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Get Educated About Practice Management: Consider This Your Wake-up Call by Gordon F. Osterhaus Jr., DDS

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Get Educated About Practice Management
Consider This Your Wake-up Call

by Gordon F. Osterhaus Jr., DDS

When I opened my dental office in 1980, I made a lot of mistakes and cursed the fact that business training wasn’t available as part of my dental curriculum. But like many of my colleagues, I got through the ordeal, recovered from my blunders, and moved on. I was able to regroup because at that time my school debt was relatively low, as was the cost to start up a new dental office. Today, the stakes have risen dramatically. The majority of dental students graduate with six-figure debts, and the cost to build a new dental facility, due to the complexity of the digital age, is much more expensive. Today’s young dentists have less financial leeway than I did when it comes to making mistakes during a new office start-up. Yet for all the risks of starting a new office, training in how to do so is still ignored in dental school.

Dentists must realize there are inherent flaws built into the process of new dental office development, flaws that have been repeated and reinforced for years. It is imperative that anyone contemplating a new office have a clear understanding of every aspect of this process in order to hold any hope of completing the project on time, and most important, on budget. The planning, coordination and supervision of a new dental office start-up is very dangerous to leave in the hands of an inexperienced and untrained dentist!

A dentist would never dream of purchasing a vacation cruise without scouring the Internet to research cost comparisons, ship amenities and ports-of-call options, in order to maximize leisure time and discretionary vacation dollars. Yet many dentists approach the new dental office arena without undertaking any research or formulating even a rudimentary plan. Instead, they elect to take what seems like the easy way out and place all their trust in a group of vendors who don’t necessarily hold the dentist’s best interests at heart. This approach often results in some very expensive lessons learned in the school of hard knocks.

Given their post-graduation financial situation, it is understandable that dentists often shop all over town, searching for the cheapest pricing when hiring a team of vendors to build out their new office. What dentists must understand is that this lowest-price approach generally results in a lower level of customer service from such vendors, resulting in cost overruns that grossly exceed their original estimates. There are areas in new dental office development where you need to spend money, and areas where you can cut back. The key to success is becoming a student of the process and acquiring the knowledge necessary to control all the variables.

The reason many dentists choose this path is because, in the past, it was difficult to find any reliable information regarding the construction or relocation of a new dental office. Sadly, new dental office development is only one of many business challenges facing young dentists today, where the lack of formal practice management training has left them hung out to dry. Fortunately, our profession as a whole is slowly but surely responding to the need for further practice management training, in order to supplement what hasn’t been adequately addressed in our dental schools. This type of training must not only encompass all dental career opportunity choices, but also teach how to sustain one’s chosen path toward a long and successful career.

There is a wealth of untapped experts in the field of dental practice management. Our profession needs to do a better job of coordinating and combining this expertise, whether via the dental literature or hands-on practice management courses, to make knowledge readily available for interested dentists to pursue. The encouraging news is that at the national level, the American Dental Association (ADA) is beginning to respond to the pleas from both the leaders of the American Student Dental Association (ASDA), and current ADA members, in regard to this dilemma. A few state dental associations are responding by coordinating the efforts of their New Dentist Committee and Council on Dental Practice to develop much needed practice management programs. A number of dental schools are also responding to this need by developing similar programs available either within their current curriculum, or through post-graduate continuing education programs.

Granted, the development of these new practice management programs is in its infancy. As a profession, we still have a long way to go before adequate courses are available to effectively bridge the current gap that exists between a dentist’s clinical and business training. The new generation of dentists and dental students is going to have to continue its push for reform at the national, state and university levels, to make the dream of readily available, high quality business management education become a reality. Simply stated, dentists need to be better prepared to handle the business challenges that lie ahead of them.

Where does that leave a young dentist, now, caught between the past and the future in regard to practice management training? Consider this: Our country is filled with successful business entrepreneurs who never had the grades required, or the means available, to pursue any type of formal collegiate training. Yet they succeeded by rolling up their sleeves and becoming students of the game, through persistent self-study, hard work and determination. This is the path you must take.

Consider this your wake-up call! Are you going to repeatedly hit the snooze button, or are you going to jump out of bed and grab the proverbial bull by the horns? There are new books now available in dental literature that address some of these topics. Call the ADA library or check the ADA Product Catalog to assess currently available practice management topics. Unprecedented comprehensive practice management courses are now being developed that offer the training needed to successfully pursue any dental career opportunity. Check with your state dental association or local dental schools to see if one of these courses is available. If not, hop on a plane and attend such a course offered elsewhere. The ball is now in your court – you must take the initiative to search out for any currently available resources and take full advantage of them. The level of success you achieve throughout the rest of your career may very well depend on it.

Author's Bio
Gordon F. Osterhaus Jr., earned his DDS from the University of Illinois at Chicago and completed a general practice residency at the Illinois Masonic Hospital, Chicago. He practiced general dentistry for 20 years in Glendale, Arizona. Gordon subsequently gained extensive experience in dental equipment sales, which inspired a career in new dental office project management. To date, Gordon has overseen the development of 80 new offices.

A member of the Arizona Dental Association (AzDA) since 1978, Gordon was co-developer and longtime chair of the AzDA Associate Placement Program. He won AzDA’s President’s Award for Leadership in 2005. Gordon also has been widely recognized for his philanthropy. He received the 2005 Business Partner of the Year Award from The Coalition to End Homelessness. In 2009, he received a Special Recognition Award from the Phoenix-based John C. Lincoln Health Network for service provided to the new Desert Mission Children’s Dental Clinic. He also received the 2010 Arizona Smile Maker Award from the Delta Dental of Arizona Foundation.

A sought-after consultant, Gordon delivered a 2009 lecture at the Arizona Dental Association’s annual meeting, “Opening a New Dental Office or Relocating Your Current One: Practical Applications and Pitfalls.” The audience’s enthusiastic response to that presentation led to the development of the book How to Open a New Dental Office or Relocate Your Current One: A Journey Through the Dark Side of Dentistry.

Gordon’s book provides a comprehensive overview of new dental office development and renovation. To preview or purchase the book, visit www.valleydentalconsulting.com
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