Practice Management

Everyone is talking about it: Social Media. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, and from YouTube to the blogosphere, it’s difficult for the dental team to know what’s relevant, where to start, and how it’s ultimately going to improve the practice’s bottom line. It’s important and almost impossible to fathom the size of the opportunity and to grasp just how many new patients you stand to lose by not joining the conversation.

The number of patients seeking therapy for snoring and sleep apnea has increased by 60% in the past decade, making sleep dentistry a profitable new practice driver for doctors and one of the fastest growing segments in dentistry today. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, oral appliance therapy is first line treatment for snoring and mild to moderate sleep apnea.

A hygienist lays out many of the frustrations dental professionals and their patients face when it comes to dental insurance. Editor’s Note: The opinions reflected in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the editorial staff of Modern Hygienist and Dental Products Report. Photo: Getty Images Dear Sir,

November 3, 2010 | dentalproductsreport.com

Have you ever heard of the Institute for Oral Health? This organization identifies best practices in oral health and then encourages collaboration between dental insurance companies, physicians, dentists (private practice, academia and public health) and researchers to benefit the public and the profession. This year’s annual conference theme was on preventive dentistry and I was lucky to attend.

Fred Joyal is CEO of 1?800-DENTIST and author of Everything is Marketing: The Ultimate Strategy for Dental Practice Growth. He can be reached at goaskfred.com.

For more than 50 years dental laboratories have worked hard to differentiate their individual laboratory from the masses. In the early 1960s porcelain fused to metal restorations were just beginning to “come of age” and a few smart dental laboratories took advantage of this new technique to try to stand out from the crowd. There have been other techniques, materials and product/service innovations that laboratories have used over the years to try and gain a competitive advantage in an industry where everyone offers the same types of products and services.

Now that you have your team in place, your next step is to find the dental practice. There are practices for sale throughout the country but the pricing is now increasing due to a number of factors such as the economy and the fact that dental practices are very stable financially so that dentists are not selling as readily as in the past. Many dentists have lost considerable money in their retirement plans and also can not afford to retire for that reason as well since their savings have been depleted.

You have effectively worked to keep your costs as low as they can possibly be. Your ability to use home equity lines at cheap rates have allowed you to save substantial money when borrowing for your practice needs rather than using commercial bank rates and terms for the practice.

Dr. William Twohig comes from a family with medical background that runs deep. His father was a physician and instilled in him open-mindedness and forward thinking. Soon after he began his dental practice he considered looking into methods that were unconventional in dentistry, and has maintained a “thinking outside the box” mentality throughout his career. Dr.

While advances in technology have dramatically changed the way lab technicians and dentists communicate and work together, and how and who is fabricating restorations, more changes are just around the corner.

Recent developments and enhancements to the components of the solution allow Delcam to offer a complete implantology system. The system includes the tools and software needed through the complete process. It supports the design of custom abutments to implant bridges and dental bars with a management system to track each stage of the process.

It’s 2010, and it’s official. With the advent of the new year, we also face an intriguing new tax-planning option, one that offers us both opportunities and challenges, especially during 2010–2112. It’s the arrival of new IRA-to-Roth-IRA conversion rules. Now that they’re here, it’s worth taking a bit of time from the bench to consider what they mean to you, your wealth, and your retirement and estate planning needs.

Online marketing is becoming essential for many small businesses. Patients increasingly turn to the Internet to seek and connect with service providers. The dental market has gone digital, with leading practices developing a Web presence via websites and social media initiatives. This shift has made the Internet a more crowded and competitive space for practices. Increasingly dentists and specialists are implementing sophisticated online promotion advertising to fortify their search engine visibility.

You can’t talk strategic planning without talking statistical interpretation of success, and you can’t talk statistics all by yourself. In the small business of dentistry, it is essential to keep the staff educated and engaged in your vision, values and strategies. That requires forwarding the concept of open book management as a key practice management tool. An open book? Open book management is when businesses share key financial and strategic details with employees. 

