I am a dentist and I have an office manager (hired a little over half a year ago) who I feel does not 100% believe in the value of what we can do for our patients. The most egregious example was when a patient was in such pain and I would have even treated at cost and I told her to help the patient make the numbers work and that I just needed her to ask up front for just enough to cover some up front costs. I kid you not, I brought the patient to her and said to both of them that I would really want to work with her to get things to work, and all this employee did was take out a paper, point to two things on said paper, “this is how much it costs and this is what we can do for you”. That was it. word for word. I was flabbergasted.
I feel like she diagnoses the patient’s financial wallet and makes judgments about their situation and even said that patients would rather spend money on an iphone or other items than their dental health.
It’s her job to talk about money and I have never heard her ask a patient “how can we make this work?” or “okay, I understand that you cannot pay everything up front, but what can you do?”
I try to explain the rationale behind some treatments to her and why the patient needs it but at this point, she is too set in her ways. She doesn’t believe that many important swaths of the field, like orthodontics, etc. are worth the money. I need to put her on a performance improvement plan soon but I’m not sure how to say, “the biggest performance issues is that you do not believe in the value of dentistry”. If she believed 100% that patients NEED to be able to chew and eat and NEED to have their cavities treated, I think the office would do a lot better. I’ve never struggled with this kind of issue before.
Any advice?
If you are asking Reddit, you have the wrong person as your office manager. Do not underestimate the seriousness of this situation. You are building a practice and a culture. Just one person who doesn’t buy in on a small team is a major headwind. Implement the PIP, let her know exactly how she’s not meeting your expectations and start documenting performance issues. When it comes time to let her go, you’ll want to be able to refer to the disciplinary documentation in a matter-of-fact manner. She may show improvement for the short term, but you really want someone who promotes your culture, not someone who can just barley be good enough. You want patients promoting you as the dentist who cares, not just another dentist with a rude staff. These decisions are more about leadership than HR practices. With that said, the employment market is such that all of us sometimes have to eat shit in the short term when it comes to putting up with employees