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Howard Speaks: And the Band Played On…Again

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Howard Speaks: And the Band Played On…Again
Dentaltown Magazine
August 2014
by Howard Farran, DDS, MBA

When you’re young, everything is black and white. When you’re half a century old, everything is 50 shades of gray. And as you get older, you see patterns.

I remember my senior year of high school when two men were dying of something called Kaposi’s Sarcoma in a hospital in California. This was strange because the two men were young and the cancer was something typically only found in the older population.

Then researchers found out both men were gay. When they crunched the odds of this, it caught the attention of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Soon the numbers grew to prompt a medical investigation.

A New York Times article dated July 1981, reported: In the United States, [Kaposi’s Sarcoma] has primarily affected men older than 50 years. But in the recent cases, doctors at nine medical centers in New York and seven hospitals in California have been diagnosing the condition among younger men, all of whom said in the course of standard diagnostic interviews that they were homosexual. Although the ages of the patients have ranged from 26 to 51 years, many have been under 40, with the mean at 39.
This was, of course, the start of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. The CDC just hadn’t quite realized yet how widespread and destructive it would be.

In 1987 Randy Shilts published a book titled And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic. A movie stemmed from the book, which premiered in 1993.

The synopsis: Don Francis, epidemiologist and main character, questions the escalating number of unexplained deaths among gay males, particularly in large cities like New York and San Francisco. He starts to investigate the possible causes and keeps tally of those affected by the disease. This list is nicknamed “The Butcher’s Bill.” He talks with politicians, professionals within the medical community and activists and eventually theorizes that AIDS might be sexually transmitted.

Now, we’re more than 30 years beyond this public health nightmare. And hindsight is 20/20. We might have high awareness now but at the time, it flew under the radar for years. And part of the problem was that people refused to talk about it.

In the past, oral and oropharyngeal cancer—or “mouth cancer,” as they call it in the U.K.—have most often been linked to drinking and smoking. And even more specifically, the cancer has been linear—someone who had smoked two packs a day for four decades was more likely to get cancer than someone who had smoked one pack a day for one decade. Chewing tobacco didn’t follow this model. It was less predictable and didn’t get a lot of attention, though still a cancer risk.

Now, the tides have turned. Today we’re seeing an explosion of oral cancer in young girls! Girls who have never had a cigarette in their lives and don’t have a drinking problem. They’re showing up at the doctor with lesions and screening positive for cancer. It’s HPV and it’s hitting us all by surprise. But nobody is talking about it.

You can’t talk about HPV without talking about oral sex… so let’s just get that out of the way. It’s awkward, but you’re an adult, so buck up. Last year the U.K.-based newspaper The Guardian published an article about Michael Douglas, who opened up the conversation about HPV’s ties to oral sex, attributing his own cancer to it.

I get it; you’re not a sex ed teacher, but if we’re going to call ourselves doctors, we need to be asking some tough questions. When I lecture I ask dentists if they talk to their patients about HPV. It’s not even on dentists’ radar.

You should be asking every patient who comes in if they’ve been vaccinated for HPV. Many dentists give excuses. “That’s not my area. Their family physician should do that.” No! We are all on the frontlines of health. If we’re not talking about this, let’s just say we’re not doctors. We’re just molar mechanics.

We have a serious biological problem here: a virus. We’re knowledgeable about AIDS—possibly one of the only positive outcomes of the epidemic—but we’re missing the new problem right in front of us.

I talked to a mother of a patient in my office who refused to talk to her daughter about HPV. And the mother thought that vaccinating her daughter against the virus would be the same as sending her off to college with a box of condoms. She didn’t want her daughter to feel protected. These are huge moral, ethical, religious questions. We need to talk about this stuff, even if it is uncomfortable or controversial.

In 2007, Texas Governor Rick Perry worked to mandate the HPV vaccine among middle-school girls. Though it was controversial and was overridden in the months after, it was one of the only big-time public actions taken against the virus. All 50 states in the U.S. have a Department of Health and Human Services, and nearly every state has a dental division. Have you ever called yours to talk about HPV? Ask for resources. See what the division is doing in your state.

HPV is a topic that makes people squirm in their seats. We don’t want to talk about it. No one wanted to talk about AIDS either. It made people uncomfortable. But the epidemic happened right in front of us anyway. And in a way, we were blindsided! This is what’s going on right now with HPV. The fact is, we don’t know how serious it is or isn’t. And it’s our job— as dentists—to talk to patients and parents about the risks of the disease.

Not only are we not talking to patients, but we’re not talking to each other about it either. I’m on Dentaltown all the time and there is hardly any discussion at all about HPV. Let’s talk about how to educate patients and parents! Let’s converse about the public health risk and our part in the big picture. Americans see a dentist twice as often as they see a physician. We have 125,000 dental offices in America. That’s manpower! We have a massive ability to get out in front of this.

We don’t want to look back at an HPV Butcher’s Bill and ask ourselves what we could have done about it. I’d love for dentists to stand up and become physicians of the mouth. We’ve got a problem on our hands right now.

References

  1. Rare cancer seen in 41 Homosexuals: by Lawrence K Altman; July 3, 1981; The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/03/us/rare-cancer-seen-in-41-homosexuals.html
  2. National Conference of State Legislatures http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/hpv-vaccine-state-legislation-and-statutes.aspx
  3. Michael Douglas: oral sex caused my cancer”; June 2, 2013; The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jun/02/michael-douglas-oral-sex-cancer?CMP=twtgu

– See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=365&aid=4974#sthash.utdmJeBH.dpuf

Google Reviews are the Only Ones that Matter

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Everyone’s buzzing about online reviews as if they’re something new and different. The fact is, we’ve always had reviews. They just haven’t always been posted online for everyone to see. Online reviews are a digital version of an analog voice, and everyone reacts to them differently.

Here are some facts about online reviews:

  • 92 percent of people have confidence in online reviews (Wall Street Journal, January 2009).
  • 70 percent of people consult reviews or ratings before purchasing (Businessweek, October 2008).
  • 61 percent of reviewers are motivated to write reviews to give recognition to a company, versus only 25 percent who write them to punish a business (Nielsen 2011).
  • Women are more likely than men to write online reviews (Nielsen 2011).

