Practice Management | Dentistry's Business Secrets

Treatment Planning for Dental Nightguards

: Portrait of young woman covering her mouth with both hands from Yuri Arcurs Website

I Don’t Need a Nightguard!

This scenario presented itself in my office just yesterday. I had a patient who admittedly grinds her teeth and shows moderate to advanced wear on all her teeth. I have recently lowered my dental nightguard fee in an effort to get more of the patient population in need to schedule this treatment. Her excuse was that if she had the money sitting around somewhere, she would do it. I shot a quick glance at her Louis Vuitton handbag resting in the chair and the BlackBerry smartphone she couldn’t resist but to answer and had to wonder. When she finally revealed that she would be taking a two week vacation to Florida next week, my suspicions were confirmed. It wasn’t that she did not have the money. It was that I apparently did not do a sufficient job in convincing her of the value of the nightguard and of her real need for it.
So this begs the question: What do you do in your practice to gain treatment acceptance for occlusal guards?

Dec 10, 2010 | 1 comment | View Post

When Should I Begin Year-End Evaluation of My Dental Practice

There are many good questions to ask yourself before you begin floating down the same path in your dental practice as that which you took this year. Did you reach all your goals? Did you establish clear cut goals to reach in the first place? Are there other goals you should be aspiring to reach? Are you happy with the way your practice life is translating over into your personal life? Could both of these lives be better? What marketing strategies are working? Do you need to increase your dental office’s online presence? If so, what concrete steps will you take to do this? Are there office duties that are taking up too much of your time that could be accomplished with delegation to another staff member or outside company? Are there items that need to be addressed with employees at a year-end evaluation? These are good questions to ponder before the end of the year, every year. Starting now gives you a head start on the competition.

Lance Armstrong began his focused Tour de France training November 1, while others waited until New Year’s Day to start aggressively training. Seven Tour victories later, we know how well this approach worked out for him. Take time now to evaluate your books and your existing practice protocol. If you feel there is room for improvement, by all means, implement the changes necessary to take your practice to the next level.

Nov 01, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

How to Hire the Right Employee the First Time

: Job interview from Crestock Photos

In attempt to avoid the need to fire an employee and begin the hiring process all over again, one must make every effort to hire “right” the first time. With the “two weeks’ notice” standard, we are often left with too little time to hire a new employee. Rushed interviews and reference checks can lead to poor decision making and settling for an employee candidate who is less than ideal. Nonetheless, striving to hire right the first time can eliminate headaches down the road. Business coach Eric Herrenkohl speaks to this in his book “How To Hire A-Players.”

Recently, I was given two weeks to hire a new dental assistant when my current dental assistant changed careers unexpectedly. With the economy and unemployment being what it is currently, I was afforded the opportunity to consider more candidates for this new hire. Within the first 24 hours of posting a free Craigslist job ad, I had received multiple resumes from qualified individuals. In order to avoid having to sift through countless resumes from unqualified applicants or applicants who would not be able to satisfy the timing requirements that I needed, I drafted a detailed ad.

In the midst of a busy day of dentistry and practice management, it is tempting to settle for the first warm body to present herself somewhat positively in an interview. Having read Eric Herrenkohl’s book and knowing from past experience where “settling” had gotten me, I decided to interview several additional candidates even after meeting one that might have been adequate. In this employment market, we do not have to settle for adequate.

Implementing the right interview protocol and background checks on potential staff members is imperative in the hiring process. Coming soon to our website is a Resource CD which contains 17 Questions to Ask in an Interview as well as a dozen questions to ask references when a potential hire shows promise. Please check back to www.dentistrysbusinesssecrets.com for the impending release of this Resource CD and my new book, ”Dentistry’s Business Secrets: Proven Growth Strategies for Your New or Existing Practice.“

Oct 19, 2010 | 1 comment | View Post

How Do We Treatment Plan the “Baby Boomer”?

