Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD Printer Friendly Version

The Secret To Success In Dentistry

Success in dentistry depends on the ability to properly manage both the clinical and practice management aspects of your practice. This synthesis is vital to your success, and it’s amazing to me how many dentists completely lose sight of it. Most dentists make the crucial mistake in their offices of focusing on only one of these aspects, while ignoring or minimizing the other. 

I see many dentists who spend an incredible amount of time and money to improve their clinical skills, which is always important and necessary. These highly trained dentists come back to their offices able to offer incredible dentistry to patients, but with the same practice management problems that they left with they find there are no takers. Patients don’t respond to clinical skills alone. In fact, most patients cannot differentiate between a dentist who has taken 1000 hours of continuing education in the past year and a dentist who has taken only 20 hours. If you don’t equally advance your practice management skills along with your clinical training, your dental practice will not grow.

I’ve seen dentists make the opposite mistake as well. They will invest time and money in improving their practice management skills to motivate patients to accept treatment, they utilize marketing to bring in new patients and they work on their case presentation, but they do not put any focus on improving their clinical skills. Dentists will invest in trying to get hoards of new patients, but if you don’t have the clinical skills necessary to perform esthetic treatment or complex restorative and implant treatment, your practice will also not grow and not break out to the next level. 

I frequently see both of these common mistakes as I consult with many dental offices around the country. It is this constant balance of clinical and practice management skills that you need to hone and improve that will dramatically enhance your ability to diagnose and treat patients while at the same time being able to motivate and lead patients to optimal dental health.  Add to this the ability to effectively know what patients want from a dental office and what procedures they desire, and this is how we bring a dental practice that is under producing to its maximum potential. 

You have to understand that every decision you make on a clinical product, technique, or piece of equipment has direct practice management ramifications in such things like patient satisfaction, efficiency, and overhead control. Similarly, every practice management decision that you make will have direct clinical applications as well. 

Let me give you some quick examples:

A Laser In Every Practice
Laser dentistry has been growing and growing and as more patients find out that dentistry can be done without the dreaded shot. The consumer demands for minimally invasive techniques will push most dentists to incorporate some kind of laser into their practices.

Facial Esthetics and Dermal Filler Therapy
Over half of the state dental boards are now allowing dentists to enter the arena of total facial esthetics. This presents a unique opportunity for dentists to be able to expand their dental practice to really enhance and complete esthetic dental cases and adjunctively treat TMJ and bruxism. Approximately 8-10% of dentists in North America are already providing this service to their patients.

No Prep/Minimal Prep Veneers
Esthetic dentistry has had its ups and downs, but in this economic recovery it will grow quickly as so many patients are aware of the esthetic dental options that are available to them. New advances in veneers will continue to rapidly grow this market as most patients now look for conservative ways to permanently receive a great-looking smile.

Answer the Phone Correctly
Everybody wants to get new patients. What may surprise you is that new patients call your office all the time. One of the biggest secrets in dentistry in getting more new patients in your practice is to just answer the phone correctly. People call your front desk all day long, and if they are on hold for too long, if their questions are not answered correctly, or if they are not asked to make an appointment properly, they may go ahead and find a new dentist.  You can do all the marketing in the world and get your phone ringing off the hook, but if the person up front does not have proper telephone skill training, then you are turning away more new patients than you can imagine. 

Like anything else in your office and in dentistry, you need to get some education and training to become highly skilled. The proof of the pudding is how many more patients get scheduled as new patients when you finally learn the right way to do it. 

Successful practice management and clinical systems are essential to every office. The most common mistakes we make are trying to isolate instead of synthesizing these two all encompassing aspects of your practice. Dentists can learn how to look at their practices differently and make smarter purchasing and hiring decisions based on both clinical applications and practice management needs.  This results in a happier, more stress free and productive environment for the whole dental team and that is when you really reach success in dentistry.

Louis Malcmacher DDS MAGD is a practicing general dentist and an internationally known lecturer, author, and dental consultant known for his comprehensive and entertaining style.  An evaluator for Clinicians Reports, Dr. Malcmacher is a consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. 

Interested in having Dr. Malcmacher speak to your dental society or study club? Click here. To reach Dr. Malcmacher, email him at DrMalcmacher@thedentistsnetwork.net or call 1.800.952.0521.

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