Humans don’t like transparency, but when humans aren’t transparent, bad things happen. I raised four boys. Whenever they all went into one of the bedrooms and shut the door, I knew something bad was going to happen. It was a red flag that definitely made me go check out what was going on.

Online reviews facilitate transparency. They’re a digital platform for checks and balances, and reviews can be your best ally if you handle them right.

Sometimes patients will make a comment about how great their experience in our office has been. Ask patients who you know are happy to write an online review for your practice! Most of the time, they love to be asked. Don’t show them how to do it from your office computer. Google is watching and if they see your reviews coming from your IP address, it might affect your SEO optimization. The patients can, however, post a review from their cell phones.

There are hundreds of review sites out there—Yelp, HealthGrades, Yahoo—but don’t waste your time on these; Google drives the whole industry. Google and YouTube (which is owned by Google) are the two most-used search engines. If you Google a dentist and they have a website of any kind, he or she will come up on Google’s search results. This means the doc’s reviews also come up (Fig. 2).

In my practice, we give out “Review us on Google” cards (Fig. 1). These cards are included with new patient gifts, in recall goodie bags and are also available in all the operatories. The card not only reminds patients to write a review after they leave the office but it also guides them through the process of writing one.

Occasionally patients might have a bad experience and surprise you with a nasty online review. Say this happens. You’ve made a woman so mad that she’s gone home and registered on Google+ (which she might have had to read instructions or watch a YouTube video to learn to set up) and she’s gone through the process of writing several paragraphs about her practice experience. This probably took her the better part of an hour start to finish.

For many dentists, their first response is to hire a lawyer or try to get Google to take down the review. But you should be going the opposite way! This is an awesome opportunity. First of all, how many patients who don’t come back take the time to write a letter telling you what you can do better? Not too many!

Second of all, can you imagine if this woman, with the amount of energy and determination she has, was rallying for your practice instead of working against it? If you can rectify her bad experience, she’s a walking marketing campaign for your practice.

The best way to deal with a bad online review, whether it’s a minor complaint or an absolute disaster, is to call the patient. There are often posters on Dentaltown who will ask what to do about bad reviews. The initial answer seems to always be to show it to your malpractice carrier. Really?

This patient is already in confrontation mode. Why isn’t your first response to call the patient? Say: “Hey Sally. You are mad. Can you come down to the office and we can go to lunch and talk about it?” Most the time, the bad reviewer just wants to be heard. And by doing whatever you can to fix the situation, you’re not only addressing that patient’s complaint but also creating good rapport for your practice overall.

In addition to online reviews, I’ve found exit interviews to be very effective for getting feedback. Call all the people who haven’t been in to the office in 24 months. See why. It’s important to keep track of why patients leave. Do you really think they all died or moved? Who are you kidding? You’ll find some of them have moved, some of them changed because of insurance policies or better scheduling. But what if you find out that a substantial number of patients decided not to return because they hate one of your hygienists? What if you find out a front office person is unwelcoming?

Most of your new patients are just old patients from the dentist across the street, which means you need to ask them why they left their old dentist. When a new patient comes in to the office, the person fills out a health history. Why don’t you include a question about why they left their last dental office?

Sometimes you’ll get answers like: They didn’t take my insurance or they didn’t provide nitrous oxide as an option or they weren’t open on evenings or Saturdays. You might learn their previous dentist was unapproachable or talked down to patients or created a culture of “don’t ask questions.”

How do you get feedback in your office? Sign on to Dentaltown.com and visit the Howard Speaks article for this issue. I’d love to hear about what you do to receive and track feedback. – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=357&aid=4863#sthash.pqxdvVBG.dpuf

The Changing Landscape of Dentistry

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When I was a kid, pharmacists had their own pharmacies and optometrists had their own eye clinics. Now these models have been replaced by Walgreens and CVS, with EyeMasters and Pearle Vision.

In France they actually have ATM machines for prescriptions. A physician loads the prescription onto a medical card and a patient can pick it up anywhere there is one of these machines. The machine dispenses however many pills the electronic script is written for, puts a sticker on the bottle and drops it into a drawer, the same way you’d grab chips from a vending machine. Prescriptions are now a commodity.

When we go get glasses, most of us don’t care if we look into a machine to tell us we have 20/80 vision because that number goes to a lab tech who crafts the lenses. Most of us are more worried about how the frames look. Glasses are now a commodity.

It’s like “The Jetsons” where a mechanized robot brushes George Jetson’s teeth, shaves his face and dresses him based on a scanner view of his body. What we once thought was futuristic and unattainable is here and now!

All this has me thinking about dentistry’s model and how it’s changing. What will the dental landscape look like in 2050? Will dentistry go the way of Walgreens and EyeMasters? I asked several of my colleagues this question and they shared their opinions, which we feature in this issue (page 64).

Let’s talk about the reality. Dentistry’s unique selling proposition is surgery. We work in an operatory. Our hands and fingers are in someone’s mouth. It’s not the same as a pharmacy or an eye clinic. It takes human hands and human eyeballs to perform dentistry.

Commodities are things you buy on price. When you buy corn, you don’t care if it’s from Iowa or Nebraska. The silliest ad campaign I’ve ever seen is the Florida orange juice one. Have you ever heard anyone at the grocery store asking for Florida oranges because they don’t want the ones from Arizona?

My practice is 25 years old. I have a lot of contacts from Dentaltown who have significant roles in the business to consumer (B to C) marketplace, and we all agree: half of America buys dentistry on price. Some of these people do perceive dentistry as a commodity and some buy on price simply because they don’t have money. If they have bad dental insurance and their insurance says they can only go to one doctor in town, they’ll go to that one doctor in town. This phenomenon is going to be around forever. There are people who are poor who really do value dentistry and there are rich people who don’t value it.

The other half of America has strong opinions about who gets to work in their mouths. The relationship with their provider has a huge impact on their choice of dentist. Have you ever once based whether you want a prescription filled at Walgreens on which pharmacist is going to be there? No! You just want to know when Walgreens is opened and if it has a drive-thru!

The argument is that corporate dentistry fuels the side that says dentistry is a commodity. These companies are representing a brand instead of an individual dentist. They’re often marketing on price, rather than procedure or specialty or dentist. So, yes, there are real-live dentists, not robots, performing the procedures, but it seems to be the beginning of taking the relationship out of the process.

