How's your office going these days? Are your schedules full? Everybody paying on time? Insurance all caught up?
Beyond these everyday challenges, there are big changes facing the dental field that affect almost everyone. Let's take a look at a few:
Dental insurance
More dentists are signing up for PPO plans in order to gain new patients and fill schedules. Recently, Practice Booster's Insurance Solutions Newsletter published a list of each dental insurance plans and the percentage of participation by the dentists in each state. The numbers showed Washington and Oregon with the highest participation — and as we know, that allowed Delta to reduce reimbursements in those areas.
Not only does membership reduce reimbursement for all PPO patients for dentists, but it also adds significant administrative work as well. We may also need to keep an eye on what happens to reimbursement levels in the future.
New patients
The average dentist in the U.S. receives about 35 new patients/month. How does your practice measure up? And where are your new patients coming from? The lack of new patients has been a driver for dentists to sign up with PPO plans, so to combat this problem, new marketing programs are needed to grow your office outside an insurance focus.
What marketing programs are working for you? How many new patients joined your practice last year thanks to yellow pages ads or because they found you online? The more you document your new patient referrals, the better decisions you can make about marketing investments.
Technology
Keeping up with replacing computers, upgrading dental practice management software and handling a wide variety of technology problems can feel like a full-time job. Is your scanner fast enough? Are you running out of storage space on your server? Do you need to install V17 of EagleSoft and learn how to use the new features? How much are you spending on your copier? Is the computer in Room 3 too slow?
Finding someone in the practice who can stay on top of problems and plans for technology can help everyone feel that the office functions well and is successful. Plus technology is expensive and time-consuming. If you're thinking about buying a new laser or direct digital X-ray sensors, you need to budget for these large purchases and focus on the 5-10-year cost of ownership.
Future
Take the time to work "on your practice" and not just "in your practice." I know how busy every day can be. Just keeping up with the regular tasks can keep an office staff running year in and year out. But those who can reserve time to really look hard at their end-of-month and then set goals each year have the opportunity to think about their practices and make plans for success.
You could even run a SWOT analysis. Write down your practice's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By taking the time to write down your observations in each of these areas, you can consider each of the issues facing the dental field in general and your office in specific to think about how you will handle them.
When you combine your observations with reports showing measurable results, now you can begin to set goals and identify your success.
