Client Snapshot

The client is a multi-provider dental practice in the Caribbean offering general dentistry, orthodontics, oral surgery, pediatric care, dental hygiene, and in-house laboratory services. In 2025, Bewaji Healthcare Solutions (BHS) completed a clinic operations systemization project for the practice, installing departmental SOPs, an operations manual, an inventory management system, recall automation, patient communication templates, a brand and marketing kit, a people management kit, and three purpose-built AI assistants. The practice runs on Open Dental for practice management and Zoho for CRM, memberships, and subscriptions.

Situation

The 2025 project gave the practice a complete operating system, but its inventory system, recall automation, content tools, and SOP library were underused, and operational decisions were still routinely escalated to leadership. Rather than recruit externally, the practice chose to develop its newly appointed Assistant Office Manager, who also coordinated the schedule, into the Office Manager role. She already carried heavy supervision, scheduling, inventory, and front-office responsibilities, yet made essentially no operational decisions without approval, tracked her work in a handwritten notebook, and was unsure where her authority began and ended.

Without a confident operator, the practice risked a well-documented system sitting unused while the owner remained the default decision-maker. An interim marketing contractor, engaged for three months, also set a firm deadline for bringing website and social media work in-house.

Objective

The engagement aimed to develop the Assistant Office Manager into a confident Office Manager who runs daily operations independently on the systems already in place. That meant turning the installed inventory, recall, SOP, and content systems into daily working practice, adapting processes that did not fit how the practice actually runs, and moving website and social media ownership in-house before the contractor’s term ended. The broader aim was to free practice leadership from day-to-day operational load through a sustainable weekly operating rhythm, with metrics that prompt timely action. Progress was tracked against milestone targets, from a personalized coaching plan in the first two weeks to a closing competency review against an agreed Office Manager profile.

Scope

Included

• A capability assessment and personalized coaching plan, confirmed with practice leadership
• Twenty virtual coaching and consulting sessions of up to 60 minutes each
• Coaching across the core Office Manager responsibilities: inventory; content, website, and social media; patient recall and communication; front-desk supervision and people management; the weekly operating rhythm and management metrics; and decision boundaries
• Coaching the Office Manager to refine and adapt SOPs and processes that did not fit how the practice actually runs
• A progressive handover of responsibility, sequenced so marketing moved in-house before the contractor’s term ended
• A competency review against an agreed Office Manager profile, and guidance for practice leadership on sustaining the role

Excluded

• Hands-on operational, clinical, or communication work performed by BHS
• System rebuilds or new software development
• On-site delivery, recruiting or staffing on the practice’s behalf, direct management of its social media accounts, and clinical training

Timeline: June to September 2026 (approximately 18 weeks), at roughly one session per week.

Approach

BHS served as coach and consultant; the Office Manager did the work. In each session she performed real Office Manager tasks on the practice’s own systems while the coach provided structure, feedback, and guidance. About 80 percent of the work was live operations on installed assets. The rest drew lightly on four modules of BHS’s Healthcare Leadership Operating System (Practice Edition): AI and digital tools, coaching with the GROW model, lead and lag measures, and decision boundaries.

Every session followed the same pattern: a check-in on the previous week’s task, a short technique, a guided activity on live work, problem-solving, and a new applied task for the week ahead. The twenty sessions ran in five phases:

1. Baseline and plan (Weeks 1–2). A structured assessment mapped her current duties, tools, and friction points against the Office Manager role profile. From it, we co-built a personalized coaching roadmap and a first decision-rights model: what she could decide and then report, what she should consult on first, and what she must escalate.
2. First systems (Weeks 3–6). She moved her work from a handwritten notebook to an Office Manager task board in Asana, applied SOPs to live situations, and flagged procedures that no longer fit daily operations. She then brought the inventory system into daily use, with par levels, reorder triggers, and full reorder cycles run within an agreed approval pathway. She also ran patient recall end to end, delegating and verifying follow-up calls.
3. Content, marketing, and patients (Weeks 7–9). She took over content, website, and social media using the practice’s brand-aligned AI content writer, Canva templates, and a marketing approval workflow. She also practiced patient communication, complaint handling, and service recovery using the approved templates.
4. Tools, people, and running the clinic (Weeks 10–15). Sessions deepened her use of Open Dental and Zoho, then shifted to leading people: supervising the front desk, coaching staff, and running hiring, onboarding, and performance processes, including mock interviews. She then began leading the weekly operating routine and a metrics-based management review.
5. Ownership and sign-off (Weeks 16–18). We refined her decision boundaries against real scenarios from the engagement and closed with a competency review against the agreed Office Manager profile.

The proposal had estimated about twelve weeks. We paced the sessions at roughly one per week across the full eighteen-week window the agreement allowed, preserving the sequence while some milestones landed later on the calendar.

Key Decisions

We decided to coach rather than implement. BHS stayed in a coaching and consulting role while the Office Manager did the work on live systems. The practice needed a capable operator, not a consultant it would come to depend on, so a capability-transfer model meant the routines would keep running after BHS stepped back.

