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Howard Speaks Howard Farran, DDS MBA, MAGD Publisher, Dentaltown Magazine

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Become an Economic Five-star General

Howard Farran, DDS
MBA, MAGD
Publisher,
Dentaltown Magazine
 If it weren’t for World War II, you never would have known who General George Patton or General Douglas MacArthur were. Both men were nobodies until the start of World War II. Both served so exceptionally that they were awarded as Five Star Generals. Both Patton and MacArthur rose to the occasion and reached their destinies because of the gravity of their situation.

We are presumably riding out the tail end of the biggest economic recession in the last 50 years. Whether or not you can steer yourself and your practice out of this recession will speak volumes about your economic intellectual capacity for all time. How does this economic threat affect you? Is your practice down? What is your battle plan? Right now is your time to prove to yourself that you can be an economic five-star general!

What can you do to cut costs? Did you know that the fastest way to cut costs is payroll? Do you need everyone on your team or are you subsidizing people for no reason at all. As Rick Kushner, DDS, would say, “It’s time to get mean and lean!” Did you know one of the fastest ways to decrease your overhead is to nail your collection policy up on the wall? At McDonalds you ask for a Big Mac. They then ask you for $2.50. You pay the $2.50 and then you get your burger. So why is it at your office you have to beg for $2.50 at the end of the procedure and they don’t pay? You then spend hours working the accounts receivables, at $10 per statement, begging for money, which they never pay. If you cannot collect your money at the time of services, then you aren’t behaving like a five-star general!

The other great way to decrease your costs is by producing more dentistry per hour. Who cares if you are a fee-for-service practice and get $1,100 for a crown? If it takes you an hour and a half to do it, you could have signed up for a PPO and received $750 for a crown but have it done in 30 minutes! The PPO king at 30 minutes is far more profitable than the dentist who charges $1,100 a crown that takes an hour and a half to do!

What are you doing clinically to produce faster? Do you pack your cord prior to the crown prep to push the gums down and out to prevent nicking the gingival tissue, or do you knick the tissue and then pack cord and spend 20 minutes controlling the bleeding?

Do you do all porcelain restorations so that at the cementation you spend 30 minutes bonding the restoration with numbing the tooth, packing cord, placing a rubber dam or do you do porcelain to gold like Captek where you can cement it in 15 minutes with 3M Vitremer?
Howard Live

Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, is an international speaker who has written dozens of published articles. To schedule Howard to speak to your next national, state or local dental meeting, email colleen@farranmedia.com.

Dr. Farran’s next speaking engagement is October 3-4, at the ADA Annual Session in Honolulu, Hawaii. For more information, please call Colleen at 480-718-9914.

Seminars 2009
September 18 • Fort Worth, TX
AGD Fort Worth
www.tagd.org
817-924-1111

September 22 • Iselin, NJ
Asteto Dental Lab
www.asteto.com
559-438-7284

September 23 • New York, NY
Dental Resource Alliance
973-812-2188

September 25 • Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Nova Southeastern University
www.dental.nova.edu/ce
954-262-5327

October 3 & 4 • Honolulu, HI
ADA Annual Session
www.ada.org

October 22 • Ann Arbor, MI
University of Michigan
dobracki@umich.edu
Keith Dobracki-Sr. Dental Student

October 24 • Naples, FL
The Dentist's Wife
727-667-6945
liz@thedentistswife.com

October 31 • Fort Wayne, IN
Mid-west Oral Surgery
Melissa Collins
800-869-7302

November 6 • Williamsburg, VA
Virginia Academy of Dentistry
Frances Kimbrough
804-320-8803

November 13 • Concord, NH
New Hampshire Dental Society
www.nhds.org
603-225-5961

Are you ready to “rev up your marketing” as Mike Barr, DDS, would say at www.revupmymarketing.com? Have you tried direct mail to bring in more new patients? Have you updated your Web site recently? Does your site have search optimization? Your new patient flow is down so what are you going to do about it? Sit on your hands? Whine about the economy? Or are you going to rise to the occasion like Patton and MacArthur and rev up your marketing both online and via direct mail?

What about your location? I own a free-standing building right next door to Safeway, Walgreens, Chase bank, Pizza Hut and a tanning salon. We get nearly two walk-ins per day just because people see our sign! How many walk-ins per day does your location get? Are you on the second floor of a medical dental building? If so, how many walk-ins have you gotten? This is the best time in 75 years to buy real estate. Maybe you should take advantage of this downturn and move to a hot location!

Are you dotting all your “I”s and crossing all your “T”s? Everyone from Tucson to Timbuktu knows that you are supposed to call all your patients the evening of the day you worked on them. Are you personally doing all your “we-care” calls? Why not? You know you should. We are in a recession, man! You’ve got to do this! You need all the word-of-mouth referrals you can get!

What about patients who get a $2,500+ treatment plan and then don’t schedule for treatment when they leave. In good times, who cares? During a recession you have to follow up on this! When this happens at my office, our treatment coordinator follows up with the patient. If they have concerns about their treatment, we ask if they would like to speak to the doctor. Nine times out of 10, they are so impressed with our follow up that they schedule that day!

Are you taking emergencies? How long does it take to meet a patient at your office and hook the fish? You don’t need to cook, clean and eat it – just hook it. I live 1.4 miles from my office. It takes me all of six minutes to drive down there to meet an emergency. Prescribe a little something for pain or infection and you have a patient for life.

Do you have an extra operatory that no one is scheduled in for emergencies? I know you love Mrs. Jones who comes in every three months, flosses twice a day, and hasn’t had a cavity in 20 years. The truth of the matter is that you lose $20 every time you see her. You want Mr. Smith who hasn’t been to the dental office in more than a decade. This guy needs perio, endo, prostho, restorative and every other thing you can imagine. This is why we have an emergency room that no one ever schedules so that we can work in an emergency case two or three times a day. We might not always do the treatment if our schedule is full, but you can certainly see these patients and then schedule him or her at a later date to do all of the dentistry.

What about adding new products and services? What are you referring out and why? If you want to plan your continuing education budget, then base it on supply and demand. Why aren’t you doing endo? Why aren’t you doing extractions? Why aren’t you removing wisdom teeth? Are you telling me you can’t do a free gingival graft or a crown lengthening procedure? What about pedo?! You yourself have children at home, doc, and you can’t treat them?!

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; you only manage three things: people, time and money. Business only has three functions: you make something, you sell something and you watch the numbers. This is as bad as it is going to get. So stand up and rise to the occasion and prove that you are the real deal. Manage your people, be faster with your times, watch the money closer than ever. You need to make something, so add more products and services to your arsenal, sell something better with better chairside manner, and again watch the numbers. And last but not least, achieve your final destiny!
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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