Once you’re 50, you’ve seen everything at least twice, particularly in economics. This is the second time I’ve seen the idea of corporate dentistry come around. Black Monday in 1987 was just months after I graduated dental school. I was practicing during the stock market crash in 2000 and Lehman Brothers fall in 2008. When everyone thinks it’s the end of the world, it’s not. It’s a cycle. We create an economic bubble and then it explodes. It’s just economics.

Corporate dentistry chains have a good grasp on sophisticated marketing and management. When I got out of dental school, not a single dentist I knew, including myself, could use QuickBooks to make payroll. I hadn’t taken one class on management or communication with staff. For some, the answer is: let someone else do it. So if you hate dealing with all things social media and Excel, corporate might be the way to go.

For those who would rather learn it for themselves, check out all the practice management courses on Dentaltown.com. They’re only $18 each. Or, if you want more than a few hour-long classes, maybe you’re interested in going back to school. I went back to school in my 40s! I took two business classes each semester. I attended class on Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6-10 p.m. every week for two years. And I about cried when it was over because I loved it and learned so much! Another solution is to hire street-smart staff—an office manager, specifically. Recognize your limits and delegate!

The other advantages to corporate dentistry are better access to capital and better patient financing. It’s nice not to have to worry about these things. The CAD/CAM unit and other equipment is part of the package and there is no third-party when it comes to financing treatment.

It’s nice to have access to capital and to have patient financing, but you can have these things in a group practice, too. You can split the cost of the rent and the CAD/CAM and the payroll with other partners. You can work with CareCredit for patient financing. So in these ways, I don’t see how a corporate chain in all 50 states is any more competitive than an independent group practice.

I’m not opposed to corporate dentistry. I think it provides needed services for many Americans who need treatment. But unless corporate chains can preserve the one-on-one relationship that a patient gets when he or she visits her independent dentist, I don’t see corporate taking over the dental landscape or dentistry going the way of Walgreens. I think they’ll always be a spot in the marketplace for both private offices and corporate chains. – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=354&aid=4817#sthash.L80fMs9A.dpuf

“Ethical Dilemma” – A Series Kickoff

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When the 2013 Townie Choice Awards was in full swing this summer, and dentists and hygienists were voting for all their favorite products and services, we asked all the voters to answer the question “what’s the biggest crime in dentistry?” We got some interesting answers – overtreatment, managed care, insurance reimbursement, indifference, embezzlement – just to name a few.

Dentists deal with all sorts of ethical dilemmas on a daily basis, and the Dentaltown the ethics forum on our message boards are filled with debate. This month we’re starting a series called “Ethical Dilemma” that will address some of the stickier, less black and white, 50- shades-of-gray areas in dentistry. These articles will run throughout the duration of 2014. I’m kicking off the series with the topic of managed care.

There are some ethical issues the majority of us can agree on. Right now most of the world agrees we shouldn’t eat cats, dogs and dolphins even though I bet they all taste like chicken anyway. But sometimes the lines are more blurred, or aren’t universal. I once lectured at a dental school in India. A dental student came up to me and said she couldn’t listen to my talk because I eat cows. When you go to McDonalds in India, there is no Big Mac on the menu. It’s a McVeggie Burger or a fish sandwich.

Everyone sees everything differently. It’s hard to get 150,000 dentists (that’s about how many are on Dentaltown.com) to even agree what day of the week it is, let alone about how managed care should or shouldn’t work.

When it comes to ethics, most people, dentists included, fall within a midrange. This middle is the silent majority. A normal distribution curve (Fig. 1) says 68.5 percent of people make up the middle ground. The further out from the middle, the fewer the people, but the more extreme. I envision this Ethical Dilemma series sparking conversation on the boards, but chances are only the extreme outliers will argue. This series is meant to start a conversation, not be the world according to Howie! It’s meant to get you thinking and discussing your views and experiences from what you see going on in your practice and in what ways you deal with the ethical issues that arise everyday. Can’t we just have an honest conversation?

About Half the U.S. Market is Focused on Price.

If someone asks you “What’s the best car?” you’re going to say something like Lamborghini or Maserati or Ferrari, or some luxury car that costs an absorbent amount of money. While this is ideal, a $200,000 car isn’t realistic for the average buyer.

Jay Leno might throw these numbers off, but the most popular cars, according to Forbes are: Ford Focus, Toyota Corolla and Volkswagen Jetta—all midsize, reasonably priced sedans. These are the top cars because they are what most of us can afford. No, they’re not the best cars, per se, but they are the most practical based on cost, safety and mileage.

This same idea can be applied to dentistry. Sure, you could have a high-end boutique style practice in a lower economic area, but it would be like setting up a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Parsons, Kansas. It could work, and would depend entirely on the dentist being exceptional in many areas, but a Ford dealership would probably do a lot better, and would be a lot easier of a sale. Demographics act like gravity, they’re hard to deny. In business we call this market segmentation and markets are usually carved up by price, quality and service.

Americans basically divide the dental market in half meaning half are primarily focused on cost and will go wherever their dental insurance, employer, Medicare or Medicaid tells them to go while the other half sees dentistry as a relationship and they absolutely want to pick their dentist. They have a special relationship with their dentists and do not want to go to another dentist just because a third party told them to, and they will pay more for this privilege.

I hear so many dentists say that the problem with third-party insurance fees is they can’t do the treatment a patient really needs, and they’re only willing to do treatment that they’d do for themselves. I personally think this view is a little extreme, especially having traveled the world over.

If someone has a cavity, the decay needs to be removed and you need to fill it. If you’re getting $300 for the filling, then get out your fanciest materials from 3M and Ivoclar, do your tooth-colored adhesive restorations, and make some money. That’s basic; Cost + Profit = Price. But when managed care comes in and sets an exact price, you’ve got to switch to Price – Profit = Budget. A budget means you will need to have a plan. Why are you doing a tooth-colored restoration when bonding agents cost nearly $1 million a barrel? Is it because it’s the only thing you would have in your mouth? Why is it that you don’t place amalgams when research says they’re lasting 30-35 years and 3 billion earthlings live off of $3 a day? This was the only material available when I was a kid and at least a few people would say I turned out just fine!

