The Exceptional Private Practice
A fictional physician in a white coat smiles, arms folded, in a warm and welcoming clinic reception.

Dramatization · fictional physician

A publication for dermatology practices

The Exceptional Private Practice

Bringing lessons from the best companies and teams into your dermatology clinic

The best service in the world was worked out far from medicine. Each lesson distills one of those answers into a principle your team can remember and gives you something practical to try this week.

Choose a lesson How each lesson works

From Thomas & Whitney Hocker, dermatologists and Mohs surgeons · The Derm Couple

Where we start

Two quiet failures every clinic knows

Neither looks like a crisis. Both wear on patients and teams, and both come down to how the work is set up, not how hard people try.

The patient who gets passed around

A patient mentions a problem to whoever is nearest, hears “that’s not my department,” and has to tell it again while it grows. They leave feeling unimportant, even if everyone was technically polite.

The Ritz-Carlton’s answer

The small problem that gets passed along

A missing site photo. A specimen jar that doesn’t match its requisition. When the schedule is tight, it’s easy to keep moving and let someone downstream sort it out, until it ambushes the dermatologist in the exam room or turns up days later on a pathology report.

Toyota’s answer

The lessons

Two lessons, each in two parts

Start with the Daily Brief. When you want the whole story, continue to the Interactive Web Book Chapter.

Illustration: a smiling hotel bellman takes an arriving guest’s suitcase and gestures into the sunlit lobby. Illustration: a front-desk agent offers a tired traveler breakfast while his room is finished. Illustration: a hotel general manager holds the elevator door and invites a housekeeper with her towel cart in first.

01 The Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton Makes People Feel Respected. Your Clinic Can, Too.

The principle: make people feel expected. Whoever hears a problem owns it, with the trust and authority to help.

The problem
Patients repeat themselves while a small problem grows, because it always belongs to someone else.
What to remember
Fix what your role allows right now, walk the rest to the right person, and write it down.
What to do differently
Decide in advance what anyone may fix on the spot, walk patients instead of pointing, and record what they tell you once.
  1. 1 · Daily BriefRead the briefAbout 4 minutes
  2. 2 · Interactive Web Book ChapterThe Right Person to Fix It Is the One Who Heard ItAbout 17 minutes · flip cards, scroll comics, one-week experiment
Illustration: at a car assembly station, a team member in safety glasses points at a bolt that won’t seat. Illustration: she pulls the yellow cord, a light on the overhead board glows amber, and her team leader walks over. Illustration: she tightens the bolt with her power tool while the team leader leans in beside her.

02 Toyota

Toyota Lets Anyone Pull the Cord. Your Clinic Can, Too.

The principle: pull the cord, and help comes. Fix the problem where it starts, before it moves down the line.

The problem
A small problem passed forward grows into rework, and people stay quiet when flagging it feels risky or nobody is free to help.
What to remember
A flag works when anyone may raise it and someone comes to settle it where it started.
What to do differently
Agree on what counts, give everyone one way to flag it, name who answers each session, and settle it before the patient moves on.
  1. 1 · Daily BriefRead the briefAbout 5 minutes
  2. 2 · Interactive Web Book ChapterPull the Cord Before the Defect MovesAbout 17 minutes · flip cards, scroll comics, one-week experiment

How each lesson works

Read it in five minutes. Live with it for a week.

Start here

Daily Brief

One clear idea in a few minutes, ready for tomorrow’s huddle.

  • The problem, in plain words
  • The one principle to remember
  • The idea in three illustrated moments
  • Five practices for your clinic
  • One thing to do today
  • The evidence, whenever you want it

Go deeper

Interactive Web Book Chapter

The whole lesson, told as a story you can scroll through.

  • The full story behind the principle
  • Why it works, and where else it works
  • The results, and the research behind them
  • Two illustrated stories set in a dermatology clinic
  • A one-week experiment for your team
  • Explore the Evidence, with every source

The publishers

From Thomas & Whitney Hocker

Two dermatologists and Mohs surgeons who keep asking how clinic work can be done exceptionally well, for patients and for the teams who care for them.

Meet Thomas & Whitney The Exceptional Private Practice on YouTube