Should You Hire a Dental Practice Consultant?

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Most dentists enter the practice because they have a passion for the work, not out of a burning desire to be a CEO. Yet building and growing your dental practice requires you to be a top-notch business owner, capable of running everything from marketing to human resources, and from bookkeeping to daily operations. You certainly do not need to perform all of these tasks yourself, but you do need enough understanding of each process to tell whether it is working well or needs adjustment. As insurance reimbursements go down and expenses rise, it is more important than ever before to run a streamlined practice that drives profits without compromising the quality of care.

A dental practice consultant can be the solution. While you are understandably attached to certain ways of thinking and managing your practice, a consultant provides an outside perspective.  He or she can take an objective look at the business side of your practice and help you see things in a new way. With a consultant by your side, you are truly poised to take your practice to the next level.

However, hiring a consultant is not for everyone. If you are considering taking this step, it is important to understand some basic truths about what to expect.

Consultants Are Not Miracle Workers

A good consultant will challenge your assumptions and help you see your practice in a new way. However, the hard work of implementing changes will fall on you. In the short run, while you are developing new systems and processes, your workload may skyrocket. Your consultant will likely give you lots of homework to complete between meetings, and you may wonder why you brought this person in at all. Remember that it is the consultant’s job to assess your practice and make suggestions, but your job to bring those ideas to life. In the long run, though, your practice will thrive. Just keep your long-term goals in mind.

Change Begins with You

If your dental practice is struggling, it is easy to blame external factors. Your location is terrible, your staff is lazy, you can’t afford a fancy new machine, or a myriad of other excuses. While some of these may be objectively true, they are symptoms of the problem, not the root cause. As the business owner, you and you alone are ultimately responsible for the practice’s success. Bringing in a consultant is a sign of strength and good decision-making—you are admitting where you need help, and hiring someone with the specific skills and knowledge to fix those areas. Take a deep breath and trust the process, remaining open-minded to ideas that might at first strike you as strange.

Clinical Skill Is Important, But Not Sufficient

Many dentists with struggling practices try to educate themselves into success. Post-doctoral training, clinical workshops in cutting-edge techniques, adding in-house dental labs…all of these things help you to become an objectively better dentist, but have little to no effect on growing your practice. Remember, your patients are not trained in dentistry. Although the digital generation has more general knowledge about various treatment options than its predecessors, few patients are really able to judge whether one dentist’s clinical skills are better than another’s.

Continuing education is always an excellent idea, but to truly take your practice to the next level, you need to switch gears to focus on the business management side. Sometimes it’s as simple as going back to basics: Do you accept the insurances that are most common in your area? Are your wait times reasonable? Do you offer online appointment scheduling? Do you have extended or Saturday hours? Your consultant will analyze all of the little details that could be hurting your business.

Avoid One Size Fits All Solutions

Be wary of dental consultants who want to sell you their practice management “system.” Implementing systematic processes is an excellent thing, but they must be tailored to your practice. Every dental practice has a different patient base and different staff members, all with their own unique needs and desires. Local norms and conventions vary widely, as do individual offices. Look for a consultant that will make the effort to analyze your practice and make recommendations that are tailored to your needs, rather than plugging you into an existing system.

In today’s economy, dentists must run smooth, streamlined practices that provide top-quality care at minimal cost. To achieve this, it is vital to ensure that the business side of the practice is fully optimized. As most dentists are not business experts, bringing in outside help can be the solution. However, a dental consultant is not right for every practice. The points above can help you decide whether it is the right choice for you.

Ascent Dental Solutions is dedicated to helping dentists build their practices. If you are interested in learning how to take your dental practice to the next level, please contact us today at 413-224-2659.

Dental implants growth tied to technology advancements

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Although pioneering techniques have always been a part of dentistry, I must admit it’s been fascinating to watch how one in particular has evolved throughout my career.

I’m talking about dental implants. When I did my first implant back in 1983, it took three hours to get a single tooth in place. Back then the process included drilling into the bone to test for bone quality and quantity. The theory was that good bone density meant a good prognosis for a successful implant.

Since then I’ve done thousands of implants and the process has developed quite a bit.

Today, using cone beam technology we can plan the surgery in great detail. The cone beam allows us to check for quality and quantity of bone, height and width of bone without any invasive drilling.

Putting the technological advances in the procedure aside, it’s hard to overestimate how important an advance like implants are to the quality of life of patients. Even a patient with no teeth can have them all replaced.

It used to be a very time consuming and expensive process for a fully edentulous patient. Prior to cone beam technology, patients would wait weeks for treatment prep and planning to be completed. The prep has been since dramatically compressed over the years, resulting in a quicker and much less expensive procedure.

There are some companies such as Implant Concierge that are rather handy for dentists in that they handle all the post cone-beam scan work and create a plan for the dentist to work from. These are online processes that eliminate office work in terms of merging, segmenting and thresholding for the procedure.

What I like about such companies is how they allow dentists to integrate implant work easily into their practice without  stand-alone software, and the learning curve that it involved for everyone in the practice.

Outsourcing this type of work is a good strategy to increase your service offerings without impacting your current business. And because it expands the scope of your practice, it is good for client retention, referrals and your bottom line.  

So if you feel your practice is not growing as fast as it should, consider all the options.

