The 5 Biggest Time Wasters Killing Your Practice Efficiency

Ever feel like your day moves at the speed of the slowest checkout lane? We unpack the hidden inefficiencies that quietly drain hours, stress your team, and shrink profit—then replace them with simple, durable systems that make your practice feel calm, fast, and predictable.

We start with the most common culprit: unprepared operatories. You’ll hear how to standardize rooms for the 90% of procedures you do most, set visual par levels, and stop the scavenger hunts that interrupt care. From there, we attack duplicate admin work—re-explaining fees, reprinting treatment plans, and rescheduling canceled visits—and show how firm pre-collection policies and clean financial consent cut out second touches. The result is less confusion for patients and fewer fire drills for your front desk.

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Episode Transcript

Paul Etchison (00:56):
All right, imagine this.
You know, when you're at thegrocery store and you're trying
to pick like the shortest linefor checkout, you're sizing up
the cashiers, you're like, howfast is this one moving?
You know, you're looking at it,and then you pick the one that
you want.
And no matter what, I swear italways feels like you picked the
wrong one.
But the line that you pick, italways looks short.
But then picture this.
The cashier keeps calling forprice checks.

(01:16):
They're rescanning items andit's not working.
They ran out of bags.
And then all of a sudden, whenit gets time to check out the
person that's about to pay forit, whips out a check like they
were surprised that they weregoing to have to do it and they
start filling it out.
And what should have taken justtwo minutes drags into 10.
That's what happens in yourdental office when

(01:37):
inefficiencies start to pile up.
Small slowdowns multipliedacross the day, add up to hours
of wasted time, stressed teams,and lost profit.
Now, one thing you should knowis patients don't always notice
the efficiency, but they willfeel the inefficiency.
So that's what we're talkingabout today.
I'm going to give you the fivebiggest time wasters so that you

(02:00):
can look at your practice andsee if any of these are
happening, what you should do ifyou find them, and how you fix
them.
Let's get to it.
Now, you are listening to theDental Practice Heroes podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Paul Etchison.
I'm a dentist, I'm a dentalcoach, and the author of two
books on dental practicemanagement.
I also own a multi-doctorpractice that nearly collects $6

(02:22):
million a year.
And on this show, I'm sharingstrategies to help you grow your
profits, work fewer days, andcreate a practice that runs like
clockwork without you.
So let's talk about these fivebiggest time wasters.
The first one, unpreparedoperatories.
We don't have the operatory setup properly.
It's not ready to go.

(02:43):
We have to ask for something.
We have to ask for thearticulating.
Maybe we have to ask for acertain instrument.
We didn't have this ready togo.
It wasn't stocked in the room.
I remember back in the day whenwe first opened, we were always
scrambling for bite blocks forsome reason.
You know, the bite blocks, thelittle rubber ones that hold the
kids open.
I love using these on kidsbecause they always close.

(03:04):
So we put them in there.
We've got three sizes that weuse, and we were always looking
for them.
So I said, damn it, we need tobuy some more of these things.
So we did.
We bought some more of them andthen it worked for a little
bit, but then the same thinghappened because they were all
getting put into one operatory.
We're all in one spot.
So then what we did is we tookthe drill and we cut numbers

(03:26):
into these bite blocks so theyknew exactly where they went.
So that when we needed one, itwas sitting in the drawer right
there.
This is the idea of making allyour operatories 100% ready.
Not only do you need to trainyour team on what you want for
100% ready, but you need to lookat the things that you're
stocking in your operatory.
For example, if there'ssomething that you use 90% of

(03:49):
the time, it should be in everyoperatory.
You're going to save yourselftime, even though you need to
order more inventory because youneed one of these in every
operatory.
If you use it 90% of the time,have it in each operatory.
Now, sometimes there's stuff wedon't use that often, and maybe
that can be located centrally,but we need to be thinking ahead
and we need to get ourassistance to think ahead so

(04:11):
that we don't lose time in theoperatories.
I always tell you, ownerdoctor, you should be pounding
out dentistry, $1,200 an hour.
Okay.
Try to shoot for $1,200 anhour.
What do you think 30 seconds iswhen you're pounding out $1,200
an hour?
Just doing the math in my head,I'm pretty sure $10.
Because it's $20 a minute, 30seconds would cost you $10.

