Clinical culture.

So I wanted to post a quick follow-up to the video I had posted before this morning about my clinical culture. I think it's really interesting how important that clinical culture is to the success of the practice in general. You know, we have moments in our practice where things seem to be firing on all cylinders and everything's running really smoothly and the patients are happy and we're doing a lot of dentistry and we're treating a lot of people. And then we seem to have moments where the schedule falls apart, not just once or for one day but, you know, for weeks at a time. And the tenor in the practice, the ambiance, the stress level, the mood of the practice is really negative. And I've noticed personally that for me that those times when everything turns south, everything becomes unpleasant, those are the times when the practice has failed to live up to its established culture goals. Now we've recently just enacted or plugged in or created our clinical culture document officially, but we've had a mission statement for a very long time which is all about service. It's all about focusing on the patients. It's all about making sure that the patient and the patient's experience there is the highest priority. So that's been in place for a long time. But we've only recently had the clinical culture document officially posted and, you know, made as a matter of, you know, the office protocol, the office policy. So that being said, the times in my, you know, the recent past, we're talking the last few years, when the office has done the best aren't just the times when we've been able to execute the most dentistry but when the office is functioning well according to its established clinical culture. You know, I recall having a conversation with Joe Feldstein a couple of years ago at an owner-doctor meeting in Kansas City where he asked me if I had a clinical culture document posted that we periodically reviewed and I told him, you know, we have a mission statement and I showed it to him and it was a great start but it wasn't as specific and as particular as the document we have now, which basically lays out if we have a new patient then we do meet and greet and we always do a BC handoff period, end of story. So it allows us an opportunity to hold ourselves and each other accountable to these things. So just to kind of conclude this real short brief clip video, I think the more we can hold true to our clinical culture, which first we need to establish and make sure everyone in the office is on board and aware of it, but the more we can hold true to that clinical culture the better off we'll be long term because this clinical culture is the foundation for the success of the office. Yeah we need people, yeah we need hard workers, yeah we need the ability to execute dentistry but if the culture isn't in place then long term it becomes a very negative experience for everyone and overall can be just an unpleasant experience. So get that clinical culture established in your practice, make sure that you're doing what you should be doing from the standpoint of treating people as the blessings that they are, as the opportunities to serve that they are. Focus on making sure that we're building patients for life, that we're establishing those protocols that allow us to keep our current patients, serve them in a way that allows them to continue returning to us, but also that instills in them a desire to refer, to invite, to bring in their family, friends, and co-workers. Those are really the keys and as we do that and as we live up to a high standard of clinical excellence in executing our treatment for our patients then the office will grow, it will continue to be successful and over time you know everybody wins, most of all the patients.