One of the rewarding things about mid-life is that we can begin to see ourselves as we really are…we finally get to know ourselves. Unfortunately, we find out we’re not perfect and we all discover things about ourselves we wish would be different. Similarly, virtually every private business owner will come to see some aspect of their personality that has been reflected in their business they wish was different than it is. In the early years of a business’s existence that isn’t necessarily bad or a disadvantage. As the business grows, develops and matures, however, some of these personality aspects can become limiting. That is probably the primary reason entrepreneurs end up backing out of the operation of businesses they have created or selling them outright. The wise entrepreneur has the insight to understand their own limiting affect on the business (or simply want to get rich quick by cashing out).

This dynamic of personality overlapping into the business applies just as strongly to dental and medical practices except for the backing out or selling out part. That isn’t as readily available as an option to medical professionals because they themselves are, for the most part, the business. So the dental/medical professional’s dilemma becomes overcoming their own recognized limiting impact on the business without leaving it.

I have been really impressed by the desire, of every medical and dental professional I’ve met, to stay concentrated on providing the best medical care to the patient, so concentrated, in fact, that the practice can suffer. Recognizing that the “practice” is a business entity and dental/medical service is a professional calling seems to imply that focusing on one will necessarily take away from the other. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. The key is to make the practice business operating systems “unburdensome” to the delivery of medical and dental services.

Fortunately for the dental/medical professional, there are many well developed business operating principles that can be applied to private practices. Most of these principles have been developed in large industrial settings so it is not readily obvious that they may be relevant to smaller professional service types of businesses. These “world class” and “proven” business practices are not pie in the sky strategic directions or broad concepts. They are the “Lean” and “Total Quality Management (TQM)” methods.

Lean and TQM methods focus on how to get actual tasks done more efficiently and predictably. By putting these proven Lean and TQM methods in place, the day-to-day operation of a medical/dental practice can be structured, organized and predictable so the medical professionals don’t have to worry about them. The key aspects of the practice can be set up to provide visual indicators or cues to the staff and owner of the practice. Are we running out of a particular supply or not?….Are our overdue receivables in control or they growing?….Are our bookings 3 months and 6 months out stable, going up or going down?…etc., etc.

Structured, visual day-to-day operating systems can take these and hundreds of other concerns off the mind of the practice owner so nothing stands in the way of the dental/medical professional focusing on delivering quality patient care. On top of that, in every case, the application of Lean methods has a positive impact on the financial bottom line of the practice.

Written by Robert Angeli.

The visual workplace has signs, labels, color-coded markings, workplace arrangement and etc. so that anyone can see what is going on (or not) at a glance. For this example of the visual workplace we will use collections. This example comes from a recent visit to a client’s office where they have developed this system to suit them. They are particularly proud of their results. Let’s see what they do.

In the picture above, you can see the heart of their collections system, the “rack”. This shelving unit has dividers for each day of the month, as well as several additional dividers that can be used for storage. They have labeled divisions for each day, as can be seen in the picture below. You can see the labels have both a number and letter. The users of this system said that they do not use the letters. It is more convenient to use the numbers for dates, rather than letters for names, because many of the collections activities are date sensitive.

You have noticed that there are different colored folders. The colors are at the heart of this visual workplace. In the picture below you can see the poster with the color codes for the folders. Yellow folders are used to collect information, phone call records and notes before proceeding to small claims court, if need be. The materials are moved to a purple folder when the decision is made to pursue collection via small claims court. Green folders are used when the collections case has either been rendered for collection via wage garnishment or if the responsible party has agreed to regular payments. Blue folders are used for income tax garnishments. Finally red folders are used for accounts that are dead, i.e. bankruptcy, moved out of state, etc.

Below you can see the storage area for purple folders. Most of them are used, waiting for the next case. The users of this system report that when they started it up (taking over from a less than diligent clerk), the predominant color was purple which means that not much was scheduled for collection and lots of court time was in order. As you can see from the first picture, the predominant color now is green, which means that collections are scheduled. The point of the visual workplace is that you can see the “state” of the process at a glance. Here green is good. The Doctor can also see the volume of collection cases at a glance.

The files are put into the divider for the day designated for follow-up which could be a phone call or payment or etc.

Below, Leilani wants to remind you that the 30 seconds required to make the note, can save 3 or 30 minutes required to reconstruct the conversation or to determine what to do next.

Both the dentist and the office manager have been surprised and thrilled with the ease with which the new process can be managed, and more importantly, how much AR has decreased since the implementation of this example of the Visual Workplace.