
 
*   The organization stands for something important and purposeful
 
*   Principles determine policies and systems
 
*   Growth is clearly defined
 
*   Resources are managed in a responsible, consistent manner
 
*   The organization continually aligns people towards it Vision, its Goal, its Purpose
 
–For help with dental practice management, dental case presentation, hygiene as a profit center, business plans for the dental practice, dental continuing education seminars and more, go to www.SchusterCenter.com or call 1-800-288-9393

The vast majority of selling methods are flawed and few sales people have been taught the structure that leads to consistent and predictable results. There are two basic positions in life from which we respond:
•Reactive
•Creative

Individuals caught in a reactive structure find themselves always looking for strategies to solve all their sales problems. Strategies, however, can never take the place or overcome a defective structure.

Creation is the ART of CREATING VALUE. What we do and how we do it are all part of the process of the creation of value. It takes a great deal of meditation, reading, contemplation and evaluation of one’s behavior to begin to move into a creative method or mode.

As a young dentist in the 1970’s, I decided that I would help my patients create a plan. A plan to move them towards health – optimum health first and then later optimum repair.

By phasing my treatment plan, I found that the vast majority made choices to move towards, or create health in their dental lives. In time, this led them to create health in other areas of their lives.

In selling, we can sell to a person’s weakness or we can sell to their strength. The choice is yours.

Help people survive and survive only, and they will resent the cost in money and time. Help people create and they will reward you and love you for it.