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Professional Courtesy Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

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The Dental Harvest is Coming
– by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, Editorial Director, Dentaltown Magazine

Congratulations! You made it through 2010. We are all tired of hearing about the struggling economy, high unemployment and nonsensical political bickering in Washington, DC, but we must not put our heads in the sand. Count your blessings that dentistry is depression-resistant or recession-proof, whichever you prefer. If you are like me, you have been careful with expenses during the slow time and you might have some money saved to purchase a piece of equipment, update the décor in your office or take a CE course to start 2011.

Here are some other suggestions to be sure you check off your list at the end of the year:
  • Did you take the time to reactivate patients?
  • Are you providing follow-up on treatment plans?
  • Have you started to make care calls again?
  • Is your team well trained on all aspects of your software system?
  • Have you reviewed numbers and goals from 2010?
  • Have you set your 2011 goals?
  • Have you added a new service to your practice?
  • Have you evaluated your online presence beyond a practice Web site?
  • What can you do electronically that you are currently doing with paper? These changes are best accomplished in increments.
  • Have you taken the time to sit down and write a personal note to each member of your team?
  • Have you spent time on Dentaltown.com reading and sharing with your colleagues?
Next, I want you to read the following passage taken from the pages The New Yorker magazine. Keep it under your pillow and read it every night.

Tiny signs of prosperity's return occasionally thrust upward through the earth, like crocus spears. We are always down on hands and knees, cheering them on. The one we found in the garden of our experience last week was pointed out to us by a dentist. He told us, gleefully, that hard times are over for dentists. Their impoverished customers, who have stayed away, gritting their defective teeth and praying that the market would get better, are able to stay away no longer. They are coming back to the chair in droves, with twice as much dentistry work to be done as they would have had if they'd made their regular once-every-six-months visit. The drills have started drilling again, and there is hardly enough gold in the land to make the inlays that are going into the nation's teeth. It is a harvest for the dentists, and – what's the old phrase? – as dentists go, so goes Wall Street.

It is difficult to know what the exact status of the stock market will be by the time this issue is in your hands. We have just finished a midterm election in this country and we are waiting for the Santa Claus effect to take hold on Wall Street. Let's hope those positive words from The New Yorker will ring true in 2011.

One final note before you rush off to prepare for the winter holidays, the words above, written by E. B. White, first appeared in The New Yorker on July 18, 1931 – roughly 21 months after the beginning of the Great Depression. Sweet dreams!

Have a compliment to share? Send it to: tom@dentaltown.com
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