Why a Team Huddle Could be the Most Important Part of Your Day

Are you performing a team huddle every day? Does your team know what a team huddle is? According to Dentistry IQ a team huddle "can make or break your day" and we completely agree. We feel it is so important for our dental offices to perform this quick ritual each morning. It really helps to focus everyone on the day and give them a broad picture of how the day will look.

Our consultants typically train our offices on how to use a daily meeting agenda for the huddle so that everyone has a printed out version of the agenda for the day. This sets the expectation and makes sure that everyone is on board with how the day will run and that there also won't be any big surprises. We will also train them on how to use a day sheet that the hygienist and assistants complete and review these at huddle and give to the Doctor after.

A typical huddle is this:

Advise everyone the percentage of goal the office is scheduled at today, along with the percentage we ended up as yesterday, and lastly the percentage of accepted treatment yesterday. Then the office manager or the new patient coordinator reviews all the new patients for the day, name, who referred, primary reason for coming in, and any issues we foresee.

After this is complete each assistant will then review their patients. For example: "Joe" we are cementing #4, next appointment is fillings on 12, 13, 14 or "Sally" has a toothache on the lower right, a crown is on tooth #30 that is 15 years old, we’ve been recommending a new crown for 3 years.  The assistant will also review allergies and any major medical concerns that affect us. We will also discuss any family members that are due or overdue.  Lastly the assistants advise everyone on today’s emergency times, tomorrow emergency times and lab delivery dates. 

A “triage” assistant will be assigned every day for calls from patients regarding post op or anything else that needs to followed up on, this will be our “go to” girl.

The hygienists will then also review their schedule by either saying "Joe" is what is scheduled or "Sally" is Bitewings today or FMX next visit, along with asking the Doctor what they would like. They will also review allergies and major medical concerns. Then consultant with the assistants on what family members are due or overdue.

The Doctor will then advise if they have questions of the team. Lastly, the office manager will review the day priors schedule with who scheduled and who didn’t and why and if there were any questions about treatment and/or claims to be submitted.

This type of huddle can take only 15-20 minutes of everyone's day. It's that simple! It seems like a lot when it's first started, but as time goes on, it becomes a habit and you can't live without it. Your day will run much smoother.