Dental Practice Management

“Every mistake is an opportunity to learn.”  Let your employee know you appreciate them without any “but” or ‘however”. Otherwise why do they still have a job? Let your employee know that “every mistake is an opportunity to learn.”  Let your employee tell their side of the story. Listen. Do not assume.  For some situations it could be one strike and you're out on the other hand always weigh an employee's value versus non-optimum behavior. In general discipline should be done on a gradient.  Until you are comfortable correcting employees, you can simply pull this policy out with your employee present...

Put yourself in the shoes of a dental consultant. What would you look for in a 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...

At any given time one or more of your staff are likely doing something that you would not be too happy about if discovered. It's the nature of the beast. That's why it is so important to have written policy and a formal protocol for correcting or reprimanding employees. You want to document bad behavior or policy violations for all employees. Doing so will hopefully get the employee corrected as well as provide documentation to help fight unemployment claims if you decide to dismiss them. When staff do not follow policy there is a tendency to either ignore it or get...

Tip 1: Verify you have an accurate active patient count. Often the count is greatly inflated. This is less of an issue then in the past due to practice management software. If patient info has been correctly entered for all patients then the active patient count should be good. There are different opinions as to what constitutes an active patient but counting any recall patients going back eighteen months works. Doing so takes into account patients who have slipped off the radar but can be gotten back in.  Tip 2: Has extensive dentistry already been done on most patients? If so, then...