You might have very different values and priorities than the patients you are treating. Your patient has the right to have different values than you, the dentist. I heard a speaker once say how horrible a parent was because he didn’t have money for his kid’s braces but he took his whole family to Disneyland. I’m good with that. I still remember driving from Kansas to California with five sisters in a green station wagon playing Monopoly in the back the whole way to Disneyland, without seatbelts, I might add, and it still is an awesome memory.

If you’re doing low-cost dentistry then treatment plan accordingly. Be aware of all the upgrades that are not covered like ortho, implants, bleaching, bonding and veneers. And if a patient only has enough resources or dental values for an amalgam, then place one.

I’m not a firm believer that the highest price is always the highest quality. Southwest Airlines is a testament to this. Southwest is the lowest cost airline and no one has ever died in one of its planes. If the plane doesn’t fall out of the sky, and it takes off and lands on time (and preferably doesn’t lose my luggage), it passes my test. High-cost dentistry isn’t necessarily the best quality or what’s best for the patient anyway. Which lasts longer, amalgam or composite?

You can never afford to get complacent and ignore your own unique dental marketplace. You must cultivate relationships and provide exceptional service at a fair price. The case of low cost dental offices and those who don’t participate is not about the quality of dentistry. It’s perceived value. Managed care fills a necessary market. For a free enterprise system to successfully exist, you must have different market providers for different price points. If this does not happen it is called a market failure and this almost always invites the government in to correct the failure. Do you want government-owned dental offices? If the answer is no, then start treating the low end providers with more respect.

Don’t try to dictate what people can choose or afford. That’s not your decision to make. They’re the consumers. They’ll make their own decisions as to how to spend their money based on what they want and how much they have to spend. It’s our decision as to how we deal with their choices. – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=351&aid=4778#sthash.v4VaGYlH.dpuf

Go West, Young Man

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Made popular by author Horace Greeley in the mid-1800s, the quote, “go west, young man,” was a proclamation to embrace new opportunity in the new western country. Granted, today I’d personally have to travel 1,457 miles east to get to St. Louis – the gateway to the west – from where I live in Phoenix, negating any literal meaning of the quote, but even so, it still has significance today. If you want to take advantage of new opportunities and possibilities, it might be necessary for you to move to an entirely new area or change your practice to accommodate a certain demographic.

In late November 2013, I started a message board thread on Dentaltown.com, which links to an article in The Denver Post titled, “Flood of new dental patients in Colorado meets trickle of caregivers” (Editor’s note: To view the thread, please visit www.dentaltown.com/ColoradoPatients). The article explains the new dental benefits Coloradans will receive via Obamacare and Medicaid, but that dentists are concerned that they won’t get paid enough to treat these new patients and keep their doors open. Also in the article, nine Colorado counties are listed as having no dentists in them whatsoever. In just a few days, this thread generated more than 130 posts from Townies. I invite you to check out this particular message board. It’s a pretty touchy issue, but I feel the concerns of some dentists surrounding this issue aren’t correct.

One of the arguments I hear is that those nine counties in Colorado have no money, hence, no reason for a dentist to open up a practice there. That’s ridiculous. Were that true, there wouldn’t be any Wal-Marts or McDonald’s in those counties either (and there are). If Wal-Mart and McDonald’s are in those counties, why can’t there exist a dental practice? For 25 years I’ve said all major businesses start with this equation:

Price – Profit = Budget
And I’ve always said that dentists seem to arrive at their price backwards:
Cost + Profit = Price

Ford Motor Co. has no problem starting with the average price of a Ford Taurus (at around $26,000 minimum average), from which they will subtract their profit, and from which the engineers will work off of the budget. Similarly, if they are designing a lower cost Ford Escort, they will say, “Here is what we are selling a Ford Escort for, we will subtract the profit we need to remain healthy, and then we will arrive at a budget.” Dentists don’t do that. Dentists don’t think they have two distinct markets. They will go into an area that has less income, taking HMOs and PPOs, but they won’t do amalgam. They’ll insist on doing composite. They won’t use a lowcost lab – they’ll go with some high-end cosmetic lab. They’ll insist on providing high-cost dentistry that much of the poulation of that town cannot afford.

These are the dentists who say, “I refuse to do dentistry on my patients that I wouldn’t do on myself.” That’s very altruistic of you, doc, but let’s get real here. The dentistry you would do on yourself is high-cost, high-quality dentistry only the upper class could afford. If that’s the way you think, you have to stay in the upper-half of the market and only that section of the market. You can’t be everything to anyone because eventually you will become nothing to no one. If you cannot figure out that there is lowcost dentistry, and that some people get amalgams and extractions and flippers and partials and dentures, and you need to use a low-cost lab, then you need to stay away from that geographic zone and let another dentist in who will make a killing offering low-cost dentistry. If all you offer is high-end dentistry, you’re going to make money on some patients and lose money on others – it will be a wash. You might as well pick low or high, run off half of your patients and only focus on the demographic you want to treat.

Also, consider the underserved areas themselves. No, they are not San Diego, Manhattan, Florida or Arizona where everyone seems to want to practice these days, but you have to remember those areas are already oversaturated with dentists. If it was always your goal to become a dentist and practice somewhere warm, you’re going to need to do something major to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. It takes a lot of work to practice in a saturated area. On the other hand, if you’re the only dentist in an entire county, people are going to flock to your practice in droves. When you serve the masses you dine with the classes, and that’s what will happen if you practice in an underserved area of the country. Do you really want to practice in San Francisco now, when you can make a killer living in a part of the country with no dentists and visit San Fran any time you want? Think about it.

There are already practices that are moving into underserved areas – corporate practices like Aspen or Heartland – and they’re doing it the right way. You know, the scariest question being asked around the dental profession is, “Is dentistry going to go the way of Walgreens and CVS the way pharmacies did?” Mom-and-Pop pharmacies collapsed because all the profit margin came from the buying power to purchase the pills. Group purchasing of drugs by Walgreens and CVS was everything that the small independent pharmacist couldn’t do. Secondly, there was not a single continuing education class pharmacists could take that would differentiate them from other pharmacists. We all know what happens when a dentist goes through Pankey or LVI or the Misch institute; we all know how dentists who take tons of CE each year for a decade can differentiate themselves from their competitors so much they’re almost playing a different game.

