Put yourself in the shoes of a dental practice management consultant. What would you look for if you were a management consultant to a dental practice whose production and collections were going down each month? How could each person in the office be the cause of a failing dental practice?

Perhaps the front office people are being rude or not answering the phone in a reasonable length of time. Perhaps the scheduling is not being done correctly. Look at each position in the office and try to come up with ways that could be contributing to the downward spiral that the dental practice is in.

Now take a look at your own production and collections. Compare it from month to month. Put it on a graph and really take a good look at it. Is it going up, staying the same or going down?

The first thing you need to realize is that production is caused. If that graph is going up or going down, it is because you are causing it to happen.

It’s not the time of the year; it’s not that the economy is bad or good; it’s not just plain dumb luck. It is not an accident.

If you have three hygienists and two of them get patients to do soft tissue management and the third one doesn't, don't just sum it up that “two are good and one is bad.” Go tell that third hygienist to present soft tissue management to you as if you were a patient and you'll find out what it is she is doing that isn't successful. And this will demonstrate to you that the production of the “good” hygienist is caused by the specific actions that they are doing.

Apply this same idea to all areas of your office and the result will be increased production, collections and profitability. And that will be no accident.

A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here

Let’s do some basic math.

Let's say you’re getting 30 new dental patients a month. That’s 360 new dental patients in a year which means a possible 720 hygiene appointments.

So are you adding new hygiene days to your schedule? If you’re not then there are big, gapping holes in your dental recare system that a city bus could fall through. The whole dental office helps to dig these holes. It could be a number of things and usually is. But it all falls under the category of “lack of control.”

Speaking of lack of control…

Dentists are always looking at the problem of generating more income. But what they should be doing is exerting more control over their dental practice. The better control you have over your dental practice the higher the income will be.

My job as a dental practice management and dental marketing consultant is to find out where the lack of control exists and fix it. And when this happens income goes up, dentists get big smiles on their faces (for awhile anyway) and staff are suddenly happier.

A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here

Disagreements amongst dental staff members and the dentist is one of the most common situations I run into when working with a new client. A good example is a recent new client who I personally found him to be very congenial so I had a hard time believing this guy was “The Dental Devil Incarnate” as described by the majority of his staff.

I began by asking each of the staff the same question: "Do you know of any dental staff member that has been treated unjustly?” All fingers pointed to one person - we'll call her Sally for simplicity - though that is not her real name. Sally apparently had been going around telling other staff members about how the doctor was mean to her, how the doctor mislead her about her pay, about how the doctor was mistreating her or not appreciating all she was doing, etc.

Needless to say Sally's co-workers were appalled and a distrust of the doctor began brewing. A bit of further investigation found that Sally was embezzling, looking for another job and was planning on just not showing up one day.

Sally had been with the doctor for about three years, but he had noticed that it was about a year ago that Sally's demeanor changed. He saw her texting in dental staff meetings. She’d roll her eyes when he asked her to do even the simplest tasks. But he never corrected her because she’d been with him for a while and, as far as he knew, she was doing a good job; and he wanted to be a “nice guy”.

Now I wasn't a fly on the wall this whole time but the embezzlements were small, and as far as we could tell, a fairly recent activity. What I imagined happened, is that Sally's misdeeds began as a minor thing and gradually built up into something far more serious. But because the doctor didn't sit down and have a face-to-face talk with her he essentially enabled her.

Doctors must take up issues with dental staff before they get too big. It's a vital action in running any business. And this should not be done in front of other staff. Do it at a time when you bring as little attention to calling the offending staff member “onto the carpet.” The purpose here is not to embarrass.

Dentists generally don't like dealing with these situations. But it’s vital you do so for the health of your practice. Correcting dental staff doesn't have to be an emotional and unpleasant activity. Don't mistake "being a nice guy" with allowing your staff to walk all over you. However yelling and getting mad at them is just as big of an error.

The good news is that there are simple procedures you can learn so you become skilled at dealing with these situations. We’ll teach you how and your dental staff member will thank you. In fact in consulting dentists for over 25 years it often happens that the staff member the dentist thought was the “worst” becomes the dentist’s most productive, loyal employee after I’ve worked with the dentist to be an effective manager.

A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here

Do you ask your patient "Do you understand?"

If you do, you're losing a lot of income. That's what all dentists do.

Dentists tell patients they need to do this, this and this, rapid-fire style, throw patients terms that they probably don’t understand like "leaky margins" and then says, “Any questions?”

So the patients go merrily along their way to the dental financial arranger and ask what procedure will their dental insurance cover and then say, “Okay that's what I want to do.”

Many dentists never really got the patient to realize what needs to be done and why it needs to done. And most dentists never really spot that fact because they ask the patient a “yes or no” question such as “Any questions?” or, “Do you understand?”

So as a dental practice management consultant when I’m consulting a client I’ll give them a very fast and detailed dissertation on computer hardware. I do this until I can see their eyes have glazed over and then I ask them how they feel. They almost always say that they wanted me to stop talking five minutes ago. That’s the way patients feel when you throw terms like “leaky margins” at them.

How it should be done is give them drawings or sketches to show what is wrong with the tooth and show them the stages of deterioration that will happen if nothing is done along with the costs associated with fixing each stage of deterioration. Steven Gordon makes these fantastic diagrams for dentists. They’re great because they are really good illustrations and there are no technical terms on them.

Then I ask them questions like this: “What do you think will happen if you don't do anything about it? Which of those three treatments do you want to do?” Or, “Did you know you were walking around with an infection 24 hours a day and 7 days a week? Well, how do you think that might affect your immune system?” Or, “Which way are you going on this chart if you don't do something to stop this process?”

A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here

Your dental practice is as strong as its weakest link.

The problem is that the weakest link is probably you.

The good news? Your job as a dentist is safe. The bad news? Your dental practice may not be.

Some dentists have a poor dental employee (or two) but think, "It's better than no dental employee at all" or perhaps the thought is, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Maybe in a large corporation a few bad apples hardly matter. But in a small business like a dental practice they do. If even one dental employee has poor communication skills, a bad attitude or enjoys shouting matches with other staff, your practice can be seriously harmed. That one employee causing hassles could be 20% of your staff!

So who occupies your attention when you're driving home, playing with your kids or eating dinner? If you thought of one of your current dental staff, then the weakest link is you, not that staff member. Why? Because YOU haven't corrected or gotten rid of the troublemaker.

If the weakest link is you, don't panic. A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here

Recently I was using a dental client’s computer and noticed that it was running really slow. On a hunch, I installed anti-spyware software.

Spyware, for those of you who don’t know, is computer software that is installed secretly on your computer to intercept or take partial control over your computer without your OK.

Commonly this is done when you or one of your dental staff download something from a web site. The download could be something as innocent as a solitaire game. The key point is that something was downloaded to your computer by you or one of your staff.

What happens then is that hidden in that download can be computer code that, among other things, records every key stroke made by anyone using your computer. User names, passwords and email addresses can easily be gotten. What can be done with such information is obvious and very dangerous. It needs no further explanation.

What you might not know is that the information can also be used to send tens of thousands of pieces of SPAM though your computer.

If you don’t already have anti-spyware software installed do a Google search and get yourself a free 30 day trial of one. Personally I would password protect your computer to only allow internet access to the vital business related web sites your dental practice must use to do business.

So if your computer seems to be running slower that it should be, it may just be because your dental practice's front desk may have been taken over by a porn site!

A free dental practice management analysis is available with one of our veteran dental consultants. Start here