By Frank Clark, Executive Coach – Fortune Management

Challenging times are ahead of you. They are inevitable.  The dental industry faces internal and external threats and changes in the national and local economies. It is essential to ensure you are well-prepared to grow your practice.

Challenges

Changes include supply chain disruptions, inflation, workforce shortages, an aging population, and a shift in lifestyle choices by patients and staff following the pandemic.  Inflation has increased costs across the board.  Rent, fuel, food, and wages are all rising.  DSOs also have buying power and can get lower pricing and better insurance reimbursement rates from insurance companies.  Technology is advancing rapidly.  Younger dentists and DSOs embrace technology and use it to gain a competitive edge as they build their careers and businesses.  Ai is changing everything.

It is getting harder to attract and retain high-quality team members.  More jobs are available for qualified dental assistants and hygienists than people to fill them.  COVID-19 led to a temporary decline in enrollment in trade schools and an increase in people leaving the industry.

How will you compete?  How will you grow your practice to stay ahead of these trends?

Three Ways to Grow Your Dental Practice

According to Marketing Guru Jay Abraham, there are just three ways to grow any business:

1. Increase the number of customers (Patients)
2. More frequent visits (think about cosmetic procedures such as Invisalign or whitening, perio maintenance/SRP, more consistent bi-annual hygiene visits)
3. More per visit (higher value procedures such as veneers, implants, dentures, endo, etc.)

If you improve each metric by 10%, the compound effect is 33% growth.  For example, a one-million-dollar practice with 1000 patients averaging two annual visits averages $1,000 per patient or $500 per visit.  If you can increase

1. 1000 patients -> 1100 patients (marketing, referrals and word of mouth, google reviews)
2. Two visits -> visits (Better hygiene reactivation, diagnosis, and treatment of Perio disease)
3. $500/ visit -> $550 / visit (add new procedures or itinerant specialists as associates, revisit your standard of care – are you too conservative relative to your peers? Are your patients accepting and enrolling in treatment?  Are you collecting payment consistently for patients and insurance companies?

 

Results

1100 patients * 2.2 visits * $550 / visit = $1,331,000 or 33.1% growth for a $1,000,000 practice.

At Fortune, we can help you identify and implement strategies and best practices to grow your practice in all three ways.  We also offer access to buying power through our TruBlu network of dental products and services to help reduce costs.  This was created to help private practices better compete with DSO’s.  We can help you create or improve a positive team culture that will empower you to attract and retain great team members.  We can suggest which clinical or information technologies can give you the greatest return on investment (ROI).

That is something that can make even a dental practice owner smile!

Frank Clark is an Executive Coach and Business Consultant who helps dentists and other healthcare professionals identify, implement, and improve upon best practices to increase the profitability of their practices.  Please get in touch with frankclark@fortunemgmt.com for more information.

Fortune is the largest coaching organization in North America focusing on dental practices. It has been in business for 35 years and has more than 100 coaches across the US and Canada.