The Dental Practice Manual

A practice runs on the diary, the recall list, and the conversation at the desk.

Clinical skill is assumed. What decides whether a practice is calm or chaotic is administrative: whether the recall list is worked, whether failed appointments are followed up, whether the diary is built or merely filled, and whether the front desk knows what to say.

This manual writes those systems down. The diary, chair time, recall, failed appointments, the front desk, new patients, records, stock, rotas and the weekly look at the numbers are each set out as a procedure.

**This book contains no clinical content of any kind.** It is a business operations manual. Nothing in it concerns diagnosis, treatment, materials or patient care, and it must never be used as though it did.

Inside, you will learn how to

• Work a recall list so it stops being a backlog
• Cut failed appointments without alienating patients
• Build a diary instead of filling it first-come-first-served
• Give the front desk words for the conversations they dread
• Keep records and admin from spilling into clinical time
• Read the four numbers that tell you how the month is going