Corporate dental practices like Aspen and Heartland are making some very smart moves. They’re opening up practices in rural, underserved areas where there are few or even zero dental practices, and they’re making a killing. We’ve all heard why corporate dentistry is dominating – buying power for supplies and lab costs, and better marketing. But its Achilles Heel will always be staff turnover. How many dentists who sell their practices to corporate chains are still there three, four or even five years later? In my backyard, they are all gone. And when the dentist leaves, the patients stand around wondering what happened, and they become a lot less loyal. Staff turnover trumps brand name every time. While writing this column, I asked my office manager Sandy how big a blow it would be to our practice if we let Jan, my assistant of 25 years, go, and Sandy literally gasped. It would have a devastating impact on our patients and our practice.

There is a lot of opportunity out there, doc. You don’t have to sit in an oversaturated area spinning your wheels trying to figure out how you’re going to get your next new patient. Take a look at demographics in your own state or states around you. Figure out where the underserved live. “Go west!” – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/MessageBoard/thread.aspx?s=2&f=2606&t=219440#sthash.ba2IC3ce.dpuf

Best Practices, 2013

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At the end of my September 2013 column, I asked readers to visit www.dentaltown.com/besttips2013 and post what they did this year to make their dental practice the best it can be. I really love the responses this thread generated. For the sake of this column, and for the health of your business, I’m going to share with you my favorite posts from this thread and my thoughts about them.  First of all, for this thread to be kicked off by a first-time poster on Dentaltown.com – and that the advice drkinnarshah provided was spot on – thrilled me to no end. When we look at patterns of a successful dental office, practices that have morning huddles do infinitely better in any way you want to measure, whether it’s stress reduction, or increases in productivity and net income. The only thing I want to add to drkinnarshah’s post is to remember, after the morning huddle, it’s imperative to keep in constant contact with the team via walkie-talkies throughout the day.

Dr M’s post is spot on. Everyday since the economy tanked on September 15, 2008, (aka, “Lehman Day”), when asked “If you could have just one magic bullet to improve your practice, what would it be?” four out of every five dentists would say, “I need new patients.” I’m personally proud to say that October 2013 was the best month my practice, Today’s Dental, has ever had in terms of production, collection and new patient intake; I attribute this to two things. The first thing we did was begin nurturing online reviews; this is very powerful. In my neck of the woods, Internet marketing is very strong. We know nine out of 10 appointments are made by women, and more women post online reviews than men do. At my practice, our staff outright asks our patients to post reviews about their positive experiences online. We know that we might receive a negative review from time to time (you can’t please everyone all the time), but if you can drown out any negative review with a ton of positive reviews, you’re doing something right. Our staff hands our patients a card prompting them to say something nice about us, and it’s been a great success.

The second thing we did in order to obtain more new patients was handing our current patients a referral card. I know pretty much every practice management consultant on the lecture circuit and just about all of them have told me when they do in-office consulting, the first day is always observation. They want to go in there and see what the team is doing and not doing. In almost every instance, on the day of observation consultants never hear a single employee – whether it be the dentist, assistant, receptionist or hygienist – ask for a referral of a friend or a loved one. This is the number-one most powerful form of marketing, and it’s never done. When we hand out our referral cards, our patients refer a friend to our practice and when their friend becomes a patient of ours, our patients and their friends will receive a $20 Visa gift card. These cards aren’t validated unless a member of our staff signs it. Also, we incentivize our staff to hand these cards out; whomever on the team has the most referral cards with their initials turned in at the end of the month receives $100.

Also in this thread, Jen Butler wrote…  For years, I’ve said all leaders are readers, and I’m glad Jen made this recommendation. In my practice, we all read a book a quarter (we’d love to do a book a month, but it is hard to try to find the time to fit a book in each month). I highly recommend getting your team to all read the same business book once a quarter, and discuss it – but, for non-readers, instead of reading the book, you might consider the audio version of it. All non-readers can knock an audiobook out in the same amount of time it takes to do three loads of laundry and mow the lawn. It’s team building and total enrichment for the entire practice.

 I applaud dave27 for implementing new procedures into his practice (it already seems to be paying off for him), and for streamlining his processes to do dentistry faster, cheaper, higher in quality and lower in cost. If you’re burning out in dentistry, start learning new procedures like short-term ortho, or implants, or CAD/CAM.

 Dr. Duke talks about how she set up a private Facebook group for her team and in the thread, Sandy Pardue quotes that as saying that this is the top pick of this entire thread. I have to agree with Sandy, but I am going to have to one-up it a bit. You have to have a communication platform for your team, at Today’s Dental we’ve had our own e-mail platform that has been very effective. The Facebook group Dr. Duke refers to is very interesting; I like that a lot. It’s also why we set up the same kind of platform on Dentaltown.com. Dentaltown’s private groups are far more robust than the Facebook private groups, however, because you can organize them by subjects. I mean you can set something up for hygienists, something for the entire office, something just for insurance or marketing, etc. It’s more organized. But here’s what I like even more: If the dental office staff members are on Facebook in the private Facebook group, they are extremely tempted to hop off that page and go see what all their nieces and nephews and girlfriends are doing. When they are on the Dentaltown.com private group, now when your hygienist, receptionist, assistant or office manager leaves that group she sees three-million other posts by thousands of other dental assistants. And if she gets caught up and lost and distracted in that, she’s still learning about dentistry.

I want to thank everyone who participated in this thread, and I invite everyone to read what’s been posted already, and continue to contribute their best practices from 2013 as we move into the new year. Best of luck to you in 2014, and I’ll see you on Dentaltown.com! – See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=343&aid=4683#sthash.tTzSBN8t.dpuf

Not Getting It Done? Hire a Consultant!

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There is a very interesting thread on Dentaltown.com called “43 and Burned Out” that, as of this writing, is pushing 6,000 views and almost 250 replies.

Every year since we launched Dentaltown in 1999 a thread like this pops up, where a dentist admits to being burned out. You read upsetting declarations like, “I just don’t feel it anymore,” or, “I’m trapped because my lifestyle is based on the earnings of a dentist, but I hate dentistry and there’s no way I can get another job to make this kind of income.” They’re desperate for help or even a point in the right direction.

