The Successful Seven Goals of the Savvy Office Manager

The Successful Seven Goals of the Savvy Office Manager

1.       Leading people is the usual description of what a manager does. But, he or she is also responsible for leadership over a segment of work, practice results relating to performance of other staff and systems within the practice that create revenue like collections and insurance.  Leading anyone is related to goals.  Goals for a dental business include production goals in the form of dollars.  If you don’t know the production goals you cannot lead others forward.  Without leadership there is chaos.
2.       Strategizing the schedule and the day.  A dental office schedule should never be a “fill the lines and keep the doctor/s away from the desk” approach to office production.  Great dental managers know what procedures will provide the numbers for goal and what procedures can be overlapped and extended to capture the goal.  It is strategy not accident that drives a productive schedule.  Having a well-planned schedule means patients will be seen on time and dismissed on time.  Patients feel important when their time is respected.
3.       Prioritizing the daily tasks and goals.  To sustain and increase the numbers that drive the practice, a great manager’s focus needs to be on what is most important to achieving practice goals.  Making it a daily goal to follow-up on unscheduled treatment and unscheduled recall appointments.  Often the orphans of most practices because “out of sight out of mind” directs the attention away from this critical source of practice revenue.  Your practice should be patient centered not staff centered.
4.       Working with the staff with policy and motivation.  Having an office policy manual is an important tool but keeping connected with the staff to support their efforts in job performance call for a manager who is literally on the floor with the team, not in an office separated with a door.  A good work ethic by the leaders improves work performance of the team.
5.       Be the vision for the practice by example.  Lead by example of your work not by words that dissipate and die a week later.  If you want to bring in new ideas and change for the better of the practice, be the one who makes it happen for the team.
6.       Understanding overhead and managing the numbers.  Do you know the industry standard for total salaries and employee benefits?  How would you know whether you can afford to give raises or for that matter hire another person?  Do you know what dental supplies should be for your practice?  How do you know you aren’t spending too much on supplies?   Overhead cost management is critical to success.
7.       Know where the money is. Analyze daily and monthly reports to see where the practice is in regards to total accounts receivables and insurance accounts receivables.  Don’t let these numbers increase beyond your control.   Run the practice by provider by code analysis to see who is producing and what is being produced.  Is this number reaching the goal for production?  What can be done to influence these numbers to grow?