The New Dentist Journey: Real life business advice to get your career started right
Congratulations. You’ve graduated from dental school.
So what exactly does that mean? For most new dentists it means a huge student debt and very little business knowledge to manage it.
Dental school is very good at providing clinical skills. But once a dentist enters in the real world business skills are even more important than a pair of steady hands.
Dr. Kevin Coughlin is an expert on the business of dentistry. Growing his practices from 1 to 14 during his career, he’s learned what works and what doesn’t.
And he knows that once you “get it right,” it’s not a great leap to replicate that success over and over again.
Today, in addition to his work as an actual dentist, Dr. Coughlin coaches, consults and speaks to dentists across the country on how to build the practice of their dreams – based on proven processes and procedures.
Some of the things your will learn in this book:
– Should you be a corporate dentist, join a group practice or start or buy a solo practice?
– What should you look for before signing any contracts?
– How to use publicly available information to find out your the patient base, the types of insurance and types of procedures you should offer.
– How dental compensation works and what you need to know; are you going to be on collection or production or a guaranteed salary or some combination of the two?
– The most common mistakes all associates make.
A Treatment Plan For Your Business: Success tips to unleash the full potential of your dental practice
Being a dentist is a great career. But the business of dentistry is something many of us struggle with. We come out of school with great expectations (and a lot of debt), confident that our clinical skills will be enough to ensure a profitable and fulfilling career.
Dr. Kevin Coughlin is a working dentist who built a thriving practice consisting of 14 offices – based on sound business and marketing strategies that I was able to replicate again and again.
Today, in addition to his clinical work, he coaches other dentists on how to run their businesses successfully or transition to an MSO or DSO relationship.
If you are a dentist struggling with the business end of your practice, this book will show you how to build a business that is profitable – while allowing you to enjoy the fruits of your work.
Selling your dental practice: preparation, processes and procedures to maximize the value of your business to buyers
The focus of this mini-book is to help dentists prepare their greatest asset – their practice – for sale.
This is the third in a series of books written for dentists at every stage of their careers. In the first book of this series, I discussed how a recent graduate starts their practice, gets their first job, and navigates the ups and downs of that initial transition.
The second book showed dentists how to grow their practices based on the SPECIAL formula.
In this final installment, I’m going to focus on the practitioner who, in most cases, is in their late 50s or early 60s, and is considering selling their dental practice. Let’s start with an analogy we can all easily understand. You would never begin a clinical case without first having a comprehensive knowledge of a patient’s past medical and dental history, as well as their chief complaint and all the radiographs, diagnostic photos, 4 diagnostic impressions, periodontal charting, a risk assessment, financial arrangements, etc.
JUST ENOUGH TO BE GREAT IN YOUR DENTAL PROFESSION: PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES FOR SUCCESS
Dental school offers the skills you need to serve patients while they’re in your dental chair, but rarely does it consider the day-to-day issues of creating, maintaining, and improving a dental practice. The newly graduated dentist is often alone as he or she stumbles through the unfamiliar realms of sales, customer service, and hiring staff.
A thirty-year veteran of dentistry, Kevin Coughlin, DMD, MBA, MAGD, runs fourteen dental practices, performing all aspects of general dentistry. Under his expert tutelage, you’ll learn how to apply his tested and refined processes and procedures to your own dental office.
Let Coughlin guide you through the otherwise torturous process of hiring your team and providing them with the right training and education. He also offers teaching points in the clinical aspects of dental surgery and the comprehensive treatment planning of cases that are difficult to include in your practice.
YOUR TOOTH IS KILLING ME: THE BALANCE BETWEEN THE CLINICAL ASPECT OF DENTISTRY AND THE BUSINESS OF DENTISTRY
You have spent the last four years diligently studying the art and science of dental medicine. You are now ready to begin your dental career, you see nothing but success in your future. After all, if you are a great dentist, the rest should fall into place, right? Not necessarily. Dentistry is, after all a business. Kevin Coughlin DMD, MBA, MAGD, recognized that reality long ago. He also realized that dental schools turn out scientifically knowledgeable students who lack sound business sense.
Through his new book, Your Tooth is Killing Me, Coughlin mentors young dentist and even seasoned dentist to create savvy businesspeople. Coughlin touches on many of the complicated aspects of launching and running a successful dental practice, including staffing, marketing, leasing space, and operational cost. Most important how to land the correct first job, and how to hire that dental associate. Coughlin founded Baystate Dental PC over thirty years ago. It is now a booming business with more than 150 employees and more than fourteen locations. He continues to practice clinical dentistry everyday and has been teaching clinical dentistry and how it relates to business since 1985.
Business Processes and Procedures Necessary for a Successful Dental Career: What you need to know before you graduate from Dental School
Upon graduating, dentists possess all of the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in general practice—with one notable exception. Few dental schools offer training in business.
This omission leaves new graduates ill-prepared to purchase and run dental practices, and the problem goes even deeper. As dentists advance in their field, the majority focus on studying the latest innovations in the science rather than methodology that could improve their business.
In Business Processes and Procedures Necessary for a Successful Dental Career, Kevin Coughlin, DMD, MBA, MAGD, offers the business skills so often neglected by the profession. An instructor of practice management at Tufts School of Medicine, Coughlin guides you through the information you need to make informed business decisions about your practice and your career.