I’ve written about burnout before. Sadly, it is still the biggest problem facing the dental profession, leading to awful, harmful vices like alcohol and drug addiction, and even suicide. You can focus on improving your environment and your gear, and you can retool your practice so you can work on what gets you excited, but another thing you need to focus on is your own health.

I’ve written often about my Four Bs – the four things I always focus on to remain successful: my Body, my Babe, my Babies and my Business. Take notice of the first B: my Body; it’s the most important one. Once you lose your body, it’s game over, and the other three Bs don’t matter anymore.

The most powerful and productive dentists I’ve known over the last 25 years all have one thing in common. No, they weren’t all valedictorians. No, they’re not all second- or third-generation dentists. No, they didn’t have specific undergrad degrees in business, marketing or finance. All of the successful dentists I know have their bodies together! They’re healthy. They eat right. They exercise.

I know far too many dentists who are couch potatoes. They work a high-stress job and come home at the end of a long day and just veg out, eating and drinking awful things, and generally do not take very good care of themselves. Then they wonder why they’re depressed and sick all the time. We still have a society that is based on the ancient model of medicine that goes all the way back to when people saw witch doctors: You have a problem, you go to the witch doctor, they make you a lotion or a potion with herbs, or they pull out their knives and cut something off of you. No pill a doctor gives you will counteract years and years of destructive living! It’s time you realize your health is in your own hands and you need to do something about it!

That’s easier said than done, though. I should know! On the day I turned 50, I asked myself, “What’s my goal?” I mean, every New Years Day when I was in my 40s, my goal was to lose 10 lbs. Then it became, “I want to lose 20 lbs.” Then it became 30 lbs. On my 50th birthday I realized I was 50 lbs. overweight and I wasn’t getting it done. So, what did I do? I hired a diet coach who came to my house, threw away about six grocery bags of food I had laying around in my pantry, sat me down and went over nutrition. That coach came to my house every Tuesday for three months before I finally figured out the proper way to eat.

Once I figured out my nutrition, I signed up for maybe what is the craziest goal I ever could sign up for: I decided I was going to participate in an Ironman triathlon where I would have to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and then run a full marathon. Everyone I told about my new goal literally laughed in my face. They’d say, “Dude, you’re 50 lbs. overweight, you don’t swim or bike or run, you’re a workaholic and you basically sit at a desk all day.” Because I wanted to achieve this goal, I knew I had to train properly. I couldn’t do this myself, and I had such success with my diet coach that I hired coaches to help me train for my triathlon. I started taking swimming lessons and found after swimming for two minutes straight, I’d either have to stop to catch my breath, or I’d turn my head to breathe in and I’d breathe in water. I also had to relearn how to ride a bicycle. You think all you need to do is mash your foot down on the pedal, but when you’re training for a triathlon, you clip your shoes onto your pedals and learn to push and pull. I even needed a running coach who taught me the proper way to run. People who run marathons have a high cadence, they lean forward, and they try not to swing their arms left to right. Basically, the point I’m trying to make is I raised my hand. I realized, “I ain’t gettin’ it done,” so I brought in consultants for my body.

If you’re stressed and burned out, it’s time to start getting your body in better shape. I’ve met thousands of dentists over the last 25 years and any dentist I’ve ever met who had his or her body in shape was never burned out. Ever. Since I’ve been training for an Ironman triathlon, I’ve been really tuned into a message board on Dentaltown.com called “Ironman Training“. The other Townies who post on this thread will get up early in the morning, ride their bikes 50 miles in two hours, come home, shower and get ready for work. The cool thing is, because they’ve worked out, they come to work totally fired up and engaged! Why? Intelligent people know that even though they weigh 150 lbs., they live inside a 3.5 lb. brain. The brain has a trillion circuits, was built by 3.6 billion DNA base pairs, and it’s probably the least-taken-care-of organ in the body. People take better care of their teeth by brushing and flossing and getting their teeth cleaned every six months than they take care of their brain. If your diet is horrible and you don’t exercise, don’t sit there and wonder why your 3.5 lb. brain isn’t working right. It’s all connected.

Once you start taking care of your body, then you can really focus on the remaining three Bs. Along the same lines as what I’ve explained previously, when you start focusing on your business and you realize that your practice is just not getting it done, guess what? Raise your hand and hire a consultant! I’m serious! When I started my practice, right out of the gate I hired Sally McKenzie. I thought I was doing well, but Sally McKenzie came in and took us to another level pretty much overnight. Since then, I’ve had Sandy Pardue and other consultants come to my office to help me figure out the best way to run my practice.

When I talk about consultants, I’m usually asked, “Well, is it worth it?” Dentistry is a cottage industry – if you sneeze in dentistry at one end of the ADA convention hall, everyone knows about it at the other end of the hall. Consultants cannot make a living in dentistry by taking money from dentists and providing no value. Every consultant I know has reams of happy customers. Consultants wouldn’t exist if they didn’t work. Believe me, consultants work!

My friend and colleague Dr. Jerome Smith in Louisiana might have one of the best – if not the best – operating practices in the profession. I mean, his practice runs better than a Rolex watch, and he still has Sandy Pardue come in and consult on a regular basis. When you ask him why, he just laughs and says, “You can always do better! It’s always a value. I’ve always seen Sandy as an investment. She’s never come here once when she didn’t bump us up to the next level.”

If you’re burned out, there’s a good reason you’re burned out, and nine times out of 10, it’s because of something you’re doing (or not doing). If you’re not taking care of yourself, it’s time to hire a coach, and if you’re not taking care of your business, it’s time to hire a consultant.

– See more at: http://www.dentaltown.com/Dentaltown/Article.aspx?i=340&aid=4641#sthash.gXy4fc6M.dpuf

Treatment Plans, Social Media Marketing and the Meaning of Life

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People don’t buy on facts or information. You see it every day in dental practices everywhere. The dentist will explain a treatment plan to a patient, telling her what percentage of a certain type of restoration typically fails or the chances she’ll get paresthesia or what her insurance will cover, producing nothing more than a blank stare or a remark like, “Well, I’ll think about it and I’ll call you.” But when someone presents the treatment plan with enthusiasm, excitement and emotion, people buy into it.

