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What a Semi-Retired Dentist and Practice Management Consultant Can Teach Us About Practice Growth

What a Semi-Retired Dentist and Practice Management Consultant Can Teach Us About Practice Growth

9/19/2017 8:42:27 AM   |   Comments: 0   |   Views: 211
Dr. Stephenson, tell us a little bit about yourself. What is your background?

I have lectured on computers in dentistry since 1986 and as you can imagine, there were not too many computers in dentistry back then. I have always really enjoyed it, and over the years that has morphed into practice management. I semi-retired from dentistry about four years ago and started doing more of the consulting that I had been doing. We specialize in working with practices who are running Open Dental because we have found it to provide much better data than many of the other options.

Having practiced for so many years and consulted with so many practices, you are bound to have a few great tips for practice growth. Can you share a few of those with me?

You know, back when I was in dental school there was a very popular saying. It went something like this, "take care of the patients and the business will take care of itself". While I don't know if that was ever really true, it was definitely more true back then than it is now. My goal now, as a consultant, is to help practice owners create office systems that work with the computer systems, hopefully helping people to see the folly of the mentality mentioned before.

What is your number one tip for growth in new patient acquisition?

We have seen an issue arising with a lot of the dentists that we have worked with. That issue is that dentists, in a lot of instances, are ignoring where new patients are coming from. They think that if they buy a new product they are going to start seeing new patients. The internet has become the number one referral source for new patients in dentistry, there is no question about that, but many dentists feel as though they have been burned by SEO companies in the past. This comes from a lack of understanding and a lack of paying attention to what is going on. 

I always tell clients to Google the number one practice in their city and start doing what they are doing, or find someone who can help you do that. Why re-invent the wheel?

Make a nice site, drive traffic to the site through your newsletter, pay for adwords if that makes sense for you, post compelling content and drive people to it through getting links. Just try to do what the top person in your city is doing.

Now give us your best tip for practice growth by way of income, or is that the same?

Those are not the same in most cases. If you are looking at income growth, it would be a good idea to start with attrition. We see a lot of practices focusing on new patients, while their practice is shrinking by a large number of patients per month. Even in well run practices, we see a lot of patients going out the back door. That is kind of the flip side of new patients.

The next suspect would be case acceptance followed by fee schedules. These are areas that many dentists just glance over because they think their fee schedules are good, and because they don't feel like they need to focus on case acceptance because they don't want to be "salesy".

Once those things are in-place I would take a look at the mix of services. Add in some things that are easy to add and that are profitable for the practice. Think about things like Invisalign and same-day dentistry. Those things can add a lot to the bottom line.

If you were to start again, knowing what you do from your years of practice and consulting, how would you do it?

I would start from scratch so that I would not inherit a bunch of bad legacy systems. I see that holding a lot of practices back. They have been taught by someone who was taught by someone else and so on... Unfortunately those systems are not always correct and are hard to unlearn. So I would start from scratch and invest in advanced technology. I would build new patient flow by building my online presence and by adding a few other marketing services in where they were applicable. I probably wouldn't get equipment that was very expensive and required additional training right out the gate, but I would invest in being able to provide same-day dentistry from day one. Dr. Stephenson, thanks for your time today! It was fun to sit down and learn from a veteran in the industry like yourself! If people have questions for you, how is the best way for them to get in touch with you? If people would like to get to know a little bit more about me, they can check out my dental practice website at https://brucestephensondds.com/. If they are interested in finding out more about our consulting services and are currently using Open Dental, they can find out more at http://todaysdentalconsulting.com/
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