We decided to build on the installed systems and keep theory light. Most of the coaching happened on live work in the systems installed in 2025, with leadership concepts added only where they sharpened day-to-day judgment. The practice already had the SOPs, tools, and templates it needed; the gap was daily use, and practicing on real work turned those assets into habits rather than reference documents.

We decided to set decision boundaries in the second week, not at the end. She began the engagement making essentially no operational decisions without approval. A working decide, consult, or escalate model from week two let her start making routine decisions safely while she learned, instead of escalating them until the final phase. We refined the model later against real scenarios from the engagement.

We decided to front-load the marketing handover. Content, website, and social media moved into the first half of the engagement, with two sessions each in Weeks 7 and 9. The contractor’s three-month term was a fixed deadline, and handing over while the contractor could still advise reduced the risk of gaps once that support ended.

We decided to treat AI as a drafting tool with a human editor. The practice’s AI content writer produced first drafts, and the Office Manager edited them and followed an approval workflow before anything was published. Raw AI output can drift off-brand or introduce clinical inaccuracies, so the workflow required a brand check, a clinical check where needed, and sign-off before publishing.

Work Completed

• Assessment and plan: a structured capability assessment against the Office Manager role profile, and a personalized coaching roadmap.
• Decision rights: a three-tier model of what the Office Manager decides, what she consults on, and what leadership decides. Hiring, significant discipline, major refunds or discounts, major financial commitments, and clinical decisions remain with leadership.
• Task management: an Office Manager task board in Asana with daily and recurring checklists, clearly assigned tasks, follow-up routines, and protected management time.
• Standard work: SOPs used as the first reference and applied to live situations; procedures that no longer fit daily operations were flagged for revision. A new routine has front-office staff confirm that clinical documentation and treatment plans are complete and flag gaps to the responsible provider.
• Patient service: refined communication scripts, a clearer complaint-management procedure, and incident records that separate patient complaints from internal staff matters.
• Inventory: a structured process built on room-specific inventory lists, par levels, reorder triggers, vendor information, a centralized catalog, purchase-order preparation, invoice and price comparison, and clearer user roles and permissions.
• Recall and memberships: broader use of Open Dental for recall workflows, follow-up lists, procedure-code filtering, and post-operative follow-up; structured tracking of recall conversion from patients contacted to appointments booked; and competent handling of membership and subscription processes in Zoho.
• Marketing: in-house content planning, brand-aligned content created with AI support and Canva, website updates, content calendars, an organized approval and storage process, and a larger role in community outreach.
• People management: coaching with the GROW model and SMART goals, feedback, delegation, and documented follow-up, applied to real issues such as punctuality and attendance, with cross-training encouraged across front-office and clinical-support roles.
• Hiring and onboarding: structured and scenario-based interview questions, candidate scoring rubrics, mock interviews, orientation and onboarding checklists, front-desk shadowing, clinical-flow observation, and probation reviews.
• Management reporting: weekly measures, management reviews, and updates for leadership, with daily statistics now completed routinely.
• Close-out guidance: a final engagement report with a before-and-after assessment and sustainment priorities, and a consulting note advising leadership on how to protect and get the most from the role.

Evidence of Effectiveness

The clearest evidence comes from the Office Manager’s structured self-assessment at the start and close of the program, read alongside BHS’s competency review against the agreed role profile.

Her closing reflection was that she had met the leadership and administrative goals set at the start and, in some areas, exceeded them. She attributed her stronger confidence to responsibilities and authority that were now much clearer.

Outcome

The practice now has an Office Manager who manages operations rather than simply supporting them. She handles routine patient, staff, scheduling, supply, and minor financial decisions within defined limits, while hiring, significant discipline, major financial commitments, and clinical matters stay with leadership. The systems installed in 2025 are now part of daily work: tasks run through Asana, SOPs are the first reference, inventory runs on par levels and reorder triggers, recall conversion is tracked, and marketing content can be produced in-house. The role is now positioned as an operating layer between frontline staff and ownership, so leadership can step back from routine matters and focus on clinical leadership and practice development.

What Happens Next

BHS advised that the next stage is less about further training and more about management discipline around how the role is used. For the first 90 days, we recommended that leadership confirm the Office Manager’s decision rights in writing, protect recurring management time, hold a weekly or biweekly review with her, and adopt a simple Office Manager dashboard. The practice should also complete recall automation while tracking conversion manually in the meantime, and settle who creates, approves, and publishes marketing content, since time rather than skill was her main constraint at the close. After 90 days, leadership should review the role on operational outcomes rather than activity alone.

Your Role

BHS designed the coaching plan, delivered the twenty sessions, coached the Office Manager through process refinement, assessed her competency, and produced the final engagement report and leadership consulting note. The engagement was delivered by an assigned BHS consultant under the oversight of Dr. Temitayo Bewaji, who retained accountability for quality. The Office Manager did the work, running the practice’s systems on live work and completing an applied task between sessions. Practice leadership provided her time, system access, and decision authority, and set the boundaries within which she acted.