Message Boards
Today's Active Topics Today's Active Cases Browse Forum Categories My Recent Activity My Messages Private Groups My Marked Threads My Subscriptions
Today's Active Images Today's Active Polls Most Active Topics Global Townie Map Advanced Message Board Search Message Board Terms of Use

24 Ways to Pass Go: Keep the Marriage and Money Police at Bay by Douglas Carlsen, DDS

View Comments (47) More by this author (62)

After working with more than 500 dentists since 2007, I’ve found commonalities of personal and practice behavior that can make one’s life a breeze or a tornado. An informal survey showed that few dentists do more than half of these 24 beneficial items. How many of these do you do?

Personal

Home:
  1. Do not engage your computer’s silicon personality unless you have a 15-year old or know what Minecraft and Call of Duty means. Find a geek through a nearby university’s IT department. They love upgrades, glitches and blue screens. Go to any local campus directory, enter “technology support” in the search box, call and inform them of your needs. Expect to pay $50-$75 per hour—it will be the best money ever spent.
  2. Stage home upgrades and major repairs. Two major areas of doctor financial weakness are expensive mortgages and frequent upgrades. Keep expensive projects to no more than 2 percent of your home’s value per year. If you spend $25,000 on a new bathroom for your $600,000 home (4 percent), wait two years to undertake your next project.
  3. Maintain your heater, AC and sewer system. Set up for semi-annual inspections and maintenance for HVAC systems and for annual sewer/septic tank cleanout.
  4. Hire a yard/landscape service unless you love yard work. Doc, you make at least $250 per hour at the office; do not complain about paying the guys $250 per month!
Auto:
  1. Buy reliable if you drive more than 10,000 miles per year. Consumer Reports has yearly data on auto reliability (www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/index.htm). Don’t waste shop downtime on status. Jaguar, no; Acura, yes.
  2. Always receive regular maintenance at 5k or 7.5k miles. This step can save many hours of breakdown headaches and costly repairs.
  3. Hire a great mechanic. Find either through a friend’s referral or through AAA at aaa.com.
Financial:
  1. Know your retirement number. A good approximation can be easily calculated at www.dentaltown.com/ Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=274&aid=3668.
  2. Get organized with a dedicated area for finance in your home with proper files and storage. More information is in my 2012 Dentaltown Magagzine article at www.dentaltown. com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=308&aid=4190.
  3. Go over your retirement accounts yearly with your financial adviser. If self-directed, pay for an annual session with your discount broker.
  4. Talk annually with your spouse or partner about all loans: mortgage, auto, credit card and school loans. Talk logistically about prudent changes. More debt strategies can be found in my 2013 Dentaltown Magazine article at www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=314& aid=4270.
  5. For any purchase more than $1,000, have both you and your spouse approve before purchasing. If you can’t contact that person, wait to buy!
  6. Annually evaluate these problem financial areas (and budget them!):
    • Auto payments
    • Clothing
    • Dining out
    • K-12 private school
    • Home improvements
    • Vacations
For more information on cash flow, go to my January 2013 Dentaltown Magazine article at http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=311

For additional helpful family financial tips, go to LearnVest at http://learnvest.com.

Family Relations:

Having lost a wife to cancer, I know how important it is to show appreciation to family. You may not have another chance.
  1. There is no upper limit to how many “I-love-you’s” are appropriate. Show appreciation to family members just as many times as you pet your critters each day.
  2. Educate your children on your finances. They don’t need to know every loan rate you have, yet the more they know about debt and saving, the less chance they will live with you in their 30s.
  3. Have a “date night” away from the kids. This has been a marriage-saver for many.
  4. Have a “family night” with the whole family. Not only might this improve a marriage, it sometimes promotes teenagers to actually talk.
Office
  1. Meet monthly with your financial staff member to scrutinize:
    • Accounts receivable
    • Insurance payments past due
    • Problem patient accounts
    • Number of new patient exams
This will take an hour. I estimate that 2 percent of all dentists do this. Other than having too many employees, this is the dentist’s major source of lost money. Doctors who have this meeting normally have less than one month’s total AR, collect 98 percent after PPO adjustments and have much less risk of embezzlement.

David Harris, in January 2012 Dental Tribune, said: “There have been several studies by the American Dental Association and others. Collectively they suggest that the probability of a dentist being a fraud victim in his or her career is between 50 and 60 percent. However, such statistics are necessarily low because there is an unquantifiable amount of fraud that is never detected or is detected but not disclosed.”

For late insurance and patient payments, make a definitive plan of action.

New patients are your practice’s lifeblood. If numbers are down, evaluate. If you decide on professional help, consider Scheduling Institute at www.schedulinginstitute.com or hire a practice consultant well versed in the new patient experience.

  1. Monitor supply inventory. Take a look at the Henry Schein Cubix system. It is a high-tech procurement system that monitors electronically. Alternatively, have your equipment supply representative use a bar-code system. Doctors lose thousands of dollars per year on either redundant or out-of-date supplies.
  2. Have your equipment supplier perform monthly maintenance on your compressor, vacuum and dental units. This not only prevents costly down time, it will put you first in line when you need an emergency repair.
  3. Have your computers monitored and protected professionally. Digital Dentist provides an all-in-one solution for your dental office’s IT needs with information back-ups, network security and HIPAA compliance. Go to TheDigitalDentist.com.
  4. Look at the office checkbook. If the end of month balance is gradually going up, your “house” is probably in order. If the balance is stagnant or going down, there’s a leak. Go immediately to your front desk financial person. Have her or him investigate.
  5. Call patients who had more than a simple filling each night. I hated this, yet dutifully performed the task each night at 7 p.m. There were normally three or four calls that took five minutes total. Some docs like to chat, but the patients don’t expect it. The benefits: more referrals and you seldom get calls late at night from your patients of record. In 25 years, I got exactly zero late calls.
  6. As with #14, there is no upper limit to how many “thank-yous” are appropriate in your office. Show appreciation to your patients. Remember, they have a choice of where to spend their money. The most positive experience a dentist can provide a patient comes from painless injections and thank-you’s. It’s amazing how many patients reciprocate kindness.
Add just one of these items to your list and see the difference it makes.

  Author's Bio
Dr. Douglas Carlsen has delivered academic-based financial education since retiring from private practice in 2004 at age 53. He has no connection with any company or individual and speaks his mind freely.

Carlsen is very interested in speaking to your study club! Contact at 760-535-1621 or drcarlsen@gmail.com.

Over 25 videos available: search Dr. Doug Carlsen YouTube. Additional Carlsen Dentaltown articles are at: www.dentaltown.com. Search "Carlsen." Carlsen website is at www.golichcarlsen.com.
Dentaltown Magazine
April 2024
Dentaltown Magazine April 2024 Read Current Issue Read Archived Issues
Sponsors
Townie Perks
Townie® Poll
Does your practice screen for sleep apnea?
  
Site Menu
Message Boards Magazine Continuing Education Podcasts Blogs Classifieds News Events Townie® Poll Ebooks Townie Choice Awards
Company Info
Contact Us Advertise With Us Howard Farran DDS, MBA Policies and Agreements
Site Help
Sally Gross, Member Services Specialist
Phone: +1-480-445-9710
Email: sally@farranmedia.com
©2024 Dentaltown, a division of Farran Media • All Rights Reserved
9633 S. 48th Street Suite 200 • Phoenix, AZ 85044 • Phone:+1-480-598-0001 • Fax:+1-480-598-3450