Workshops

The Communications Solution: Creating a Relationship-based Practice

Foundational Program, 2 Days

The two-day event combines the two introductory programs: Creating Stress-free Patient Relationships and Transforming From Staff to Team into a single event. This is a powerful combination for a study club or small group of committed practices to undertake together while respecting the unique qualities of each individual practice.

Creating a Relationship-based Practice is a real roll-up-your-sleeves program very suitable for the dentist and entire team. Participant groups will be given an opportunity to re-think their practice model and consider how to create an environment where patients feel understood, respected, and safe enough to openly discuss their concerns. The result will be more connected patients choosing better dentistry sooner as well as an improved atmosphere for the entire team.

For specifics of each day, please see the descriptions above.

The Communications Solution: Creating Stress-free Patient Relationships

Foundational Program, 1 Day

This introductory program will change the way you and your team relate to your patients. Creating Stress-free Patient Relationships provides an overview of the behavioral aspects of dentistry presented in a way that involves every participant in learning real skills that are immediately useful. No more sitting in lectures for a day followed by very little change in the practice. It's a hands-on program that ensures each member of the team will understand the most important behavioral principles as they apply to dentistry. Sandy will help participants discover that what they think is more important than what they say. You will find out why many of the same problems occur time and time again and how to prevent them through a greater understanding of human behavior.

This program will address why patients:

Fail to keep appointments or agree to pay and then don't
Reject diagnoses and treatment when they are so obvious
Get angry when you tell them the truth
Put treatment off when things are falling apart
Call for treatment only when they feel it’s an emergency
Feel your fees are too high
Think insurance should cover everything
Treat the staff differently from the dentist
…… And many other challenges participants raise during the program

Sandy will guide you through understanding why your patients REALLY come to you and intro-duce you to the Outcome-Means-Prices model. This concept, which is crucial to successfully working with your patients, is based on the principles of choice making and how they apply to a person’s decisions about their dental care.

Participants will learn three critically important skills:
QUESTION ASKING, LISTENING, EARNING THE RIGHT TO INFLUENCE
These communications skills are vital to forming good relationships, which are the basis of strong and successful relationship-based practices. This survey program prepares a group to explore other areas, which are founded on strong communication skills and is recommended as the first program in a series offered by Sandy Roth.

The Communications Solution: Success With New Patients
Advanced Program, 2 Days

Pre-requisite:
participation in a previous ProSynergy workshop OR
participation in a study club presentation with Sandy Roth OR
Complete the Introduction to Relationship-based Dentistry audio program
(Available for purchase from ProSynergy for US$279).

Dentistry is as much a behavioral profession as a clinical one, and the practice that lacks advanced communication and behavioral skills may be in jeopardy. We offer Success With New Patients! to enhance your ability to take the best advantage of the new patients who seek your services. You will be stimulated, challenged, and inspired to consider new ways to have a significant impact on the lives and health of the people you serve.

Without a doubt, one of the greatest assets a team has is the potential in each new client who seeks your services. What you and your team choose to do with that potential can perhaps mark the difference between a truly prosperous practice and one which achieves only limited success.

During the program you will have an opportunity to explore, discuss, and learn how to:
Establish a relationship based on clear communication and openness
Help your patients take ownership for their health
Understand patients’ attitudes, beliefs, values, and expectations
Know enough to take the next step wisely
Help new patients discover what they want and how you can help them.

In this program we help you create your own practice method; one which is as personalized as a signature.

Just some of the questions to be explored in Success With New Patients!:

What is the right new patient experience for our practice?
How do you handle the initial phone call? How much time should it take?
Who should be involved in what steps of the process?
What can you learn about the new patient? How can you use this information?
What will your patients learn about you?
What are the benefits for you, your patients, and your practice?
How can you individualize the process? Where do you begin?


The Communications Solution: Creating a Hygiene Practice of Distinction
Advanced Program , 2 Days

Pre-requisite:
participation in a previous ProSynergy workshop OR
participation in a study club presentation with Sandy Roth OR
Complete the Introduction to Relationship-based Dentistry audio program
(Available for purchase from ProSynergy for US$279).


"Dental health is peculiar. The rich cannot buy it and the poor cannot have it given to them. I can make people more comfortable, more functional, and more attractive. But I cannot make them healthy. I can teach them how to become healthy, but whether they remain that way will be up to them." Robert F. Barkley, DDS

Dr. Barkley's observation provides the primary theme for this seminar. The patient must want to be healthy. And health in this sense can only be the result of personal sense of responsibility. How interesting that this flies directly in the face of what many of you learned in dental school, hygiene school, in assisting school or in active practice. You learned that you were to make people well through a series of technical and clinical procedures. Your job was to fix, to correct, to repair, to remediate. You learned that you were the healers of others, that you were to "teach" those who came to you and that would make them "good" patients. Actually, nothing could be farther from the truth!

Fixing doesn't really fix. The Correcting doesn't correct for very long. Repairs don't last. Reme-diation has to be remediated. And "teaching" doesn't cause learning. You continue your same behaviors and patients continue theirs. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to find ways to engage your pa-tients without feeling like you’re constantly scolding them or your efforts were falling on deaf ears?

This workshop can help you discover new and powerful ways to achieve more success with your patients! Instead of "just cleaning teeth" hygienists can learn what patients care about, become the bridge to finding out where they want to go, and discover ways to help them like never before! The major thrust of this workshop will center around behavior change. Not your clients', but yours. If your clients are to change you must do the changing. You cannot help them to do things differently unless you begin to support them and work with them in a different way.

