Dental Office Monday Holidays Are Predictable

Dental office Monday holidays are awesome!  Right?   The dental practice can extend the weekend a bit.  Spend a little more time with family and friends.  Travel if we desire to do so.   And maybe rest at home too!  It’s a nice break in our usual weekly routine.  However, a long weekend presents challenges to our practice.  In fact,  a dentist I worked with used two phrases to describe these challenges.  Pre-vacation hell and post-vacation hell fit the bill perfectly for him.

There were those late Thursday afternoon toothache phone calls.  And this wasn’t a surprise.  Anyone who works in dentistry for a bit, knows this scenario.  “I used to be a patient.  But I lost my insurance.  And I haven’t been in the office for some time.  But I’ve had this toothache for nearly 2 weeks now. And right now, it’s killing me. I know it’s a long weekend coming up.  That’s why I’m calling now.  Because I really need to be seen before the weekend.”

 

 

Pre-Vacation Hell 

So, now we have two choices.  We can put this person somewhere in our afternoon.   Or we can tell them we can’t see them this afternoon.  But wait!  There’s a little more to this to consider.  Remember,  it isn’t a surprise.  What we couldn’t predict, was who would call.  But we knew there would be a call.  Perhaps more than one!   So, I’ve got a great idea to consider.   Try this on your next extended weekend or vacation from the office.

Keep the afternoon schedule completely open for emergency care!  Schedule a full morning of production and meet your office goal with your morning.   And then, keep the afternoon open for a more relaxed wind down to the weekend.  Then, if there truly are no emergency patients on this day, everyone has the chance to slowly unwind and slip into holiday mode.  However, I bet you’ll see some activity for the afternoon.  And can take advantage of this opportunity to welcome some new patients into the practice.  Or maybe even reactivate a dormant patient who needs some treatment!

Dental Office Monday Holidays Done Right

Dental Office Monday Holidays are followed by Tuesday.  And you can take that to the bank!   As surely as the sun rises in the east, Tuesday is just ahead.  We’ll have phone messages to respond to, emergency patients who need an appointment, and unexpected openings in our schedule.  Not to mention all the other stressors that jump into our post holiday return.  But, again, we are talking about a very predictable event.  And this is our post-vacation hell.  Let’s change that!  I for one, do not want to accept it as just the way it is.

First, come into the office just 15 minutes earlier than usual.   This provides time to check voicemail messages for urgent needs.  And also the chance to see who might want to reschedule an appointment set for today or tomorrow.   This little piece of time buys me a whole lot of peace and preparation.  And is well worth the investment.   It’s certainly worth the whole day prior as a holiday to give this 15 minutes extra to my work day today.

 

 

Post-Vacation Hell

Then, we do exactly the same thing in our schedule.   With just one little twist.  We schedule all our production for the morning.  And again, we leave the afternoon free for emergency care and immediate needs.   However, we do this one important thing differently in our morning.  We only schedule patients we truly trust to show up.   Of course, anything can change. And it will.  But our most dependable and reliable patients only are scheduled the day after a holiday break.

That’s really it!  These simple steps relieve so much stress.  And eliminate our need to have a pre-vacation and a post-vacation hell experience.  Let’s have a better dental office day every day.  And feel like we truly had a restful break from the daily grind.  We might also find we are more excited to return from a holiday break.  Because we know we’ve set the stage so well.  And we have the time and energy to manage the day so much better.  Cheers!