I’m not really sure any professional dentist business owner would have priorities that trump their bottom line. Of course patient care and taking care of your team are both important aspects that go into your profitability and practice success.
However, at the end of the day, you are a business owner who happens to be a dentist; not a dentist who happens to be a business owner. You have clinical responsibilities in one part of your job and you have profitable responsibilities in the other.
Like I always say, if you honestly believe and can say you don’t want to make more money…or you have all the money you could ever want…or you have no goals or ambitions beyond what your life looks likes today…
Just ask your spouse or significant other. I’m sure they’ll help you think through those last three scenarios. They are always the best at brainstorming things to motivate you to want to do more, be better and reach higher levels of success.
For me, it’s never ‘all about the money’ but it is ‘about’ the business serving as a vehicle for your life’s journey. After all, the vehicle of life does require you to put fuel in the tank and money is the fuel that makes the vehicle go wherever you want it to.
Last week, we began our conversation of how the practice can eat all of your profits if you do not have a structured and disciplined plan, system, approach and strategy to take money off the table in order move it over into the other areas of your life and investments for your long term future.
Practicing dentistry just for the sake of income is a fool’s game and a great way to never establish a foundation for greater wealth, achievements and endeavors outside of your practice.
I told you there were two other major ways the practice can eat the profits and we’ll cover them quickly today because they are things we do talk about frequently but not in this way.
First you have the obvious enemy…insurance and the suppression of your fees for what you do. The reality is, you are in a business of minutes, seconds even, where you are paid to use your skills to help patients based on your clinical philosophy. Whether you are the one doing the dentistry or you have someone else doing it for you – you are selling time.
Now, the big goal is to reach a point when you break the link between hours for dollars by setting premium priced fees tied to the value and life changing work you are providing to your patients. Still you consume minutes with everything you do.
As you know, insurance is a double edge sword because not only can you have fee limitations but you really have patient perception limitations where you end up with small amounts of dentistry per person and then you fill your day with people instead of profits.
The practice eats the profits when you allow other people to control how much you can earn per hour and per procedure. You become hamstrung and capped on your daily revenue potential and you reach a point where your capacity to earn is maxed out.
Of course, if you are following my methods, then you know there is a way to break free from all of this and that is what we call value based dentistry and value based scheduling (which puts you in control of your demand and dollars per day).
The other one (and perhaps the biggest way your practice can eat your profits) is…lost opportunity. Lost opportunity can come in so many forms it deserves a separate Profit Report and probably a complete training coming in the New Year.
When you think of lost opportunity, all you have to do is ask yourself: how many of my new patients from last year are regular hygiene patients this year? How much of the treatment my new patients were diagnosed with last year has been done in the last 12 months? How much of my total collections are being paid by insurance reimbursement of any kind, in or out of network? If you are receiving more than 30 percent (and really 15 percent is preferable) from insurance then you are running an insurance practice and you may not even know it. The only real way to be in control is to be receiving the majority of your collections from your patients getting out their credit cards and checkbooks to pay for their dentistry over and above what insurance is covering.
This gap between your total treatment plan value, what insurance pays and what your patient contributed – that difference is lost opportunity.
Not to mention the treatment left in your patients’ mouths that never gets diagnosed…or the patients who walk out of doctor with pending treatment and don’t have a discussion about it first.
I could go on, but hey, it’s Christmastime and we should be talking all about happy times, merry moments and be full of good cheer.
So, we’ll shelve this as good news for the New Year because I’m going to help you close the gaps and start picking up the missing and lost opportunity every single day and I promise you more dentistry walks out than stays in your practice and we can easily double your daily cash-flow and collections by mastering this – and we will.
More on that after the Holidays.
Speaking of the New Year, there is so much to celebrate in these past 12 months. I have never seen a year with such incredible growth in profits across the board in practices like this. I’m seeing more and bigger cases than anytime since maybe 10 or even 15 years ago.
Baby boomers are ramping up their spending and everyone is taking a more conscious effort and responsibility for their health than ever before. The forecast for the independent dentists is all sunshine and rainbows going into 2017 and all the trends show improvements.
Now, enjoy the Christmas weekend and have a Happy Holiday. However you celebrate your life and family know this: you deserve all you can dream and desire, as you’ve chosen the most honorable healthcare profession on the earth. You give so much to so many, take some time to give back to yourself too.
