Lancaster city centre.
Filed under: Blog, Corporates, Dentistry, Marketing | Leave a comment »
HOW TO GET THERE
Go to the end of the path until you get to the gate.
Go through the gate and head straight out towards the horizon.
Keep going towards the horizon.
Sit down and have a rest every now and again,
But keep on going, just keep on with it.
Keep on going as far as you can.
That’s how you get there.
I have come across the work of (Michael) Leunig recently, he’s an Austalian cartoonist, writer and thinker.
Here’s a link to his website.
Filed under: Blog, Quote | Leave a comment »
One of the pleasures of living outside the UK and, for the moment anyway, being able to visit freely the country where I pay income tax, is listening to and reading other opinions of the land where I spent my first 60 years. I am no longer a UK citizen, I gave up a dozen years ago as my way of saying to Tony Blair, “not in my name”, when he sent another collection of young men off to die for his vanity.
The phrase “to see ourselves as others see us” was written by a Scot, Robert Burns. These are not my words but I wish they were.
Fintan O’Toole on Brexit: Is England ready for self-government? from the Irish Times via Memex.
Is England ready for self-government? It’s a question that the English used to ask of peoples less obviously made from the right stuff than they are, such as the Indians and the Irish. But it’s time they asked it of themselves.
Brexit is essentially Exit: if the Leave side wins the referendum it will almost certainly be without securing majorities in Scotland or Northern Ireland. For all the talk of reasserting the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, the desire to leave the European Union is driven above all by the rise of English nationalism.
And the chief consequence of Brexit will be the emergence of England as a stand-alone nation. Whatever entity might eventually emerge from a tumultuous breach with the European Union will almost certainly not, in the long term, include Scotland: a second referendum on Scottish independence will be inevitable, and this time Scots would be voting to stay in the EU.
It may or may not include Wales. (A resurgence of Welsh nationalism in reaction to the rise of English nationalism seems possible.)
And its relationship to Northern Ireland will be increasingly tenuous and fraught: if nothing else the Brexit campaign has made it abundantly clear that what happens to the North scarcely merits an English afterthought. The kingdom founded by Boris I will, in time, come to be bounded by the English Channel and the River Tweed.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
A great article that first appeared in Dentistry. Written by Chris Baker from Corona Dental Marketing.
As a practice, one of your most valuable resources is your existing patient database. The most cost-effective way to communicate with this base is via email – this is why you need to be doing it. Here are my top 10 tips on using email to the benefit of your practice, and a few things to avoid.
Filed under: 7 Pillars of Successful Dental Business, Blog, Lists, Marketing | Leave a comment »
I was a relatively early adopter of computers in practice management, an Amstrad PCW256 in 1988 was followed by something that ran on 4.5″ floppy discs in 1990. Finally a very neat little system called Dental Practice which was put together by a dentist and his brother, a programmer. This was bought out by Denplan, sold on to a supplier subsidiary of Henry Schein, possibly Kent Dental or Rexodent, then left to wither on the vine and finally became part of the SoE empire when the users were told that it wouldn’t be supported any longer so why not move to Exact? A friend of mine explained the means of the growth of computer software, and other, companies this way, “buy up the opposition and close them down”.
The one area that I resisted, through choice not by being a laggard, was the writing of clinical notes. I was taught both as an undergraduate in Newcastle and especially during my six months in the trenches as one of two resident housemen in Oral Surgery at The London Hospital that my notes were to be coherent, comprehensive and contemporary. It didn’t matter where you were, what the time was or who was waiting for you, write up full notes and sign them. “Be prepared to stand in a courtroom in 10 years” said Brian Littler one of the two Senior Registrars, “and be cross examined, with only your notes to remind you of what went on.” My handwriting isn’t the best, but it is mine. My thoughts in those days were pretty coherent because of the excellent systems that we were taught and the notes reflected that. (I did have to write a report some 10 years later about one incident that lasted fewer than 20 seconds yet had repercussions. My notes, forwarded by the investigators, brought everything sharply into focus.)
“Never ever let anyone else write your notes”, I was told, “certainly don’t delegate them unless you can read everything that has been written and can amend and then countersign it.”
Having worked in (quite) a few practices after selling, and before establishing myself with enough coaching and consultancy work to keep body and soul together, I came across some variations in the way that notes were written. By now probably 60% – 70% of practices were able to write notes using the computer software. My feelings then, and still, are that too often the software is driving the record keeping process rather than the other way round.
So I was concerned to read of a new set up on one of the leading software suppliers’ systems which means that, “you can now charge whatever you want through but have the rest of the day to alter and finish your notes on that same patient without having the notes locked”.
That doesn’t sound like the notes will be contemporaneous to me, but perhaps people have better memories than I did?
Filed under: Blog, Clinical, Dentistry | Leave a comment »
“You don’t sell anything to anybody unless you think they are going to come back for more.”
Sam Rogers / Kevin Spacey
Filed under: Blog, Quote, Sales | Leave a comment »