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. The following functions are typically where you find system breakdowns: a. New patient phone callsb. Processing new patientsc. Financial arrangementsd. Patient retentione. Scheduling 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...

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 -...

Does your management consist of always putting out fires? The reason why you’re always trying to solve things frantically today may lie in how you do your dental office meetings in the morning. Often morning huddles are being done but the dentist is solely running the meetings, and they are always just talking about what is being done today. And here lies two mistakes in doing it this way. The dentist must never run the morning huddle. Now I didn’t say not to have one at all; I just said not to RUN it.  What the dentist should do is have...

Do you ever ask your patients, "Any questions?" If you do so often enough, you'll lose a lot of income. Let me explain. Dentists often tell patients they need to do this, this, and this, in a rapid-fire style, throwing in terms patients probably don't understand (like leaky margins), and then ask, "Any questions?" More often than not the patient says no, and then goes merrily to the financial arranger and asks what procedure their dental insurance will cover. Often whatever procedure is covered is all they commit to -- and sometimes not even that. Many dentists never really get the...