I learned this the hard way 25 years ago when I would present a treatment plan to patients and maybe half of them would schedule treatment. I asked my assistant, Jan – who is high energy, on top of her game and radiates enthusiasm – to review and answer questions about diagnosed treatments with our patients to be sure they understood everything. When she started talking to our patients about treatment, people just got excited!

Then when it came time to schedule treatment, our Treatment Coordinator, Dawn, would continue the positive, uplifting discussion. Instead of merely getting a necessary filling done, Dawn would even talk them into getting their teeth cleaned first, then she would sell them into whitening their teeth because then we could do a tooth-colored filling so everything would match properly. Then she would say, “Another way you could make those teeth brighter is to contrast your teeth with darker lipstick. Oh my goodness, you’re going to have a million-dollar smile and it’s only going to cost you a few hundred dollars!” Any questions patients had about financing, Dawn would answer and provide great payment options such as CareCredit. The way Jan and Dawn reviewed and presented these treatment plans really spoke to our patients’ needs and desires. Patients got excited about it because Jan and Dawn were excited about it and because of this patients would agree to come in for treatment.

There’s a funny cartoon that depicts evolution and the meaning of life (see page 18), where all of the animals leading up to the evolved human have three things on their mind: eat, survive, reproduce. Then when you get to the human, he’s wondering what it’s all about. Well, if you talk to any evolutionary biologist, it’s still all about eating, surviving and reproducing! When Jan and Dawn review treatment plans, they enthusiastically appeal to our patients’ base needs: eating, surviving and reproducing. You can’t eat very well without teeth; you need to eat to survive, of course; and if you want to reproduce, you want to look as attractive as possible. Functional, aesthetically pleasing teeth hits on all three of those needs. I can present all of the facts about a case to a patient, but the difference in case acceptance is because Jan and Dawn elicit a deeper response from the patient, which boosts their dopamine and serotonin levels because Jan and Dawn excitedly appeal to the patient’s base needs.

The way you present an effective message applies to social media, too. I really got into Facebook about three years ago. In fact the main reason I got into it was because I read an article about Facebook reaching 400 million users. It was exploding and I wanted to see what it was all about. Since then I’ve branched out onto Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. I’ve really enjoyed learning about and measuring this marketing medium, and it’s interesting to see the correlation between an effectively presented treatment plan and an effectively marketed message.

I see so many Facebook pages with posts that read, “Did you know that one in three people have this disease or that disease?” It’s all facts, figures and information. There’s never any excitement. Nobody clicks “Like” or shares those posts because they’re just white noise. There’s no reason to interact with a message like that.

Mothers make a major percent of all health-care appointments. Of all of the users on Facebook, more than 60 percent are women (according to a July 2012 article from the Huffington Post); but Pinterest is truly the social media site for women; in fact I’ve read that of the 70 million users on Pinterest, 80 percent of them are female. I have a Pinterest account and I find it amazing that almost all of the 1,500+ people who follow me on Pinterest are women. When women post on Pinterest and Facebook I see a lot of meal plans, diets, healthy snacks, etc. But it’s the base need of reproduction that is the most meaningful part of life, and that’s why a lot of women who have children post pictures of them on social media. People draw the most purpose and passion from reproduction – that’s why three out of four married couples have babies. Women are hard wired with maternal instincts, and when you start posting anything about babies and children on social media – like when you should bring your baby in for his or her first check up, or the germs that live on your baby’s toothbrush – it gets viewed, commented on and shared. I mean it just comes alive.

 

One of the biggest posts we had on my practice’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/todaysdental) was when one of our staff members had a new baby. It’s one thing to post about the new laser or CAD/CAM system that you just got in your practice, but if you want more excitement or shares of what you’re posting on Facebook, post a photo of your newborn granddaughter. Post about the people who work at your practice. Post about the community outreach function everyone participated in over the weekend. That is the kind of stuff people will click the “Like” button for, comment on or even share. The average dental practice Facebook page has about 300 followers, and when you post something to Facebook, those followers have 300 followers of their own. If they all share what you’re posting, you have the potential of reaching up to 90,000 people – it’s huge!

The only way your social media efforts are going to get you new business is when your existing patients see what you are posting, make an emotional connection and share it with all of the people who follow them. There are three things you can do on Facebook: you can like something, you can comment about it, and you can share it. Sharing something is the big deal. You want people to share your Facebook posts, because all of their friends and followers will see it on their timeline. Facebook users almost never share high-quality dental information or facts about disease, and they certainly don’t interact with it. What they share are the things that make them secrete dopamine and serotonin. And for the majority of people who make dental appointments – women – the number-one thing they share is anything that has to do with babies and children. My practice always increases its Facebook “Likes” when we make our posts more personal.

Here’s something else you should consider in regard to social media: When you share information and it ends with a period or an exclamation mark, the person viewing it sits there, takes it in and moves onto the next post. They don’t do anything with it. But when you end your post with a question mark, you are engaging with them. So if you post something and end it with a question, they’re more inclined to answer, and that’s how you engage people on social media. That’s how you get people on Twitter to answer you back. That’s how you get people on Google+ to actually post back. Instead of making a statement or a fact about you or your dental office or your dental technology, engage with them. Ask them a question. If you ask your fans a question, they will answer you. When they answer you, all of their followers will see it. This is how you can judge how successful your social media campaign is going. There are a lot of companies that do social media for dental practices, and dentists will often show me how great they think their Facebook page is. What I usually see is a page with a plethora of information, with zero likes, zero comments and not a single share. The dentist thinks her Facebook page is good because her page is filled with a bunch of great scientific dental information that could really educate all of her patients. But there’s no interaction whatsoever. The dentist might as well be putting all of her practice’s marketing efforts into direct mail – a one-way conduit of information.

Real social media is about interacting with your fans and followers – so do it the right way! Remember the cartoon on the meaning of life: eat, survive and especially reproduce. Women have maternal instincts and are a lot more likely to communicate about their children than men. They are far more likely to show up to a parentteacher conference, or a PTA meeting, or schedule their kids for a recall than dad. So engage with them. Post fewer facts. Get personal! Show them your babies. Tell them what you’re doing for their babies. Ask them what they are doing for their babies. Get focused on children. Aim your marketing around babies and children, share the personal side of your practice, and you will absolutely crush the meaning of life and get more new patients.

