If you are not having daily team huddles, you are missing out! Hopefully you are utilizing a DASHBOARD for your practice, but if you aren’t then a DAILY HUDDLE is even more of a necessity.  Your team needs to know what they can do with today to make it count!  

Let’s start off by EVERYONE showing up on time for this all important meeting.  Even the Dr’s need to arrive and be PRESENT both physically and mentally.  When people are listening to understand you will have a productive meeting.  

TRUE STORY: During a morning huddle, it was stated that Bobby who was seeing Dr. XXX at 3:00pm COULD NOT have radiographs.  Mom called to make sure he wouldn’t be getting any radiographs that day.  There were flags, there were notes but not everyone was paying attention.  There was an assistant that was only listening to details that involved the patient’s in her column.  Well at 3pm the office was running behind and this assistant wanted to be a team player so they took Bobby back.  She noticed that he hadn’t had radiographs in 18 months so she was proactive and took the pano he was due for.  MOM WAS FURIOUS – it has nothing to do with the cost.  Bobby was having some medical issues and needed more tests.  The medical doctors had told mom no radiographs for 3 months before his big procedure that she had been waiting to take him in to get completed for a long time.  This small misunderstanding had a very large impact both on the practice and the patient.  Why doesn’t everyone take notes?  Why doesn’t everyone pay attention during these huddles? 

I fixed it – A simple change that made a huge impact.  I passed out physical schedules for everyone in the beginning of the huddle.  Everyone was required to take notes on their schedules.  Then at the end of the huddle I gathered the schedules and passed them back out to other people.  Now they have to show teamwork, take good notes, and know about EVERY patient on the schedule.  

How are your daily huddles?  If you need some help, here are some pointers.  

Dental Daily Huddle Instructions 

1. Facilitator – gets everyone there on time.  They have to gather everyone up and make sure the huddle runs as planned.  Checks in with team ahead of time to make sure they have all their needed information.  
2. EVERYONE needs to have a schedule in their hands and in fact conducting the huddle in front of a computer with a schedule has also been proven to be highly beneficial.  
3. Each assistant should be given a route slip the evening before the huddle to review.  They keep their own route slips, make their own notes on them, and are prepared for the huddle using these as tools.  They can all be turned back into the front if needed after the huddle but often times works out better if they keep them on a clip board for themselves for the day. 
4. Start with each column and go through the patients – Laser beam focused on what your team needed to know.  Do not simply read through the schedule – make it efficient and timely.  

BEFORE HUDDLE:   Everyone needs to come prepared.  Once you are on the clock you are on company time, not coffee time, breakfast time,not makeup time, hair should be up ALWAYS for clinical team, rooms should be stocked.