(04:32):
Think about how that adds up.
Okay.
When you're producing at thatlevel, every second counts.
So make sure that you're notlosing time to dumb things like
that.
All right.
Number two, time waster numbertwo, doing things twice without
realizing it.
And this is what I we are soguilty of at the front desk when
we don't pre-collect the entireportion.

(04:55):
When you don't pre-collect theentire portion of the patient
payment, the next time you seethem, and I'm talking in
instances of pre-collecting,okay?
The next time you see them,there is a high possibility you
will tell them that they owe theother half or what they didn't
pay in full.
And they're going to be like,huh?
I thought I paid for this.
What do you mean?
Show me this.

(05:15):
Okay, what does my insurancecover?
And now you have to get out thetreatment plan again.
You have to figure it out.
You have to audit it to makesure it's correct.
And now you have essentiallypresented this treatment plan
twice.
Okay, that's one example.
The other is when we make anappointment for someone and then
they don't keep it or theycancel it, then we have to make
them an additional appointment.
So when we look at thistransaction on a per patient

(05:38):
basis, we've had to schedule it,then we had to take a phone
call to cancel it, and then wehad to take more time to
schedule it again.
So we're doing that twice.
So there's a lot of things wecould be doing in the office
that we don't really realizethat we're doing multiple times.
Think about if you don'tcollect it all.
Now you have to audit thechart, you have to make a
statement, you have to send astatement, you might have to do

(05:58):
a patient call, you might do atext to pay.
Look at all the things you haveto do additionally that you've
already should have donealready.
So don't do things more thanonce and watch out for a lot of
these ones with like the adminsort of stuff, because it can
really get sneaky because youdon't realize that this part of
the appointment has already beendone on a different day, on a

(06:19):
different visit.
And now, because of your crappysystems, you're doing it again.
All right, time waster numberthree, inefficient patient flow,
bad handoffs.
We create bottlenecks at thecheck-in.
The hygiene to doctortransitions get sloppy, or the
checkout process gets sloppy.
It's like this relay race wherewe just every time we're we're

(06:41):
sprinting away when we get thebaton, but we just can't pass it
to the next person right.
So that's why handoffs are socritical that they are done in a
certain way and that you roleplay these with your team.
For example, there is tons oftime wasted when you walk a
patient up to the front to get atreatment plan when the front
desk doesn't know that patientis coming.

(07:02):
So they have to go and look atthe treatment plan.
They have to look at like allthe insurance benefits to make
sure it's correct while thepatient's sitting in front of
them and sometimes trying tohave like a conversation with
them.
Okay, what happens then?
That becomes inefficient.
That's a bottleneck.
And what does it do?
Sometimes it results inincorrect treatment plans.
We make mistakes because wedon't have focus.

(07:23):
And what happens when we make amistake?
Oh my gosh, the patient has abalance and they're upset in
more and more time, just likethe previous one.
So you need to focus on makingour handoffs good, making sure
that we are communicating as ateam and we're working together
to have this patient flow besuper smooth.

(07:44):
All right, number four timewaster, not pre-collecting the
patient portion.
I just talked about this ischasing money after treatment
wastes so much time.
It creates awkwardness, it hasa leaves a bad feeling in the
patient's mouth.
Everything sucks.
You should have strongcollection policies and you

(08:04):
should never, ever, ever bendthem because when you do, you
set yourself up for more workand failure.
Now, let me tell you what elsehappens when you don't
pre-collect the patient portion.
Patients are less likely toshow up.
If you have a same-daycancellation problem on the
doctor side, the easy way toeliminate it.
I'm talking about eliminatethat nearly 100% is to collect

(08:27):
the patient portion to schedulea visit with the doctor.
You will nearly eliminate that100%.
And this is one of those thingsyour team feels uneasy about
this.
I don't know how the patientsare going to react.
I assure you, try it and bevery confident in the way that
you speak about this policy.
The patients will not care.
This one is so easy to do.