SUBMIT YOUR ARTICLE TO BE PUBLISHED IN DENTALTOWN MAGAZINE!

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Visit: http://lnkd.in/b-QskFX …We will review all ORIGINAL submissions for possible publication in a future edition of Dentaltown Magazine. Any questions, e-mail our Editor, Ben at ben@farranmedia.com.

Can’t wait to hear from you and see your original submissions!

 

 

Quit Rambling On

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In 1980, when I was a freshman at Creighton University, one of our professors told us we’d earn 10 extra credit points if we went to see Warren Buffett speak when he visited our campus. One of the clearest things I remember Buffett say to the crowd was when someone pitches him an idea for something in which they wanted him to invest, he would hand that person a 4×6 recipe card and a No. 2 pencil and ask them to explain their entire idea on the card. He said 90 percent of those people couldn’t do it.

This doesn’t just apply to investing, gang – this applies to dentistry! Dental manufacturers will call my practice and try to sell their products to us. We’ll tell them, “For a product to be successful, it has to meet four criteria; it has to be faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost.” Many of them can’t explain their products to me with those four simple criteria in mind. In fact a few weeks ago, just out of morbid curiosity, I listened to someone pitch an idea for one hour and 45 minutes. Even after all the time my team and I spent with the salesman we still had no idea what the value proposition was. It blew my mind! It doesn’t just stop at dental manufacturers, though – this also applies to treatment plans. If you can’t explain to your patients what they need on a 4×6 index card, you fail at presenting treatments. Period.

Effectively presenting a treatment plan to your patients is one of the most serious aspects of dentistry. It can be the difference between a dentist who treats one-third of the caries in his or her practice to a dentist who treats twothirds or better. In the best dental practices, treatment plan presentations are typically done by a staff member; someone who can speak your patients’ language and sell the necessary dentistry. In other practices, what you often see are dentists rambling on, trying to explain what’s going on in their patients’ mouths. The patient has a toothache and the dentist says, “You have irreversible pulpitis. You’ll need endodontic therapy, post build-up and a fullcoverage restoration.” And then the dentist opens up a computer program and jumps into a giant, in-depth, scientific lecture about what a root canal is, what it does, what can go wrong, etc. Forty-five minutes later, the dentist asks, “Any questions?” and the patient looks like she got run over by a truck with no real comprehension of what just occurred.

The best treatment plans are simple and explained in ways patients can understand them. The reason Christianity thrived was because the religion was recited in short, simple, understandable parables – and there was a point to each one of them! Stop complicating things and get someone on your team to explain treatment plans to your patients in the simplest terms.

Your treatment plan also needs to be interactive. You need to follow your patients’ cues. When you talk to someone and they break eye contact with you, it means their mind is processing. When they do this, you need to stop what you’re saying and let them process. More often than not, they’ll respond with one of the following: “How much is it?” “Will my insurance pay for it?” “When would you do it?” “How long will it take?” “Will it hurt?” or “Will I need antibiotics?” What matters is you listen to their concerns, explain it in plain English and cut to the chase. I have had several patients come to my practice after they visited other offices to address their loose-fitting denture. In literally two minutes, I present the choices by saying, “Well you’ve got just a few options here. One, we can do nothing. Two, we can re-line it. With a reline, you drop it off at eight in the morning and you come back and pick it up at the end of the day. Three, we can make you a new denture. The fourth option, which would be a lot better, involves implants. We can put two of these little titanium screws into your jaw where the denture snaps on and stays in place. Better yet, we can put four implants in there and then the denture would really snap-on nicely. Or we can put six implants in there and that denture wouldn’t even come out of your mouth. Which one of those options sounds best for you? Let’s have Dawn, our treatment coordinator, go over the fees for these different options and assist you with reserving a time to get started.” What I just wrote would literally take you two minutes to recite. It was simple, explanatory and to the point. Why can’t we all do this?!

We continually see data that suggests dentists treat only 38 cavities for every 100 cavities diagnosed. That’s a terrible statistic. You might be earning your FAGD or your MAGD and think you’re on your way to total dental enlightenment, but I’ll let you in on a little secret – you’re not. Why? Because two of every three kids come into your office with caries and you don’t remove them. I don’t care if you’re using composite or amalgam – you need to treat as many cavities as you can. It’s your sacred and sovereign duty! Easiest way to do this is to get your staff involved in the treatment plans. It’s one thing for a patient to try to trust the guy who’s presenting a treatment plan in Latin (that’s rare), but it’s another thing for the patient to implicitly trust the entire staff standing behind the dentist nodding their heads in agreement and better explaining the treatment plan.

When you and/or your staff can explain a treatment plan in plain English and combine it with some great visuals from your digital X-ray system, every single one of your patients is going to fully understand what’s going on in their mouths and will want you to do something about it. It’s impossible for your patients to grasp what you’re trying to explain to them on a one-inch by one-inch X-ray film. I still can’t believe there are dental practices that do not employ digital X-rays in 2013. You want to explain something to your patient? Blow up the image on screen and do some teaching. Better yet, print off their X-ray on a piece of paper and circle the trouble spots, then give them the printout to take home as a reminder of what they need to have fixed.

Every single dental practice consultant I’ve ever met has told me when they walk into an office and pull up the report generator on the practice management software, 80 percent of all of the reports have never been run once. So, maybe you are only treating a third of the diagnosed dentistry, or maybe you’re doing a better job than that… or maybe you aren’t. You’d never know because you don’t know what the score is. You don’t know what your close rate is. You don’t track it. When you start tracking the dentistry you’re doing against the dentistry you’re diagnosing, you start to become a much better dentist. You start to realize you might not be the best person in the practice to sell dentistry to your patients. Your close rate will improve and your patients will be much happier with healthy mouths. You owe it to yourself, your practice and your patients to start running your treatment plan reports and actively reviewing them to help identify your monthly close rate. It’s time you start taking the selling process more seriously. Taking 500 hours of CE and earning your MAGD is completely useless if you’re not going to treat two-thirds of the people who come through your doors.