Practice Management

Every patient-practice interaction represents a chance to motivate and educate patients. Unfortunately, many dental offices haven’t written scripts for these conversations, and significant marketing and customer service opportunities are lost as a result.

Stress is so prevalent for practice owners and teams, you may think it’s an unavoidable occupational hazard. In fact, though it can’t be eliminated completely-there will always be “challenging” days at the office-you can radically reduce stress and the negative feelings, fatigue and general dissatisfaction it can cause.

As a private-practice owner, you may not think you can learn much from the companies on Fortune’s 2015 World’s Most Admired Companies list. After all, they’re big – really big. So how can anything done by these super-sized, wildly successful, profitable companies possibly be relevant to a small or mid-sized dental practice in Smallville, USA?

Dental team members are paid to perform daily, correct? So how do you balance the employee engagement with the accountability each day to the numbers and the goals of the practice? Dr. Tarun Agarwal explains.

Canadian dentists continue to increase their use of social media to promote their dental practices, according to results from the DIAC (Dental Industry Association of Canada) Twentieth Annual Future of Dentistry Survey.

Knowing about goodwill and the necessary attributes for the dentist's practice valuation can be critical in a divorce.

Eight strategies that have helped dentists maximize their income and reduce taxes, in addition to other expenses. This in return allows additional monies to be working for them and their families.

It is typical in a dental office that when we hire a new employee at the front desk, they start by answering the phones for the office. Really, when looking at it from the dentist’s perspective, that is the easiest thing to start with, right? That definitely seems to make sense, but frankly, that is one of the worst things you can do for your office with a new employee.

Dentists require a team of staff members to serve the needs of the patient. When everyone is busy, working together, there is room for conflict to arise.

Based on his extensive experience with dentists over the past 30 years, Dr. Roger P. Levin has authored a new book entitled The 31 Biggest Mistakes Dentists Make. His premise is simple. As he says in the introduction, “We can learn from our mistakes. But isn’t it better to learn from other people’s mistakes?”

Incorporating videos into your dental practice’s website, social media and online presence can bring big returns.

Search engine optimization is more important than ever. Here are 6 ways to make sure your site stands out.

The new database is designed to save dentists time and money when dealing with insurance companies.

External marketing may work for some dental practices, but oftentimes the ROI isn't worth the effort. See how internal marketing can be a lot more effective - and much less expensive.

A dental practice employee embezzles greedily from her employers. Why did she do it, and how can dentists ensure it doesn't happen to them?

Here are some of the highlights of this year’s conference to use as you plan your trip to Boca Raton, Florida, for this year's AADOM gathering.

External marketing may work for some dental practices, but oftentimes the ROI isn't worth the effort. See how internal marketing can be a lot more effective - and much less expensive.

In previous articles in this series, we have explored many of the HIPAA rules and regulations that affect dental practices. While many of these involves areas familiar to dentists, such as data backup and antivirus software, a number are less well-known, but just as critical. One of this is something called patch management.

Why on Earth do we love to give scripts to our team members and then freak out when they freeze on the phone? How skipping the script can help your team members thrive and adapt in a real conversation.

Why on Earth do we love to give scrips to our team members and then freak out when they freeze on the phone? How skipping the script can help your team members thrive and adapt in a real conversation.

Bullying. We hear so much about it in the news today. It's no longer the mean boys that beat up kids for their lunch money or even the mean girls that don't invite other girls to the mall.

As is true with all businesses, reputation is everything. Your practice’s reputation is worth fighting for and investing in. You work hard to build up your practice when you first begin in this industry, but you need to work even harder to maintain the reputation that brings you a consistent patient base and exceptional staff.

Let’s face it, even with the ease of the internet, new patients want to speak with a live person. They want to know what to expect, what insurance you accept, how long it will take, etc. So they pick up the phone and call.

Remember the Skeleton Dance? You know: the foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone, the ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone... Many of us learned it in school to help illustrate how the parts of our body work together to function. This song, with just a few changes, can just as well apply to your dental practice, the telephone’s connected to the appointment book, the appointment book’s connected to the daily production, the daily production is connected to the net income…

It’s true – there’s no stopping the passage of time, but there’s got to be a way to get it on your side. As practice administrator, the clock can be a fierce taskmaster and is hardly your best friend. Sometimes things go wrong and difficult situations occur in even the most efficient practices, but the test is not what will go wrong. It’s how we handle these challenges.

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.

Aside from on-the-fly training and “shadowing” during working hours, few dentists make a strong commitment to providing training to help administrative team members perform better, says Dr. Roger Levin.

Novonee.com, founded by Dayna Johnson, is the first digital community of its kind dedicated strictly to Dentrix® users.

As a dentist you regularly interface with your patients and your community, making you a public figure and the target of online and offline discussion. How patients discuss you, in a good or bad light, can be strongly influenced by you and your team. In essence, much of their opinion of you is shaped by how you present yourself and your practice - and whether they agree that you live up to those expectations.

Carestream Dental has launched eConnections, an all-in-one solution to help oral health care professionals manage, market and grow their practices.