Building trust to create a thriving practice

Looking back over my last 22 years as a Practice Manager and as President of the Practice Managers Association, I am often asked what makes a great PM, and my answer always include: a great principal/principals and a team that shares the same values and goals. PMs and principals must work together and build a trusting relationship to create a successful, happy and thriving practice.

I decided to ask one of my principals that I have worked with side by side, through ups and downs and thick and thin over those 22 years. Steve Lomas from The Old Surgery Dental Practice in Cheshire shares his thoughts:

“One of the biggest but best decisions is to get the PM on board with the vision of the practice and to entrust them to help grow that business.
“Resist the urge to micromanage and control, when working in surgery all day. There are not enough hours in the day to perform dentistry and run a business well on your own anymore”.

Steve continued, I need my PM to:
• Manage advertising, website, social media output and content.
• Liaise with the marketing team, web designer etc. during the normal working day, taking our ideas (dentists, PM, rest of the team) and turn them into output for our final approval before releasing whatever it is we wish to promote.
• There are so many different strands to advertising now, the PM can orchestrate the team to provide content.
• Manage the advertising budgets, KPIs, assessing what works best, ROI (return on investment).
• Manage the reception team; it is vital to have the front of house all delivering the right message to ensure the new patient contact is converted into a new client, and make the existing patients feel valued.
• KPIs – financial stuff, accounts, bank reconciliations etc. that all take the pressure of the practice owner.
• HR, primary contact for dealing with staff issues, conciliator, shoulder to cry on, an iron fist in a velvet glove and all points in between. A vital shield to protect the practice owner from having to deal with many problems and niggles.
• A trusted PM who shares the vision and ambition, and will build the success and profitability of the business. At this present testing time, someone able to put an arm around the team and reassure them.
• Contact suppliers, suspend, reorganise finances, spreadsheets, encourage the team to stay engaged with each other.
• Organise appropriate social media content during this time.
• Try and keep plan patients on the plan.
• Plan the marketing for when this is all over.

That’s just for starters, how any dentist can manage that lot and do dentistry as well is beyond me. Without a doubt, the very best practices that I have the pleasure of knowing all have one thing in common – an empowered PM and management team that all have a specific role to play in practice by committing to these roles. Having a PM doing too many other roles will dilute the success and happiness of your team.

Utilise them properly and see the results.

My thanks to Steve for sharing his valuable insight. He just forgot to mention one important point – Chief Party Planner!