Five Dental Consulting Biases

See the full article, which I posted as a Knol. Here's the list:

1. Short-term bias
2. Dramatic change bias
3. One size fits all bias
4. Smart sounding answer bias
5. Rule of thumb crutch

Appointment Reminders

I offer anecdotal evidence on the value of appointment reminders. A dental practice in Grand Rapids, Michigan neglected to perform reminder calls one day. The no show rate was extraordinarly high for the affected day and some patients specifically said they forgot their appointments without the reminder calls. Separately, the practice quit sending appointment reminder postcards for three months. Last minute cancels were higher in those three months than ever before.

Dental production per dentist

How much dentistry can a general dentist do in an hour? It depends on a number of factors including staffing and delegation of duties. A dentist with two or three hygienists and two or three registered dental assistants to whom all legally delegated duties are delegated can do a lot more dentistry than a dentist working alone doing his own cleanings. Proveer Practice Management has observed an order of magnitude difference in production per dentist across dental practices in West Michigan.

Production in a dental or medical practice

While there are many ways to think about production in a dental or medical practice, one way I find insightful involves the following loose decomposition:

Production = Number of Patients Examined X Production Per Exam

where the latter factor includes production associated with the exam itself and any treatment that follows from the exam.

Different dental practices serve different market segments and accordingly optimize their strategy toward the above factors differently.  Think spa dentist vs. medicaid dentist or single dentist practice vs. group practice or busy practice vs. not-so-busy practice.

In future posts, I will contrast approaches of one Grand Rapids, Michigan dentist office client of Proveer Practice Management, which provides dental practice management services in Michigan, with one hypothetical dentist in Grand Rapids and another hypothetical dentist office in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  

Proveer completes first dental practice acquisition

Proveer Practice Management helped Grand Rapids dentist office Van Haren Family Dentistry acquire the practice of Grand Rapids dentist Dr. Robert Bochniakas on March 1st, 2009.  The merger is a win-win-win for Dr. Bochniak, Van Haren Family Dentistry, and patients.  Dr. Bochniak will continue to see his patients at Van Haren Family Dentistry for 6-12 months while transitioning to full retirement.  The larger patient base furthers Van Haren Family Dentistry's growth objective.  Finally, Dr. Bochniak's patients will experience a smooth transfer of care to Grand Rapids dentist Dr. Ryan Van Haren as Dr. Bochniak transitions to retirement.

 

According to Dr. Van Haren, “We have experienced consistent organic growth over the last few years despite the economic downturn.   Dr. Bochniak’s desire to transition to retirement offered us an opportunity to take a big leap in our growth."

 

Dr. Van Haren adds, "The fit between the practices in this merger is great.  Both Dr. Bochniak and I enjoy the relationships we form with patients and our sense of service to patients.  We both built our practices to foster those relationships and help our patients.” 

 

Greg McGlaun from Proveer Practice Management was the architect of the acquisition and is now managing the transition.  "We are managing a number of tansition issues: different location, different fees, different relationships with insurance companies, different practice management software, different approaches to periodontal care and x-rays, and more.  It's early, but so far so good." 

Genuine service

I have been spending significant time inside the practice of a Grand Rapids Michigan Dentist, Dr. Ryan Van Haren.  I am repeatedly struck by the depth of trust and comraderie between the dental staff and patients that flows from the staff's genuine interest in patients and the quality of patients' interactions with the practice.  The staff and patients have relationships that go well beyond scripts or fake smiles. 

Leveraging dental insurance benefits

Dental insurance is complicated. Annual maximums, benefit periods, exclusions, participating versus non-participating, usual and customary, claim submission, narratives, explanation of benefits, deductibles, coverage levels, and writeoffs. Through all the complexity, hundreds or thousands of dollars of each patient's household budget are at stake.

Many insurance companies provide ready access to details of patients’ insurance benefits. Rather than assume each patient has generic benefits, dentists can leverage insurance benefit information to design treatment plans that better leverage patients’ dental insurance benefits. By taking account of variation in patients’ insurance benefits, dentists can produce one hundred or more dollars per day of highly profitable dentistry while providing better dental care to patients. Just one hundred dollars per day adds $10,000 or more profit for the dentist over the course of a year. What’s best, insurance companies pay for the extra production.

While insurance benefits would be irrelevant in a utopian world of “ideal treatment”, financial considerations are relevant in the real world. If economics were irrelevant, why would so many people – especially in poorer countries - continue to walk around with imperfect smiles? Why would employers put so much money and effort into providing dental insurance benefits? Why would patient financing programs such as Care Credit exist? Why would Americans seek dental care in Mexico or other countries?

The principle of Patient Autonomy in the ADA Code states, “The dentist’s primary obligations include involving patients in treatment decisions in a meaningful way, with due consideration being given to patient’s needs, desires, and abilities.” Finances are not only a justifiable, but a required consideration for dental treatment under the ADA Code.

With detailed information about patients' dental insurance benefits, dentists are armed to provide optimal care for real-world patients who face constraints on their household budgets.