Athena Consulting: Dental Practice Solutions

Over the years many management programs, dental consultants and gurus (a favorite word in dentistry) have joined the marketplace. It is important to understand these different types of programs and styles of management before determining which is right for you and your practice.

Whatever program you choose, or whichever dental consultant you engage, commitment is paramount to your success.

Seminar management: This program requires taking your staff to a location for listening to a carefully orchestrated and planned lecture on one or more management topics, by a consultant well versed in public speaking. Hopefully you and your staff will learn a few new pearls of wisdom, feel motivated and promise yourselves you will implement this new system or procedure first thing Monday morning! These seminars attract doctors to the consultant and/or company through charismatic, public-speaking motivation techniques. I call it “seminar magic.”

Management gurus: These folks are highly trained public speakers with practice management and dental background who know how to market their products and services. They also use charismatic, public-speaking motivation techniques with a marketing-driven theme, triggering your impulse-buying mechanism. At the ballroom's entrance and exit will be a huge display of videotapes and books promising to teach you and your staff how to achieve success within your unique practice. You buy, they profit. When you return to the office on Monday, you refocus on treating your patients and promise yourself to set aside staff meetings to view the videos and discuss the books that were not read. As time passes, your staff will forget about the training videos and from time to time you will think of the money you spent on these materials now collecting dust on the bookshelf.

The “cheerleader” consultant: These consultants provide training sessions designed to motivate your staff. They are full of enthusiasm and really get you and your team fired up. They will implement a monthly bonus system for the staff, based on production, collection or a combination of both. After 30 days the staff will forget 50 percent of what they heard, and at the end of 90 days the training session will be a vague memory. Please refer to my article, You can't buy attitude and behavior!

The “fly girl” consultant: These consultants fly to the city where your practice is located and visit your office for a few days. They diagnose your practice, have meetings with the staff individually and as a group, meet with you to discuss their findings, leave you with their collection of training videos, wish you “Good luck!” and fly off to another city to provide practice management to another dental office. This management program – and I use that term lightly – will cost from $15,000 to $25,000. This style of management creates a management event. Please refer to the Cheerleader and Guru prototype for further instructions.

Cookie-cutter or cookbook management: This program is accompanied by a very thick manual. The consultant has little training other than a background in dentistry. Critical-thinking skills are lost on this consultant. She or he will meet with you and your staff one or two days each month, then introduce your staff to many forms and checklists. Every existing system within your unique practice will change. These consultants will run report after report and plug figures into their laptop computers. You will receive a monthly practice monitor intended to show growth and assure you that practice management is indeed taking place. Your staff will fight or take flight – but don't worry; you still own the cookbook and can train your new staff members, one at a time. Cookie-cutter management costs from $25,000 to $45,000. You will end up throwing the manuals away (just as you did the money spent on this program) and reverting to what was most comfortable and worked in the past. Cookie-cutter programs are not logical for dental practices, but cookie cutters make wonderful batches of cookies for the holidays.

Big-business management: These companies will have you sign a contract for several thousand dollars – maybe as much as $40,000 to $60,000 – covering a specific time. The company will assign you the consultant for your territory without you having met him or her. You will see this consultant on the average of one day (6 hours) per month and participate in telephone consultations with a “practice analyst” every two weeks to discuss your numbers. Your consultant will insist that you purchase the latest and greatest state-of-the-art equipment, used for processing and delivering crowns in one appointment. Imagine the increase in production you will realize! No lab fees! Huge profit margin! Remember to hand your monthly contractual payment to the consultant during his or her monthly visit. These “consultants” are people with dental-hygiene or dental office management experience who attended an intensive 3 – to 4-day training program in cookie-cutter management. They will not deviate from the company program. You likely will work with two or three consultants during your contractual-management program. These consultants are paid a daily fee equal to one-third the fee you paid the big business for practice management. They have a client load of 10 to 12 monthly clients, spend their life “on the road,” quickly burn out and leave the company.

The fireman consultant: These consultants form a needy and parasitic relationship with you. They are vague about what you should do to improve your practice performance. However, each time your level of worry increases and you call, she or he will don a fire hat, grab the hose and attempt to put out the current fire. This type of consulting lasts forever and is a huge financial drain on your business. You have not learned practice-building or problem-solving techniques and probably never will because you are being enabled to continue doing what you have always done. This consultant is the shield between you and your employees.

The away-from-the-office seminars: This program requires shutting down your practice and flying your staff to some major city or boarding a cruise ship. You can write off the travel expense for continuing education. This is a huge “bonus incentive” to your staff for a job well done over the past year. While you were cruising on the high sea for a week, you lost an average of $18,500 in production. This cost is in addition to the course fee of several thousand dollars and the travel and meal expense. You should provide your staff with “spending money” so they may enjoy the vacation. Please refer to the Cheerleader and Guru prototypes for further instruction.

The Ex-Employee Owns His/Her Own Consulting Firm Be very weary of this consultant. He or she may have worked for a large consulting firm for less than a year, and thinks he/she knows it all, so started his/her own consulting firm. He/she took away some forms and other info, but do they really have the knowledge base to meet all the needs required in a full-blown consulting project? Probably not, but they will let you be the guinea pig.

The above styles of practice management promote self-interest on the part of the consultant or company. They seldom will improve your practice or increase your profitability long-term.