: Loving, handsome senior couple from Crestock Royalty Free Photos

The “longevity” factor of our patients cannot be overemphasized when it comes to our treatment planning. We would be remiss in our examination process if we were determined to diagnose the pocketbook and not what the patient (read, Baby Boomer) might want. Calculations for retirement plans are now being performed based upon the expectation that the retiree will live to be 100 years old! Baby Boomers know this and are trying to plan for the welcomed eventuality that this occurs. Therefore, they are valuing their teeth for a lifetime and not opting for the extraction as often as I have witnessed in my practice life. I am reminded of a quote from history,

“Every tooth in a man’s head is more valuable than a diamond.”

Miguel deCervantes, Don Quixote, 1605

Oct 11, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Getting to “Yes” for Esthetic Dentistry Treatment

Even though we may want to drive the sale of cosmetic dentistry to our patients, it is generally more profitable to allow the patient to take the wheel in this process. The idea is to balance the notion of investigating what the patient really wants without “selling” the patient something she does not want. Fleshing out true desires is an art. I have been disappointed at times when the desire for esthetic improvement was primarily my own and not the patient’s. When this is the case, the patient tends to be even more critical of the work and more difficult to please. Tread lightly with the patient who was actually “sold” cosmetic dentistry, I would caution. Be sure to present all available cosmetic improvement options you can provide and then let the patient “buy” the treatment from you.

Oct 07, 2010 | 4 comments | View Post

Avoiding Slow Times in Dentistry

September and October can be a slow time in the dental office schedule. After a summer filled with child check-ups, everyone returns to school and the schedule lightens. The combination of hectic back to school schedules and the expense of school supplies, clothes and fall sports leave many families without time or financial resources to visit the dentist. Summer is an expensive time with increased child care costs and vacation expenses for many families. The credit card bills from that vacation in July are now due which squeezes the budget even more for many families.

My practice experiences this slowdown every year so we take steps ahead of time to combat this tendency. It can be difficult in the busy months of summer to find time for additional marketing, but a few simple steps have helped us to avoid too much of a decline in the early fall months. In August, we check through our overdue recall and outstanding treatment plan reports. Patients with an overdue recall are sent a postcard which is followed up by a phone call a couple weeks later. Patients with an outstanding treatment plan are offered a discount if they schedule during the month of September or October.

These months also afford an opportunity to highlight a special promotion such as free whitening. Online advertising and social media are great outlets for getting the word out about a new promotion or special. Google Places allows status updates which can run for 30 days to highlight a new product or promotion. Twitter and Facebook provide easy updates to current patients and potential new patients, but you must remember to use location specific keywords in these updates. Blogs provide easy content updates to highlight special events as well.

I have found these fall months to be a great time to take a vacation. Popular vacation spots are less crowded and more affordable, as families have headed back to school. Closing the office for a week or two provides the added benefit of creating a more efficient schedule in the weeks surrounding the vacation. This is also an effective means by which to control payroll overhead if your staff is paid on an hourly basis.

What steps does your office take to avoid slow production times?

Aug 24, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Dental Insurance Benefit Maximums

As we enter the second half of the dental benefits’ year, it is important to check remaining insurance maximums when calculating patient co-pays. Many dental insurance companies provide a $1,000 maximum which can be reached quite quickly. Often, dental patients are not aware of how low this maximum is and will not be keeping track of how much of their benefit maximum has been used. In order to ensure the proper collection of a patient’s co-pay and maintain goodwill with your patients, a quick check of the patient’s remaining benefits should be conducted prior to presenting the patient with an estimate. Patients may have received treatment in the office of a dental specialist and used most of their dental benefit amount there. Some dental insurance companies provide year to date benefit usage information through online benefit systems or faxes, thus facilitating the verification process.

One of the biggest mistakes made in today’s dental practice is that of calculating inaccurate pre-treatment estimates. Not only is this bad for your production/collections ratio, it can also tend to leave a very bitter taste in the mouth of patients who assumed their bill was paid in full, only to later discover that they are left with a weighty balance after insurance reimbursement. The best advice I can offer to prevent this practice breaker is to get their bill right the first time!