Creating a Hygiene Practice of Distinction is a seminar designed to help dentists and their teams review their phi-losophies, re-evaluate their ideas, and re-clarify their perspectives, specifically in regard to "hygiene" in the practice. We want to help you learn how to begin where you are and grow into a methodology which truly works for you and reflects genuinely who you are. We want to en-courage you to experiment on a limited scale so as to begin to learn about untapped strengths, gifts, and talents hibernating in your team. We want to help you deliberately, rationally, and slowly bridge the gap between what is and what can be, while continuing to practice dentistry in the best way you know how.

The Communications Solution: Re-activating Lost Souls
Advanced Program, 2 Days

Pre-requisite:
participation in a previous ProSynergy workshop OR
participation in a study club presentation with Sandy Roth OR
Complete the Introduction to Relationship-based Dentistry audio program
(Available for purchase from ProSynergy for US$279).


Do you have:
- hundreds of charts languishing on your shelves?
- countless treatment plans lying dormant?
- a feeling that you are missing opportunities?

This is an opportunity to learn how you can re-activate patients, re-energize treatment plans, re-create positive relationships.

Sandy Roth will help you transform your "lost souls" into active patients. Re-activating Lost Souls is a hands-on workshop that will involve both dentist and team in a highly interactive and stimulating experience. You’ll work with actual case histories from your own practices and role play challenging conversations. No scripts. Just common sense insights and information that will help each practice begin the journey of reviving stagnant relationships and building new ones.

You will learn to discover what every patient wants, to identify important opportunities you’ve been missing, and develop skills in facilitation—not selling or manipulation.

You will also learn:

How to put the control for the patients’ health in their hands -where it belongs.
The many missed opportunities to connect with patients
When written communication and follow-up are not utilized effectively
What are they telling you that you aren’t hearing
If you are putting pressure on them to do dentistry they may not want right now
To help people plan their dentistry better
To figure out what every patient wants
To understand your patients as unique individuals
To develop skills in facilitation, not selling or manipulation

The Communications Solution: Co-Treatment Planning
Advanced Program, 2 Days

Pre-requisite:
participation in a previous ProSynergy workshop OR
participation in a study club presentation with Sandy Roth OR
Complete the Introduction to Relationship-based Dentistry audio program
(Available for purchase from ProSynergy for US$279).


In a recent survey sponsored by ProSynergy Dental Communications, dentists were asked about their most challenging patient problems. Here are just a few of their responses:

"Getting the patient involved in co-diagnosis"
"Acceptance of comprehensive care"
"Getting them to identify their own goals for dental health"
"Communicating the value of my treatment"
"Understanding value for dentistry"
"Motivating them to move ahead with recommended treatment"
"Trying not to overload them at the beginning of the relationship"
"Treatment acceptance"
"Increasing our batting average with case acceptance"

Co-Treatment Planning can have a profound impact on each and every one of these challenges.

While dentists want patients to take responsibility for their health, they often don't allow them to become active participants in the process. This workshop will help participants learn how the process of Co-Treatment Planning can dramatically change the way you work with all of your patients to your mutual advantage.

This workshop is A MUST if:
-you are frustrated by blank stares when you express concerns you wish your patients shared...
-you feel "tolerated" by your patients when you try to provide solutions...
-despite all your efforts to understand your patients, your "pitch" is still rejected...
-patients schedule for restorative work, but either fail to keep their appointments, change plans at the last minute, or greet you with "Now, why am I here today?"...
-team members are telling, but patients are not listening
-the team is not responding to the patients' hints about what they want
-you are pressuring patients to do dentistry they want to put off
-you want to help people plan their dentistry better
-you want to figure out what every patient wants
-you want to understand your patients as unique individuals
-you want to develop skills in facilitation, not selling or manipulation
-you want to put the control for patients' health in their hands-where it belongs
-you want to identify and prevent the missed opportunities to connect with patients
-you want to create an environment where patients will take advantage of your finest services!

The Co-Treatment Planning process contains the keys to unlock these frustrations and many more.

The Communications Solution: Transforming from Staff to Team
Program length: One Full day
Suitable for:   THIS PROGRAM IS APPROPRIATE ONLY FOR DENTISTS AND ENTIRE TEAMS. IT IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR A SMALL DELEGATION, DENTISTS ATTENDING ALONE OR TEAMS WITHOUT THE DENTIST.
Recommended group size:     25 up to several hundred

How does a team differ from a staff? It begins with your leadership and a clear understanding of the purpose you intend for the practice. While staff members focus on task, team members are purpose-driven and when a group discovers how to bring their individual skills and talents to a common purpose, a transformation occurs. Sandy begins this important program by focusing on these leadership aspects and moving participants through the fundamentals of management and resource so critical to the success of your practice.

Sandy provides insights about why the traditional front/back model no longer works in modern dentistry and actually impedes practice development and growth. By outlining the three realms of the practice: Administrative, Behavioral and Clinical, Sandy helps you conceptually re-tool your practice and staff model. She addresses why it has become so difficult for the traditional front desk to serve both paper and people and introduces you to the highly successful facilitation model. Learn the fundamentals for providing facilitation and how a dedicated facilitator can provide new possibilities to connect and become successful with patients. From the initial phone conversation to the first appointment, from diagnostic exam, to treatment discussion, acceptance and beyond, the team is a highly sophisticated group who serves the practice's purpose.

Of course, Sandy addresses internal team relationships too. She helps practices recognize the source of frustrating and strained relationships and helps participants learn how to clear the road-blocks impeding a healthy team environment. This liberating and healthy way to work with your staff insures that you will serve your patients better as well!

This program will cover:

Principles of leadership and management
The new boss: purpose
The ABC's of the practice
Why the traditional practice management approach fails
Why the traditional front desk doesn't work
How the team can function with less stress and more productivity
How a facilitator functions and how she can impact your practice
Ways to open team dialog and cooperation