Dentistry plays key role in sleep medicine

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Setting up a good dental practice same as setting up a good business

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“So how do I set up a good dental practice?”

When I meet colleagues or new dentists, it’s the first real question that gets put to me, after the hellos and “that’s-a-nice-shirt-you’re-wearing” chit chat.

It’s a great question. But sometimes the answer I give isn’t exactly what they expect.

The answer, or at least my version of it, is that setting up a good dental practice is exactly like setting up a good business.

My colleague Steve Parker is responsible for that observation and he’s absolutely correct.

So how do you set up a good business that just happens to be a dental practice?

It comes down to focusing on five areas:

  • Leadership
  • TeamBuilding
  • Money (finance)
  • Metrics (measurement for the business and systems)  

Whether you be setting up a sole practitioner office or one in a DSO or MSO, the principles are the same. A DSO will provide the measurement systems and some of the team building tools.  But in the end it’s up to you to provide inspired and inspiring leadership.

But here’s the rub. Most dental school graduates emerge from the hallowed halls of their academe wielding a dental drill like a champion but with a limited business acumen that borders on financial illiteracy.

It may explain why some find the allure of DSOs and MSOs enticing. Much of the marketing and business growth is left to the corporate head offices.

But let’s go back to those factors again, one by one…

Leadership: It’s about the buck stopping with you. It’s about standing behind your team members so they know you have their back. Remember, how you behave sets the tone and atmosphere of your entire practice.

Team Building: Your team can build you up if you build them up. Get them to understand that training is a lifelong pursuit. If one of them learns something in any given day, ask them to share it with the others. Encourage sharing of lessons learned and how they were learned them. In essence, you are their coach, showing them how to do the work, push them when needed and cheer them when they do a superb job.

Money (finance): This one is important if only to ensure a smooth flow of finances to keep the doors open.

Metrics (measurement for the business and systems): This is about where you steer your Good Ship Dental and why you’re doing it. If you decide to focus on getting new children patients, then that is where you’ll point your metrics and determine your success.

Is it really that easy? Well yes and no. Within each of the four areas noted above there are multiple areas for discussion and exploration.

But those four factors are the foundation of setting up a good Dental / Business practice.

If you want more direction on setting up a new dental practice, please give me a call.

Early decisions in a dental career are the most crucial

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New dentists don’t often think of themselves as business people. But that’s exactly what they are. Whether you are starting your own practice, buying into a practice or joining an established team as an employee, your decisions are all primarily business decisions.

And the choices you make at the beginning of your career are some of the most important you’ll ever have to make.

When you leave dental school you are ready for patient care. But what about career care? What business prep have you received?  I can tell you that when I left school it was very little and that hasn’t changed much.

I was out on the street with a DDS and not much else.

Thirty-four years later, I have 14 dental offices, 23 dental associates and over 150 employees.

I learned a few things over those years. Today I coach young dentists, so they don’t have to figure out the toughest part of the job  – the business part.

I still practice dentistry day after day. Oral surgery, implant surgery, TMJ, orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, fixed and removable prosthesis: I do it all. I can do this because I learned how to implement processes and procedures that make the business part work efficiently.

I talk to new dentists all the time and I get the same questions over and over again.

“Do I open my own practice?”

“Should I take over a practice from another dentist or join a corporate practice?”
“What should I consider before signing a contract?”

“How can I research a practice and learn more about it’s potential for growth?”

These are all great questions and I wish a simple FAQ would do the trick. But every dentist’s situation is different. While some are more entrepreneurial, others might prefer to clock in and clock out in time to hit the golf course a couple of times a week.

Defining your goals and then mapping out a career plan to reach them is something I enjoy doing.

If you’re interested in this specialized career guidance, take a look at my dental coaching program and I will help you match your plan to your goals.

Talking to dentists is a great spring break

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Last month I had a great spring break at Destin 2017. No, there wasn’t a lot of swimming, or reading by the beach. It was a different kind of break: one where I was connecting with fellow dentists and sharing best practices to make our businesses more profitable.

At these types of events the one-on-ones are great. But I was fortunate enough to have been invited as a speaker – thereby allowing me to share my practical experiences with more people dentists than I could ever have reached simply walking the halls.

With 34 years in the industry building up 14 dental practices, I played to my strengths and talked about building profitable dental operations.

Specifically I spoke about the reality that cutting corners often costs a practice more than one might think. Instead I am an advocate for investing in the processes and procedures that really drive business growth.

It comes down to what I call the SPECIAL approach:

S scheduling tips that make a big difference to profitability by increasing efficiency

P production improvements to provide better care and service to patients

E employee or team member management that make everyone want to deliver better results and perform at higher levels.

C collections improvements that will show you how to reach 98%

I internal controls to help you manage your practice

A associates and accounts receivables as a tool for growth

L liabilities and asset management to protect yourself and your business

The talk went over very well, given that in the days afterward, I was fielding questions about the SPECIAL factors from many in attendance.

If you weren’t able to make it to the conference – or even if you did – I pulled together a resource page with the slide deck of my presentation, and related materials.

If you want to talk to me about how to make your practice SPECIAL, please send me note and we can schedule a private coaching/consulting session that will help you make your dental practice more profitable going forward.