Dental team accountability is a topic I frequently address with dentists. In a business like dentistry where the boss must spend 95% of his or her working time in the mouth of another person in order to be successful, accountability becomes even more elusive.

Your Dental Practice Income Statement, sometimes called your Profit and Loss Statement, or your P&L Statement, can be a foundational management tool for your practice if it is purposely designed. Unfortunately, many dentists have no idea their Practice Income Statement can be arranged to meet their specific needs.

Dental practice embezzlement is a real issue. It is estimated that between 60% and 80% of dentists will know they were embezzled by the end of their career. Who knows how many never know!

Want a day where you meet your goals, feel a sense of pride in your work, and leave relaxed and on time? Who doesn’t? So, how often does it happen in your dental practice? Once a week? Once a month? Never? There is one way, without a doubt, you can make this happen more frequently and consistently. It is the use of an organized Morning Huddle.

When working with practices, often I see significant savings, increased efficiency, and higher patient satisfaction when outsourcing specific tasks and duties. Creating a modern office with progressive technology and effective operating systems makes the difference between a thriving practice and a struggling practice.

There is a serious conundrum in every dentist’s work life: 99% of your training was clinical dentistry when in reality you spend more than 50% of your time focused on interacting with employees and patients. How do you hear those affirmations from your employees?

First coined by the philosopher Aristotle, the phrase “a whole is greater than a sum of its parts” still has a lot of relevance in this day in age. This is the basis behind the idea of teamwork. If the full dental team isn’t working in synergy your practice isn’t going to be as effective, efficient or run as smoothly as it could, or should, be.

Many practice owners feel like they need to be SUPERDENTIST by day, and the business-minded Clark Kent by night to make sure both of their roles as a dentist and business owner are taken care of. This doesn’t have to be the case. A dental practice that is “organizationally-organized” can alleviate the stress on the practice owner and let them focus on being a dentist.

“The garbage can or the to-read tub?” This was a regular question I asked my dentist-husband about his proliferating dental journals, articles, and newsletters. Of course, he always had the best intention of reading them all, so 9 out of 10 went to the “TO-READ” PILE. Many times our bedroom was lined layers high with multicolored plastic tubs full of the “to-read” pile. Not to mention the piles at his practice.

It’s Monday morning and your team is gathered for the Morning Huddle. Each goes through their reports and all agree that the schedule looks perfect! There are no openings in the schedule and everyone is ready to roll. But what happens? The infamous NO-SHOW BOMBS start dropping. It hits hygiene first…second…third!!! The final bomb takes out your most productive appointment of the day!

In my last post, I discussed five reasons why it is important to monitor your practice’s vital signs for trends, trouble, and “touchdowns.” In this follow-up post, I outline five more reasons you and your team should be taking at least one hour per month of your precious productive time, and using it to review the “vital signs” of your dental practice.

As a dental practice owner, you must monitor your practice’s vital signs for trends, trouble, and “touchdowns.” This is similar to the way you monitor the vital signs of a patient undergoing dental treatment. In a dental practice these vital signs are frequently referred to as monitors.

FOCUSED, PERIODIC, COMPREHENSIVE… 0140, 0120, 0150. We are all familiar with these oral exams for our dental patients. We use them daily and know how important they are in detecting and correcting problems and disease in the oral cavity.

“Sandy, I need help! My front desk person had to leave suddenly due to a personal situation, and may not return. We are all struggling without her! I have deposits hitting my bank and have no idea to whom they belong. I can’t access my own practice’s website, email, or Facebook account. We can’t even attach x-rays to our e-claims! Can you help me?” This type of call happens more often then you would think.

In business school, the mantra they pounded into my head was, “exceed your customers’ (patients’) expectations every single time.” It seems obvious and a no-brainer, but it is much easier said than done. Why? Today’s dental patients are very different from patients even five or ten years ago. There are three core trends that are changing expectations of the dental patient.

Most dental practices know it is critical to have HIPAA dental team training meetings on a yearly basis. Although, many practices don’t talk about it much beyond that. Ongoing reminders throughout the year at team meetings can help keep HIPAA regulations on top of mind for everyone, which can help prevent compliance situations.

In my 35 years in dentistry I have heard this phrase over and over again. Most dentists didn’t get into the profession because they wanted to run a business; they did it so they could be DENTISTS! Unfortunately, the business side of running a dental practice often ends up being so overwhelming they aren’t able to enjoy their true passion of dentistry.

Are you looking for ways to increase your dental practice’s annual production? According to a study conducted by Harvard Review, businesses with healthy work cultures produce, on the average, 31% more than those businesses without one. There are three fundamental pieces to ensure a healthy work environment - and bottom line - for your dental practice.

Many small business owners, including dentists, make business decisions on instinct. They have so much on their plate they don’t always slow down to document their decisions and processes. This appears to work on a day-by-day basis, but long-term it can cause a multitude of problems. Systemization can release you from management responsibilities and allow you to focus on your patients.