By: Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, Publisher, DentalTown Magazine

Most dentists tell me they just want to focus their practice on crown & bridge and restorative dentistry. Most dentists tell me they would rather mow their own lawn than do a molar root canal. Most dentists would rather listen to a Fidel Castro speech than take out a wisdom tooth. Pediatric dentistry has to be the ultimate torture for at least 90% of all dentists. At this very moment I think that Adolph Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and Pol Pot are running the pediatric dental clinic in hell for eternity. Anyone who chooses a career helping crying babies through a pulpotomy and a chrome steel crown will definitely pass purgatory and go straight to heaven upon death.

So how do you build a practice based on crown & bridge and restorative? It is so-ooo simple. You just have to master the “Team Approach.” You have to get completely connected to all those weird dentists around the corner from you who enjoy molar endo, removing impacted wisdom teeth, doing quadrant gum surgeries, listening to screaming children with baby bottle tooth decay, and dealing with moms during ortho!

In the past we got connected with our local specialists at the local study club. The problems with study clubs are obvious and I think we solved them at www.Dentaltown.com. In the past one dentist would volunteer to be in charge of running the local study club for one year. The dentist has no fancy electronic infrastructure to do this task. The only form of communication is a snail mail letter through the US Postal Service “Big Government” monopoly. You, the receiving dentist, find this letter on your desk with the very exciting news that next month a Farmers Insurance agent is going to give a talk for one hour. Let’s start praying for a head injury now!

Dentaltown just built a massive electronic communication infrastructure free of charge for every study club the world over. From now on everyone can talk back and forth to each other seamlessly. No more using the government’s snail mail. Who ever is in charge of the study club can post a message asking study club members what they want to learn about next month. Some general dentist may want to learn about Invisalign. The local orthodontist sees the request and says, “I’ll give a one hour presentation on it.” Better yet, the orthodontist could post Invisalign cases, complete with photos, radiographs, panos, and cephs right now. The Dentaltown Study Club feature is extremely robust and it took forever to program.

A local periodontist may be thinking, “Why do five local GPs send me one or two crown lengthening procedures a week, while 20 other local GPs never send me one, ever?” So the local periodontist starts posting some before and after crown lengthening procedures and educates the referring dentists to the positive merits of crown lengthening.

A local endodontist just made an excellent decision making form to help determine whether a tooth has reversible or irreversible pulpitis and decides to post it to the entire group so that everyone in the local dental community can print it out and save it. Did I mention the endodontist included his name and office information for referrals?

A local oral surgeon wonders why some dentists are very bullish in referring sinus lifts for root form implants while other referring dentists never refer these cases. Many dentists do not feel comfortable with this procedure. So now the local oral surgeon, or periodontist, starts posting some before and after cases to educate and reinforce how predictable this procedure has become in the last 20 years. I can still remember the first time my oral surgeon moved the inferior alveolar nerve over so a root form implant could fit. At the time I had never even heard of this and was shocked. Just recently I was amazed again to learn that a local oral surgeon is correcting inferior alveolar parasthesia with an auricular nerve graft. Very impressive!

This does not have to be limited to the specialist/general practitioner relationship either. There are dentists in almost every community who revel in the fact that they are using cutting edge technology such as Biolase lasers or Sirona CEREC 3D CAD-CAM milling machines. They too can use this resource to meet with other local like minded high technology dentists to share their tips, tricks and troubles. You could share your trials and tribulations to look for solutions, or bestow your perfect case to educate your local peers.

Every single dental consultant knows that the dentists with the best diagnosing and treatment planning skills are the same dentists using the team approach with a handful of very sharp dental specialists. I wish the local study club president would simply post a full set of radiographs, perio charting, and photos and ask every dentist and specialist to treatment plan the case for the next study club meeting. Remember the February 1997 issue of Reader’s Digest, entitled “How Honest are Dentists?” written by William Ecenbarger? Dentists were outraged! But it is true. I swear if you take an FMX, perio charting, photos, and study models to 25 different dentists, you will get 25 different treatment plans. Do this at your very own study club and see for yourself! Or better yet, do it online with your local study club group today, for FREE!

The word “doctor” comes from the Latin word “docére” which means teacher. With the robust power of www.dentaltown.com the cost of dental continuing education has now almost approached zero. The local specialist should add new meaning to the word “teacher.” Why are your local GPs flying half way across the country to learn about implants, perio, endo, and ortho when you could be sharing that knowledge for free, today? Your entire study club can be connected 24/7 with information ranging from radiographs, photos, forms, to the time and place of your next party or fishing trip.

We are now asking for “Dentaltown Study Club Volunteers” for each state and province for: President, Vice President and Secretary.

Dentaltown Study Club Volunteers will be in charge of going to each existing dental study club in their state or province and show them how to use and implement the free benefits of www.dentaltown.com. The person in charge of the study club section is Rita Zakher DMD, MBA. You can e-mail Rita at rita@dentaltown.com, or call her at 480-598-0001.

Dentaltown has made a PowerPoint presentation that explains the benefits and features of our website; i.e. how to post, how to post a radiograph, how to post a photo, etcetera. The PowerPoint presentation is posted on www.dentaltown.com. You could then e-mail each study club the presentation.

It would also be great if you could e-mail Rita a list of all the study clubs in your state or province who are interested. This is really going to turn into something special. I think Internet technology and Dentaltown are going to shrink this entire world of 1,000,000 dentists, 400,000 of which speak English, into your own personal PC. As Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing!”