Dental Management Secrets

When I saw the promos for this weekend's Pebble Beach Pro-Am, it struck me that this would make an awesome venue for our Dentist Bucket List Educational Tour!

I have played there twice, and I can assure you of two things:

• it is very expensive
• it is worth every cent

If you are a golfer, you know that Pebble is the Mecca that we all know we need to play at least once in our lifetime.

Dr. Dave Live in New York

I thought I would let you know that I have been asked to speak on practice management at the Big Apple Dental Meeting on Wednesday, March 17, 2010.

You can see my agenda as well as all the speakers that will be presenting here: http://www.bigappledentalmeeting.us/

Is Bill really wrong?

You can't believe the flurry of responses I got to my last posting.

Some people thought I was trying to insult Bill. I have nothing against Bill, and I'm sure Bill teaches how to do wonderful work. And you probably should know how to do this work very well. But this is not a quality issue or integrity issue.

This is a practice success issue.

The truth is, on my consulting side, I have just had a lot of people contact me because they were in financial trouble from trying to operate as a ‘high end' dentist.

I don't even know how many of them went to some institute, Bill's or otherwise.

I used Bill as the example simply because he is currently the most visible proponent of that type of practice.

Let's face it there are many types of practices and many ways to earn a good living and practice quality dentistry.

There are very successful dentists doing ‘low end', welfare type work, and there are also successes doing ‘high end' work such as veneers all day long and everything in between.

In fact, a big part of my own personal practice is doing large cases; full mouth, cosmetic, full arch, etc.

The difference is that I do not exclude anyone from my practice. Dentists love to collect up front for all our work and get the patients to deal with their insurance on their own. But if someone can't afford it, you lose that patient.

I want to be able to accommodate everyone.

Marketing gurus insist that you need a ‘market niche'. I am the antithesis of market niche.

My niche is everyone.

We find a way to accommodate everyone whether they want full mouth reconstruction or only an occlusal filling that is covered by their insurance and find a way to do it profitably. That is why we grow and grow.

And guess what? If you grow and grow, you can have a ‘high end' practice within a larger practice doing high end, middle and low end work as I do.

The irony is that by accepting everyone, I have grown a high end practice PLUS I have associates doing all kinds of treatment as well.

So don't be ‘exclusive'. Be ‘inclusive' and you will achieve your dreams much faster.

So the issue is not about Bill at all.

The issue is; do all potential patients feel comfortable and welcome in your practice? You never know where the next big case is going to come from.

All for now,

Dr. Dave

Anyone who has been reading my material knows that I am skeptical about the odds of success in setting up a high end practice with high fees, fee for service paid up front doing major cosmetic cases all day long.

Sure, if you can pull it off, it will be great. And some people have. However most can't. Even with extensive training. And I think Bill misleads people into thinking that they can all be cosmetic gurus and not everyone can.

To pull it off you need to be top 5% clinical skills, top 5% selling skills, and top 5% management skills to set up and operate at a high level like that. And you probably have to be in a top 5% demographic market as well. You also have to take a big risk to even try. You need set up an expensive high end office which is also in the high rent district.

Dentist or CEO Part 2

My last post seemed to create a bit of confusion. If you didn't get to read "Dentist or CEO?", you can see it here:

Some people thought that I was implying that just being a great dentist is not important.

Every now and then I run across an article on my computer that I have written and forgotten about.

Today I stumbled across this one and I thought I would post it:

Dentist or CEO?