Athena Consulting: Dental Practice Solutions

My father used to tell me there are three kinds of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what happened.

It's all about change. In dentistry, change is necessary for a practice’s growth, doctor satisfaction, employee satisfaction and a higher profit margin.

Based on years of experience in dental practice management, I believe most dentists “watch things happen.” And yet there is opportunity to grow at a much faster pace, make a strong contribution to our profession, build better business relationships with staff and patients, make more profit and provide the patient with better care than ever.

Strategic skills necessary for change include:

• leadership
• supervision
• communications (interpersonal and public)
• negotiation
• advertising
• marketing
• networking
• financial planning
• customer service

To offer the breadth of skills required takes tremendous resources, yet the need to improve strategic skills is crucial for long-term survival.

To serve the needs of the dental practice, continuing education is key. However, what you learn in that seminar must be taken back to the office and taught to the staff, then implemented and monitored. That last step is where dentists fail most. When they return to the office they find neither time nor resources to do what is required to create lasting change.

The title of this article could as easily have been “Change? You Want ME to Change?” Well, you can change. Here's how:

• Decide, right now, to improve your business.
• Request that your dental consultant complete an in-office diagnostic of your practice.
• Make the commitment to correct the weak areas within your practice.
• Allow your dental consultant to customize a plan that fits the needs of your particular office and staff. (Cookie-cutter management will not work!)
• Make a long-term commitment to your dental consultant and allow him or her to provide you the necessary tools for change and implement them (new systems where or if needed, staff coaching, doctor coaching).
• Stay committed. After the process of making the initial changes, contract with your dental consultant to monitor your practice monthly. If any numbers aren’t where they need to be, your consultant will identify the problem areas and provide what is necessary for correcting them.

Dental practice management can't be addressed by having your staff attend a few motivational management seminars each year. Instead, it should be viewed as a continuing process necessary as long as you own the practice, a tool necessary for keeping your staff current in the administration of the practice and causing the “stickiness” that is so important to create change over the long term.

Stop trying to “reinvent your practice” after every seminar. No one has the time to implement all the pearls of wisdom you learned while there. Just as important as a treatment coordinator, dental asistant and hygienist, a good dental consultant should always be a member of your team.

You can change your world! What type of person do you want to be?