A competitive business environment and the ongoing down economy have forced more and more companies to seek out new and better marketing alternatives. There is an increasing trend to use social networking as an affordable way to connect with customers and attract new ones as well.

You don’t come to your choice of dental materials lightly. Creating restorations that you can be proud of and that your patients will love are a priority. With all the research that goes into choosing the materials we use, how often do we share that information with patients? They may not care about all the science, but translating that data so that we demonstrate this value to patients is a vital part of gaining case acceptance.

How many times have you woken from a sound sleep, with an employee’s performance issue weighing on you? As your heart races, you think dark thoughts-She hates me! He needs a therapist! There’s nothing I can do! I’ll just have to live with the problem until I sell the practice! This is an example of “stinking thinking” because it doesn’t give the leader any options to upgrade performance and doesn’t allow the team member the benefit of being coached to new levels of success.

Information provided by Delcam North America. DentCAD is a computer-aided 3D design module for the fast and accurate creation of dental restorations. In addition to new libraries of teeth and implants, the 2011 DentCAD design software includes a module to check that connections are aligned correctly, smoother shapes for custom abutments,

January 7, 2010 | dentalproductsreport.com News XL Insurance and Dentists National Insurance Group announce agreement to provide E&O program for dentists  EXTON, Pa., and CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- XL Insurance, the global insurance operations of XL Capital Ltd. ( XL), today announced a new underwriting agreement with Dentists National Insurance Group of Coral Springs, Florida, to provide a comprehensive dentists' errors & omissions (E&O) insurance program.

Photo:  Somos/Veer/Getty Images

If you think your current level of attention to the needs of your patients, both current and prospective is 'good enough,' think again.

1. With its ability to surround your patients-whether seated or reclined-with digital media, the Flexview HD media delivery system gives your practice a “wow” effect patients are sure to remember. 2. Designed to make the most of your intraoral cameras, digital x-ray systems and software, the crystal-clear Samsung monitor shows patients-in high definition-everything you want them to see.

Dental assistant tops the list as the best job for people under 25 years old. Entailing the preparation of dental patients and dental equipment and keeping track of inventory and medical records, the position is expected to grow 35.7% and has 16,100 openings each year.

Provides dentists with an effective, easy-to-use and more affordable option in clear aligner therapy. Provides patients with an easy, cosmetically appealing alternative to traditional braces. Phase-based delivery system makes it easy to track movements and make corrections, which leads to successful treatments and happier patients.

If I took an educated guess on what topics the majority of The Pride Institute’s phone calls for “help” were based on, I would have to say half of the calls are from hygienists who feel under appreciated, undervalued and underused, while the other half come from dentists who are, quite frankly, a little anxious about their relationship with their hygienist(s). Considering the No. 1 secret to succeeding in these challenging times is a modern, interactive hygiene experience, we need to get to the bottom of what seems to cause frustration for the key players involved in continuing care.

MELVILLE, N.Y., July 13, 2011-Dental Products Report-Henry Schein, Inc. (NASDAQ: HSIC), the largest provider of health care products and services to office-based practitioners, and the Henry Schein Cares Foundation, Inc., announced today a contribution of more than $375,000 in financial and product donations to help provide health care to those who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, flood in Australia, earthquake in New Zealand, and tornadoes in the United States.

There are an overwhelming number of studies showing that your oral health is related to your body’s overall health. If your mouth isn’t healthy, you may be twice as likely to die from a heart attack, three times as likely to die from a stroke and even four to seven times more likely to die if you have diabetes. Additionally, you may be 63% more likely to develop pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Clearly oral health (or lack thereof) has life and death consequences.

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When considering the digital technology that exists today, it’s not hard to imagine a dental lab looking a lot more like a cubicle in a typical office with just a computer and a scanner as the only tools occupying the desktop.