Aug 10, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

The Low Overhead Dental Practice Part III: The Three Day Work Week

Operating your business within the framework of a more condensed schedule can yield maximal productivity in fewer hours and fewer workdays. I am reminded of a statement offered by my childhood dentist, “I can produce as much in 25 hours per week as it would take most dentists 35 hours to produce.” The data bear out that dentists operating within a highly efficient, compressed work schedule tend to be more productive and ultimately more profitable. Dentists utilizing a three day work week often out produce those laboring four or even five days per week. The explanation for this is that these three day practices are operating more efficiently. There are fewer openings in their schedules, and waiting lists of patients help to ensure that. Schedule compaction not only fosters greater hourly productivity, but also enhances profitability through overhead reduction.

The elimination of additional days per week of hourly staff pay and associated variable costs can reduce overhead and directly flow to your bottom line. Less time at work permits periods of rejuvenation necessary for most dentists to side-step the all too frequent reality of occupational burnout. A dental school instructor related an anecdote of once dining with colleagues, each sharing numbers of annual practice production, in an attempt to go one better than the others. On the contrary, my friends and I often try to outdo each other by actually scheduling the fewest number of workdays per year. Net income being equal, the true victor in terms of practice success may be the dentist achieving this income result via the fewest labor hours invested.

Operating your practice on a three day work week offers multiple variations of workday selection, provides patients with multiple appointment time options and helps prevent workplace boredom. For example, a doctor may choose to work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of one week and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of the next. Vacation time can be worked into the six day chasm between weeks, eliminating the necessity to close the practice for an entire week. When the doctor elects to open early on Monday and Friday and close late on Tuesday and Thursday, patients will always have convenient scheduling options. Patients can choose appointments on any day of the week, early morning, through the lunch hour or after work, even though the practice is only open three days any given week.

Another option for the doctor is to open the practice the same three days every week. Whether the doctor chooses M-W, T-Th, or W-Fr, the resulting five day break between patients regularly seems adequate to reduce professional burnout. The downside to this type of regularity in the schedule is the difficulty it imposes on patients to find convenient appointment times. Any three day work week also encroaches on a doctor’s ability to treat dental emergencies in a timely fashion. For these reasons, a doctor may elect to open Monday through Thursday one week and Tuesday through Friday the next. This schedule affords the doctor a four day weekend every other week and permits patients to be seen in a prudent manner through convenient appointment times.

Jun 24, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post

Building Trust in Your Dental Patients

In the end, a patient’s decision to schedule proposed treatment is all about trust. This trust relationship begins well before the patient ever enters your office door. It begins with the initial exposure a patient has to your practice, whether in the form of a postcard mailer or by way of referral from a friend or family member. It continues to develop through the new patient phone call and expands via the guest mentality your staff extends upon arrival. The relationship grows with the gentleness and concern afforded by your hygienist and progresses further by means of displaying your own honesty and integrity. This bond matures over time through the consistent care and attention imparted by your staff and the painless, quality dentistry you reliably provide.

You can employ the best treatment plan coordinator in the world, but it is ultimately the doctor who is responsible for convincing the patient of the necessity for treatment. The dentist is the office staff member most trained and knowledgeable in the importance of oral health care procedures. This is not to overlook that many practices successfully schedule dentistry based solely upon the salesmanship of the treatment plan coordinator. It is to say, however, that these practices will never be as productive as they could be with a doctor who educates, inspires and elicits the trust of the clientele.

One way to cultivate this trust is to be wary of handing the new patient an overzealous treatment plan on the initial visit. While we are obligated to diagnose and present all oral health needs to any patient seeking our expertise by way of a comprehensive exam, certain procedures can obviously be prioritized over others. Nurturing a trusting relationship over time seems to result in the greatest cosmetic dentistry and comprehensive treatment plans being accepted. Most people take some time to develop trust, and they quite often require multiple six-month recall appointments before they are ready to sign up for those beautiful veneers you have awaiting them. Do not oversell them. The fact that they are in your chair is evidence that they want to trust you. Give them every reason to do so. With time, they will be requesting the treatment from you, their new friend.

This principle of establishing trust eclipses every other form of internal marketing you can extend your patients. This is the real internal marketing. The attractiveness of this form of marketing is that its effects are consistent no matter what type of practice you have chosen to operate. The real beauty, of course, is that the fiscal cost of this manner of marketing is zero.

Mar 22, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post