Chicago Midwinter Meeting: 7 Promising Practice Management Classes

It’s almost that time of year again. The Chicago Dental Society’s 2017 Midwinter Meeting is almost upon us. This year’s Meeting is shaping up to be an enlightening event for the business-minded dentist.

The theme for this year’s meeting, now in its 152nd year, will be “Leadership: Cornerstone for Success.” A new meeting feature are three all-day learning tracks. The conference kicks off with a learning track on the Business of Dentistry on Thursday. Friday's learning track will be The Basics Express: Things They Didn't Teach You in Dental School. The meeting will close on Saturday with A Day in the Life of the Female Dental Professional. Conference organizers have brought back live patient demonstrations this year and are offering attendees a virtual trade show bag containing offers from exhibitors. Dentist's Money Digest will be on site to bring you continuing education coverage and video interviews with experts.

Since we tend to be more than a little dental-business obsessed, we’ll be covering many practice-management sessions. If you’re still on the fence about which sessions to attend, these might be of interest if you’re looking to elevate your practice.

The Chicago Dental Society Midwinter Meeting

Feb. 23-25

McCormick Place West

Chicago, Illinois

1. Empower Your Practice: Know Your Numbers: Thursday, Feb. 23, 9-10 a.m. This session looks to give you a better understanding of what performance indicators to consider when evaluating your practice’s productivity. The lecturers will provide guidance on increasing collections and lowering accounts receivable.

2. Your Image/Your Brand/Your Success: Getting Referrals: Thursday, Feb. 23, 11-12 a.m. As you know, dentistry is a referral-driven business. Generating referrals can be a subtle business. It involves not just what you say and do, but how you communicate. This session will offer practical tips on body language in addition to strategies for branding and social media.

3. Drama Queens, Pot Stirrers and Problem Makers: Transform Toxic Attitudes to Tremendous Attitudes: Thursday, Feb. 23, 2-3 p.m. It’s a safe bet that every practice has at least one problematic employee. But how do you deal with them? Moreover, how do you transform them into a contributing member of the team? This session looks to offer answers.

4. Get Out There, Be Your Own Boss: Friday, Feb. 24, 9-10 a.m. Say you just made it out of dental school and you’re thinking about buying your own practice. This session will offer insights regarding what worked for dentists when they decided to make the switch to private practice. Dental school, unfortunately, does not prepare you for being a small-business owner.

5. Dentistry is a Business and You’re the Team Leader: Friday, Feb. 24, 10-11 a.m. This course should be a useful reminder for established, practice-owning dentists. As much as you’d like, you can’t just do dentistry alone. You need to run your business. This means you need to be a leader — not something you can learn overnight. But, this session should offer you a blueprint of where to begin.

6. Visionary Leaders Embrace Art & Science of Inspiring Change: Saturday, Feb. 25, 8-11 a.m. Do you see yourself as the CEO, the leader, of your dental practice? You should. It’s up to you to inspire your team members to lead up and down the chain of command. This session will give you the skills “to coach, educate team members in order to inspire self-direction and top performance.”

7. Unlimited New Dental Patients: Marketing to Create a Super General Dental Practice: Saturday, Feb. 25, 12:30-3:30 p.m. According to the speaker, Michael Abernathy, DDS, corporate dentistry and increased dentist to population ratios are making finding and retaining dental patients critical to succeed. The session will “help you create a faucet of new patients.”