I recently received a phone call from a new dental practice administrator of a three-location group practice. She had years of hospital administration experience and management expertise, but was new to the dental field. She accepted the position to manage this group practice and immediately set to looking for resources to help her quickly learn dentistry.
She contacted me requesting my help to run an evaluation of her practice so she could have a better understanding of the challenges she was facing. Plus, she wanted to hit the ground running and see what areas of the practice she needed to focus on to make the most improvement.
I remotely connected to her computer and we ran a series of reports together. We looked at:
- production/collection
- aging report
- write-offs
- outstanding Insurance claims
- QuickBooks (to evaluate the major expenses)
- new patients
- referrals
- hygienist performance
- schedule
When we ran each report, she made some notes, and we talked through what each report was telling us. I shared questions to ask and initial suggestions on steps to take. By the time we finished, she had a real sense of the business side of this group practice and what type of challenges she was facing to manage the locations successfully.
Since she came from a medical practice background, she was a quick study and understood the issues easily. In fact, I complimented her on how easily she seemed to be picking up the concepts since she was so new to the dental field.
To give her a hand, I typed up a summary of the different reports we ran and added my ideas. When I sent the summary to her, it ended up at five pages of customized, data-supported, targeted information that she could use to get started in her new position.
This was such a brilliant way to get a jump-start as a new dental office manager. Her dentist is incredibly lucky to have her manage the group since she is so resourceful.
