Dr Phillip Palmer, August 2017 

Let’s consider, or imagine, a dental practice, with 3 partners.

They decide to try to keep as much work as possible in-house and cross refer certain parts of dentistry to each other.

One of them thought he had a slight leaning towards endo, and offered to do as many as possible of the root canals of the practice. One thought she was better at surgery…wisdom teeth and general extractions, than average, and requested that she get referred that side of work.  And one thought he was ok at orthodontics and wanted as many ortho cases as possible to be referred to him.

So they each leant more and more towards their preferred work, and in that way, kept as much work as possible in-house.

None of them had undertaken any real postgrad training in their area of work, just what they learnt at an undergraduate level, plus been to evening lectures, and the occasional 1-day course in their area of interest.

So definitely none considered themselves as good as a specialist in their area…just more ‘interested’ in it compared to the other partners in the practice who had little interest in the others’ areas nor much knowledge and expertise.

In many ways, compared to ‘best practice’ in any particular sphere of dentistry, they could be considered to be the ‘least bad’ at that particular area of work, of the 3 partners.

The reality was that none of them were particularly skilled, or qualified, at any of their chosen parts of dentistry. But within their group….each was the least bad at their area of interest in dentistry.

Most dentists who read this would agree that the patients of this practice are not being offered dentistry of optimal quality. They would think that the patients would be better served by being referred outside the practice to specialists.

Now let’s look at other parts of the practice.

In the same practice they had a hygienist, 3 DAs, and 2 front office people.

One front office person got their job because they were an experienced receptionist…experienced at answering the phone, making appointments, giving receipts for money paid. The other got their job because she was a DA at the practice, a little bored with her job, and thought she’d like to try something new. So she got the job, and was considered to be ‘reasonable’ at it. Not great, but OK.

But there were so many other jobs to do in the practice that needed to be done by someone not in the clinical area of the practice.

• There was hiring, firing, pay reviews, and general rosters and HR.
• There was marketing, including website maintenance, search engine optimisation, Facebook and other social media posting.
• There was doing pays, and doing number tracking of key performance indicators, or KPIs, for general practice running.
• There was chasing debts, paying bills.
• There was all sorts of compliance issues with respect to the normal running of the practice.

And it all went to the person…not necessarily with any expertise…. who was the ‘least bad’ at that particular area of work.

Very commonly in dental practices, no training is given to whoever is chosen for any particular role. They are just left to do it as best as they can. And if/when there is a change in the staffing of the practice, whatever inherent tasks the exiting team member performed, needs to be taken on by the incoming new person. After all….the owner dentists are not providing any team training in any of these tasks.

This method of distributing management tasks, and not providing any training in a dental practice (or for that matter in any business) is very common in the dental industry, but it condemns the practice to mediocrity.

It used to be that one could be successful in a practice purely because you were a dentist. There was a sufficient shortage of dentists (similar to the current situation with medical specialists) that you were on a positive career path no matter how badly your practice was managed.

However, in today’s crowded dental market place and increased competition, anything other than professionalism in all areas of the practice will condemn the practice to stress, and a lack of the growth and success that would be otherwise possible.

The ‘least bad’ no longer is good enough.

Want to know how to better manage your own practice?  Contact us here.

Dr Phillip Palmer ran a successful dental practice in the Sydney CBD for 34 years.

He is the founder and director of Prime Practice, which is the industry-leading practice management company in Australia and New Zealand, helping dentists manage and grow their businesses at any stage of their career. He is also a director of Practice Sales Search, Australia’s leading dental practice brokerage firm.

Phillip has a deep understanding of all the different management, financial and professional issues that face dentists and is regarded as Australasia’s leading expert on the business of dentistry.

Through Prime, Phillip is available to carry out a thorough practice analysis, to establish where there is untapped value in your practice.

For more information click here .