Athena Consulting: Dental Practice Solutions

While many consultants will tell you they are “willing to work with orthodontists,” we have a passion for it. Because we have consultants who love “ortho,” we’re very good at it.

A couple of years ago, one of our “ortho” clients told us that “worrying about possibly going bankrupt” in his new practice was “keeping him awake at night.” While our assurances that bankruptcy was not in his future did help, the success of his practice helped even more. He is now so busy he has had to limit his new patient-exams and has been able to shorten his work week to spend more time with his family.

Athena Consulting is one of the few dental-consulting firms that provide complete orthodontic management and training. We have extensive experience that comes from working in orthodontic offices, and we keep up with all the specialty’s latest techniques and philosophies.

We know ortho scheduling, operatory flow, contracts and insurance billing. We’ll help an orthodontist who is just setting up in practice to do it right the first time. We’ll also help an established doctor take a practice to the next level.

New practices

When we work with you as a “new start,” we begin the process by helping find a suitable space with enough room to grow in the future and financing to get the project going. We will attend meetings to map out architecture, construction, equipment and marketing, with suggestions and ideas. Our team will be with you throughout the building process and we’ll be there with you the day you open your doors. Our aim throughout is to see a steady stream of patients flowing seamlessly through an attractive, well-designed environment.

Far from being the end, this is just the beginning. Now comes the intensive systems work to get everything running smoothly:

• We will work with you and your staff to create a schedule that accommodates as many patients as possible while also maintaining the doctor’s sanity. This schedule will be “tweaked” regularly to keep up with the growth of your practice.
• We’ll train front-desk personnel on verbiage and scheduling.
• We’ll work with your financial coordinator to be sure insurances are billed correctly and contracts are all in order.
• We’ll also spend a lot of time with you and your treatment coordinator, getting case presentation polished and case acceptance maximized.
• Because in a new practice one person may wear many hats, we’ll share some tricks we’ve learned over the years to help one or two staff members keep all the balls in the air until the practice has a growth spurt and more staff members come on board.
• Finally, as we do with all our clients, we’ll assist with interviewing, hiring and keeping the team dynamic working smoothly in your office.

Established practices

When working with you as an established doctor, we’ll first do an analysis of your current practice based on scheduling, patient flow, treatment acceptance and much more. We can then discuss your goals for the practice and how to get to the levels you’d like to achieve.

By using a combination of schedule revamping, staff retraining, targeted marketing and doctor education, we can start you working smarter, not harder. We have consultants trained in all aspects of orthodontic office finances, management and growth planning to create a practice plan that will add profit without creating the “3 p.m. chaos.”

Let’s get started!

Athena Consulting has an orthodontic specialty department that is ready and willing to get any orthodontist, at any stage of his or her career, into a more comfortable place. Our goal is for you to sleep well at night, knowing your ortho practice is in great shape – and on track to stay that way.