Simon Palmer, March 2012 -
When a non-owner dentist is not earning the take home remuneration that he thinks he should be able to, the usual gut reaction is to find someone or something to blame.
And it’s easy to find candidates to apportion this blame to.
They could blame:
• Getting the bad hours of work;
• The practice having too many dentists, or too few patients;
• The dentist’s remuneration % being too low;
• The fees of the practice being too low;
• The marketing the practice is doing (or not doing);
• The “good patients” always being elsewhere or given to the other dentist;
• The local economy (or global);
• The equipment, fit-out, décor or auxiliary team of the practice.
Placing blame on others is a natural response to hardship and while all of the above factors can of course influence a dentist’s income, relying on them to change means placing your fate in the hands of others.
Life, remuneration and practice owners favour those who help themselves and there are plenty of ways that a non-owner dentist can make changes in order to increase their busy- ness and earning potential with minimal if any need for help from the owner of the practice. Here are four such ways:
1. Improve patient relationships
Have you ever looked at tracking the following patient metrics?
- Your reappointment rate: Are all of your patients leaving with another appointment? Do your patients return to see you?
Treatment acceptance: Are you comfortable offering comprehensive treatment? When you do are you finding that patients are accepting and booking in for it or are they “thinking about it” more often than not?
- Referrals: Are your existing patients referring to you?
It is all too common for dentists to look at how their patients are responding to them as just ‘the way things are’ and continue with business as usual hoping that they respond better in the future.
It is critical to any dentist who wants to improve their busy-ness and income to understand that how patients respond to you is not a static thing but a function of your own current skill set. And that skill set along with all of the metrics above can be measured, trained and improved.
A dentist’s skill at getting patients to have their comprehensive dentistry done, return, and refer to them is probably the most invaluable and lucrative one that they (and any practice) can have. And this skill can be learned via improving the communication skills of yourself and your team.
Your reappointment rate is also something that can be improved by learning skills to increase trust and loyalty with patients. While some of the responsibility of reappointing rests with the front office team, a significant amount of responsibility rests with the dentists and their ability to build relationships.
2. Clinical skills
Look into the procedures that your practice refers out (implants, ortho, endo, etc). Or other things that frankly aren’t done as well as they could. Could some of these be kept in house, or add extra service levels to your patient base, if you invested some time, effort and money in more clinical training?
Your practice may even be interested in subsidising this training as keeping this clinical work in the practice is in their interest too (some examples of lucrative special interest courses include LVI, Invisalign and POS orthodontics for example).
Having a clinical special interest can lead to significant increases in busy-ness and income as:
- This work no longer needs to be referred out, which can sometimes lead to attrition if not managed carefully;
- The patient base doesn’t need to be built up, but is often already available in the practice, waiting to be taken advantage of;
- You are competing less or not at all for patients with other dentists in house;
- Other dentists in the practice will start referring to you;
- The fees generated often come with very little extra practice expenses.
3. Community Engagement
Become a member of the local community as much as possible. Go and introduce yourself to the local businesses and leave your business card. Be a member of the surf life saving club or some other sports club, volunteer at your kids’ school or become involved in a local charity.
Anything that gets the message out about who you are and what you do so that when people in the area are looking for a dentist they know, remember and hopefully like you already from some other activity that you are involved with.
4. Time flexibility.
Usually between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, dentists within a practice and within the whole area will compete for the same patients. This makes building and retaining a patient base a challenge. However, there is usually much less competition for patients outside of these hours and much demand from professionals who don’t want to take time out of their busy workday to see the dentist.
The non-owner dentist that is quiet and wants to maximise their busyness and income could capitalise on this and offer him/herself up for some flexible hours. Maybe instead of always working 9-5, 5 days a week they can offer to work an evenings per week or a Saturday a month. If the owner agrees this could be a great way for a dentist (and a practice) to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
These four ways to increase busy-ness are just a few of the many pro-active and creative ways that a non-owner dentist can take control of their destiny and work their way to a higher income rather than accepting things the way they are or just complaining and blaming others for it. While some of these suggestions may require requests to the owner of the practice (for flexible hours or for help with subsidizing a course), most will appreciate these requests as ways that you are trying to solve the problem rather than blame others and the smarter of them will appreciate these suggestions as ways that may be able to extend their businesses.
