What is a person worth ?
By Dr. Michael Edwards
CEO, The Schuster Center
The epitome of industrialized medical model and consulting is to ask the question, " How much is a person worth?" Doesn’t just reading that make you sick?
Many consultants ask what a new patient is worth to your practice. This is often calculated as a first year spend. What short term thinking is that? Consultants ramp up marketing to get as many new patients into the practice as possible creating stress, rushed and fragmented experiences and problem focused exams.
How much are you worth to your patients? That is a better question! Why should they spend their time and money with you over a corporation or DSO?
In our curriculum, we help each doctor think through their values, their purpose for existence and the benefits to their patients and their community in order to create an experience that is unique and honors each individual person.
People today are tired of being rushed through a process where their own control is lost, where they feel powerless or not included, or their individuality is not honored. People don’t want to be seen as numbers, but want their doctors to put their health, their values around their health and life, and their purpose for going to the dentist as the number one priority when helping them create their care plan.
When doctors take the time to really understand their patients, help them then enter into a co-discovery experience, and co-create care plans to address their short and long term desired outcomes — not only will people move forward with care, but often will demand more of you, the doctor!
Measure success at how often your existing patients and new patients refer others to your practice instead of measuring how much a person spends when they come through the front door! Because if you are treating people based on their first year spend, it is likely many people are seeing their way out the back door.
In our core program, an essential module is the New Patient Experience (NPE). In NPE, we build experiences for the many types of patient encounters. Our work together gets the entire team involved and then supports you as you implement this work through a detailed syllabus, data, phone support and team support. This becomes a word of mouth marketing driver and leads not only to higher levels of engagement from your patients and referrals, but to a higher level of health for your patients.
These experiences are also addressed at deeper levels in Performance Coach where we regularly hold advanced case presentation retreats, share case examples, tool kits, and experiences that lift everyones office environments and patients experiences to new levels. This is the work of Mastery, the endless journey.
Performance Coach is geared towards our graduates of the Schuster Center who are wanting to activate their growth potential again or for those feeling stuck or uncertain about the future.
Performance Coach builds a mastermind around you and your goals, helping you gain clarity about what and why you really want what you want, and then helping you focus your energy, efforts and resources effectively. Performance coach doctors have become insurance independent, are doing more of the work they want, are reporting higher satisfaction with work, enjoy a greater work life balance, are taking more time off, are better leaders and yes, are more profitable!
People who have been in Performance Coach also report higher levels of belief in themselves and their abilities and with the support of the mentors and their PC groups, increased self-confidence.
Our Open January conference, January 26 and 27th in Scottsdale, AZ, will focus on Transitions wether they be a life transition, when to add a hygienist or associate, or the final transition into retirement. We will also be covering material from Dr. Edward new book, The Heart Of The Matter: Dental Diagnosing in the 21st Century among other topics.
Join PC for the year!! PC meets on the January 25-27 and June 20-22. Groups will form at the January meeting, be assigned a mentor, and then biweekly calls are scheduled for the year.
To get more information about the upcoming PC year or the Open PC Jan meeting, reply to this email!
To schedule a complimentary strategy session with Dr. Edwards use the following scheduling link: Dr. Edwards Calendar
[Article copied from The Schuster Center email "The Round Up" of 10/19/23. Used with permission.]