1. Time is money It is the small things that add up to consuming vast amounts of time, and as we all know: Time is money. Too often, staff members look busy but are in fact simply handling unnecessary work they needlessly generate caused by inefficiencies, lack of training, and so on. Some examples that generate unnecessary work are listed below: Lab case is not in the office when the patient arrives.A message is taken but not given to the correct person.A patient leaves the office without an appointment.   The patient's phone number is incorrect.There is incomplete information in charts.Incomplete...

Many dental practices can appear very busy, but over the years, when I have drilled down into my client's numbers (pardon the pun), I have found many were underproducing by as much as 40% or more based on their production capacity. For a practice to produce at the highest level it is capable of, the key has everything to do with your staff and your skills in leading and managing them. The practice owner From a management viewpoint, the biggest problem in most dental offices is the practice owner. Why? Because most dentists want to be Dr. Nice with their staff....

1. Typically practice owners do not have or do not follow an effective hiring protocol as they are often in a hurry. Many successful practice owners follow the maxim “Hire slow, fire fast”. By doing so you increase the probabilityof hiring a “good employee”.  2. Hire for ATTITUDE is hiring Golden Rule #1. The right attitude cannot be taught. Everything else can be.   3. Interviews only give you an “outer-view”. You won’t really know if you have a winner until you see the employee in action over a period of time. If the employee does not meet expectations within 90 days, dismiss...

There are a lot of variables, but I think you'll find these numbers close to average plus or minus a few percentage points (based on collections): Staff: 25%Rent/upkeep, cleaning, etc: 5%Lab: 5%Dental Supplies: 5%Marketing, phones, etc: 10% Typically there are not too many places to cut costs other than payroll when it comes to the management of your dental practice overhead. In general payroll is the one area where the percentages are often too high. On top of that most practices are only producing at about 60% of what they could be doing. Consider this: A $10,000.00 monthly increase equals $120,000.00 per...