(08:48):
It's such a mindset trick thatwe think the patients are going
to be upset to do this.
Now, this is not like arestaurant where we can't
pre-collect because we have noidea how many drinks they're
going to order.
We don't know what food they'regoing to order.
We know what the treatment isthat they're coming in for.
So collect for it.
There's no reason to wait tothe end.
You should do it now.
And if you do it to schedule,you're going to get that added

(09:10):
benefit of the patient alwaysshowing up, nearly always.
All right.
Lastly, number five, not havinga morning huddle or any sort of
daily alignment.
If you do not check in in themorning before your day, your
day can be full of surprises.
So what I want you to do iswhen you meet with your team in
the morning, make it short, makeit quick, but make it matter.

(09:33):
Look at your schedule, find theareas where you're going to
have some issues.
You can tell.
You know you can look at yourschedule and you know there's
going to be some busy points.
Hey guys, this part's going toget a little bit busy.
You know, if we could have oneof the hygienists numb for this
patient, or if we could just beaware of it, let's not add
anything else in here.
This part in the day is goingto really require everybody all
hands on deck and everyone togive their best.

(09:55):
Okay.
Also, you want to be talkingabout what is the goal today and
what are our opportunities tomeet our goal if we're not at
our goal.
And then the last thing youwant to talk about in these
morning huddles is just yourlittle rally cry.
Let's change somebody's lifetoday.
All right, guys, let's go blowsomebody away today.
Let's go do something amazingfor someone today.
Those sort of things, those addup to your culture.

(10:17):
Remind your team that this ismore than just a job.
We are doing something trulyspecial and we should not take
it for granted.
So, last one, make sure thatyou are having a quick morning
huddle.
All right, so here's yourtactical takeaways.
You've got to work on theselittle things with your team.
And that is about training.
That's about looking for allthese little things, like these
inefficiencies, like not havingthe operatory set up, different

(10:40):
ways to make them more efficientwhen we need certain
instruments or certain supplies,making sure the rooms are fully
stocked.
These are all systems andaccountabilities that you bake
into the checklist that you havefor your office.
And this is what we do with ourcoaching clients.
We build all these things soyou have these at your office so
everybody knows what to do andyou don't have to remind them.

(11:01):
Okay, look at what you're doingand say, did I do this twice?
Are we doing this more than weneed to do this?
Is there a small tweak orsomething in our process we
could change so that this couldbe faster or we don't do it
twice?
All right.
Next, script your handoffs.
Teach your team, what do youneed to know?
Ask your front desk team.
When I bring you a patient andI give you a handoff, is there

(11:22):
anything I leave out?
Is there anything else you wantme to tell you?
Like what am I notcommunicating to you?
What do you need to know thatI'm not sharing?
Next, switch to thosepre-collection policies.
They are so easy and man, whata big difference it makes.
And then lastly, run that10-minute quick morning huddle
every day.
So, wrapping up, most practicesdo not need to work harder.

(11:43):
They need to work smoother.
So, by fixing these five bigtime wasters, you're gonna
reduce stress, you're gonna runon time more often, and you're
gonna be able to see morepatients without even feeling
busier.
The efficiency, it's not aboutspeed, it's about the flow.
You fix the slowdowns and yourpractice can finally speed up.
And what follows right behindthat is increased profits.

(12:06):
So look for these things thisweek when you're at your
practice, see what you canimprove on.
And if you want help, someoneto go A to Z with you for all
these things for managing yourpractice and teach you how to do
it and inspire and motivateyour team as well as hold them
accountable.
Reach out to us atdentalpracticeheroes.com, set up
a free strategy call with me.
I'm happy to talk to you on thephone about it.

(12:27):
So thank you so much forlistening today.
I really appreciate it.
And we will talk to you nexttime.