Your practice will either sink to the skill and comfort level of your staff, or you will push the skill level of your staff up to meet standards that you set. It is up to you to do that as the senior executive of the practice, and you can only do that with training—being trained yourself on how to do your job as an executive (not as a dentist, but as the practice owner) and then training your staff.
Those standards are supposed to be in the form of vividly detailed job descriptions, office policies, and clinical protocols. Now, here’s the problem: When you went to school to learn to be a dentist, they didn’t teach you to do all of that stuff. They didn’t teach you how to hire and train staff and provide them with job descriptions, did they?
They didn’t teach you how to do accounts receivables, accounts payables, bookkeeping, accounting, and to deal with insurance companies and HMOs and PPOs. Or how to assess which ones to use and which ones not to use. They didn’t teach you how to actually sell and get compliance with treatment plans. They showed you how to present a case, but not how to deal with somebody who says, “I can’t afford it, Doctor!” What are you supposed to say then? Do you just sort of fold up, because you don’t know what to say and your staff don’t know what to say?
Million Dollar Dentistry, but I wanted to make a concerted effort to get the word out to you all.
