Money

As a rule of thumb, a general dental practice should spend 59% of its revenue on overhead, says Dr. Roger Levin.

You don’t want to be in the position of the New York dentist who was fined more than $5,000 for failing to present proper I-9 forms for employees at his dental office.

Worried? Frustrated? Overwhelmed? Immobilized? You may have had one or several of these reactions to the economic downturn of the past few years or as you think about selling your practice in the next few years. You might be asking what your next steps should be. Maybe you don’t have a financial advisor, or if you do, you might wonder if your current plan-or advisor-is really the best for you.

A conservative investment plan - paying excellent returns in good years and weathering not-so-bad losses in bad years - will serve dentists well, says Dr. Roger Levin.

Attrition is devastating to a practice, and not for the reason most practitioners think. Many assume that they are only losing revenue from one patient, and that there is always another new patient around the corner to make up the difference. However, loss of patients not only results in revenue loss but also in added expenses in marketing and onboarding new patients so the practice can maintain patient flow.

Why would a five-provider dental practice throw away over $300,000 in state subsidies that they were eligible to receive? Probably because they weren't aware of a federal program administered by individual states that has been around for five years now and has distributed over $30 billion to mostly medical practices while many dental practices have stood on the sideline.

It seems almost every day patients leave the practice to “think about” needed dentistry. Patients’ Path to Dental Care Purchases study surveyed patients who had made, or were planning to make, a dental care purchase that required an out-of-pocket investment. The study findings can provide insight into patients’ decision-making process and how dental teams can help patients accept needed dentistry without delay.

This article will discuss national trends such as average gross revenue and collections in private dental practices, focusing on the widening gap between the revenue due and the actual dollar amount that is collected by the practice for services and products.

Because each dental practice is unique in how and where they are located and plans can vary widely in fee schedules, it is difficult to understand when plans are negatively affecting your patients and your practice.

The rule does not apply to dentists, but it may apply to dental practice office managers and dental hygienists.

Dentistry is a competitive field. If you want your practice to thrive so that you can enjoy your career and retire comfortably, it’s not enough to go with the flow. You need to take concrete steps to ensure the success of your dental practice.

In explaining a pretax transition, it is important to understand that there are really two types of dental practice transitions. The author explains.

Once you begin taking steps toward improvement within your dental practice, you can start keeping your profits in your practice and out of the toilet. Here are six ways to do that.

Dentistry is a competitive field. If you want your practice to thrive so that you can enjoy your career and retire comfortably, it’s not enough to go with the flow. You need to take concrete steps to ensure the success of your dental practice.

Lisa Marie Spradley, the 2014 Office Manager of the Year, has some words of advice on dental fees and the role of the dental office manager in setting them.

Tax extenders! They have been in the news every year since the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and various other tax and economic stimulus packages. Without the passage of tax extenders in recent years, dentists would have had higher taxes. These temporary tax provisions expired at the end of 2014 but, as expected, new tax extender legislation has been passed.

No one has their finger on the pulse of coding changes that will affect your practice more than Teresa Duncan. She stops by to tell us what tweaks have been made that will affect your business.

By using the techniques that I outlined in my book Grow Your Dental Practice with Wine and Cheese, I saw incredible growth in my practice. I sold over 950 plans over a two year period. Between the plans themselves and additional expenditures from plan members during those two years, I earned an additional 1.49 million dollars. My receipts grew by 45 percent a year for two years running. That’s an incredible rate of growth, and I only spent $130 and one hour a month to get it.

After a death, the transition from the seller’s side is a very emotional, disheartening and financially upsetting circumstance. The spouse of the deceased dentist was probably used to a very solid financial perspective and many times did not know what was occurring in the dental practice.

Billions of dollars in dental insurance benefits are left unused every year. These benefits can be used for both general maintenance care as well as dental procedures, like root canals or emergency procedures. According to Forbes, only three percent of patients use all of their dental benefits annually, indicating that there is a significant dollar amount of benefits left untapped at the end of December.

Teresa Duncan, insurance editor for Dental Products Report, offers advice on how to lower some of the pain that dental insurance causes for so many practices.

We sit down with Vijay Sikka of Sikka Software to discuss trends in dental fees and what dentists need to know heading into 2016.

Money can be mysterious and can also be the source of stress in your practice. How you manage money has a direct impact on your ability to serve your patients’ oral health needs.

There is a list of examples that will be addressed to explain the importance of compensation studies for the dental practice. Just like the importance of a written agreement when two or more partners exist in a dental practice to detail the role of each partner, among other things, compensation can become a disagreeable topic when the focus is after a dental practice is in full operating mode.

Some of us plan better than others. Some of us save better than others. In my years in dental practice, I knew 3 types of dentists.

As the holidays approach and the calendar year comes to a close, one word begins entering conversation: bonuses.

Dental technology and the material sciences are advancing at a rate never before experienced by the dental industry. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the average practitioner to understand and appreciate all the new “stuff” that has been developed and introduced to dentistry over the past 10 years. Things that not too long ago seemed like science fiction have now become reality.

Sikka Software is a twelve-year-old company in the dental industry that provides apps to optimize the dental businesses. In this article, Sikka Software President and CEO Vijay Sikka outlines a recent study examining the average patient cost per practice.