Tag: dental practice management consultants

Categories
Internet Management

Dental Monster (finding good employees)

dentalpost-logo-200One of the businesses most affected by the Internet has been employment agencies. Advertising for, finding and placing people in jobs has been revolutionized by the Internet. The incredible success of job sites like Monster.com and Jobbing.com is the result.

DentalPost.net is a job site just for dentistry. The service was started in 2005 by Tonya Lanthier a dental hygienist familiar with the unique needs of the dental industry. Since then, DentalPost has grown into a networking platform for over 400,000 dental professionals and over 25,000 dental offices.

As a dentist looking for help you can post a job opening for just $79. That is less than an old fashioned classified ad and much less than a traditional employment agency would charge. You can also browse resumes of people looking for work in the dental field. You can search for specific skills and or DiSC personality types.

As a job seeker you can post a resume and search for jobs at no charge.

The site includes other resources including a blog with articles designed to help you hire and manage more effectively.

Categories
Dental Speaker Management

AADPA 2014

Categories
Health Care Politics Management

Doom and Gloom ??

The usually effervescent Huge Doherty sent me this article link.

The evident truth is that the world is changing, and changing fast. The number of dentists who are employees versus owners is increasing rapidly. More than 40% of graduating dentists are women, many of whom do not seek nor want ownership. The debt load of graduating dentists is staggering, making the purchase of an existing practice out of reach. Third parties, which cover roughly 57% percent of dental patients seeking treatment in this country

via The Future of the Solo Private Practice.

The author, Marc Cooper, makes a fairly convincing case that private practice is doomed and future dentists will be little more than drones working in corporate clinics.

I might take this more seriously if I hadn’t heard it all before. Thirty-five years ago a guy named Avrom King was predicting pretty much the same thing. At that time the big threat was not Heartland but the Sears Dental Clinics. Didn’t happen.

Third parties pay for a bit over half of dentistry but that means that a bit less than half is fee for service paid by the patient. Dentistry is nowhere near as dependent on third parties as medicine.

On the other hand there is no doubt that economic conditions are tough. Many young graduates are facing way too much debt with limited options.

It is wise to face the future aware of the brutal facts. I am just not convinced that private practice is doomed. New technology, new educational systems and even new business models based on technology have the potential to transform and save private practice.

Categories
Management

Why should they care?

From Seth Godin

Should we read your press release or come to your gallery opening or take a sales meeting because it’s important, or because it’s important to you?

Marketing is the art of seeing (and then creating) what might be interesting to more than our friends.

via Seth’s Blog.

Categories
Digital Marketing Internet

Sally McKenzie on Websites.

Here is what Sally McKenzie had to say in her latest e-newsletter.

Certainly, in the last five years more and more practices have developed something of a website. They have the home page, maybe a few staff bios… but many practice websites are static. They get the www-dot-address, post a few things, and then seem to forget the site even exists. Consequently, current or prospective patients don’t have the opportunity to learn much about dental procedures that they are interested in, because beyond the very basics there is very little relevant content on the website. There’s virtually no contact between the patients and their dentists in between visits because the offices don’t maximize their websites to encourage ongoing communication. As a result, these offices are missing countless opportunities to build strong and productive relationships with current and future patients.

I agree. More and more dentists are getting a web site but very few are using them effectively. Dynamic content with patient interaction is far superior to the typical site which is often little more than an electronic brochure. As I see it there are three levels to dental office web site participation.

1: Barely There. This is the electronic brochure style. It is based on a template has no patient interaction and is probably out of date.

2: SEO Centric. These are site with a bit of pizzazz but it is all focused on new patients. Getting to the top of a search engine like Google is a constant and expensive battle.

3: Patient Centric. These are sights that encourage patient interaction and are focused as much on providing service to existing patients as they are on attracting new patients. This is where I believe web sites have the most value. Yet as Sally says, dentists rarely take advantage of it.

My favorite dental web sites vendor is TNT.

Categories
General Theraputics

CAD-CAM is all about the Training

CAD CAM is an amazing technology. It provides a better therapeutic result for patients, it reduces chair time and associated costs. On the other hand it is not a simple or easy technology to implement.

Inevitably those dental offices who are getting the most out of a CAD CAM investment have invested the most in training. Just last week I spoke to a dentist who confirmed that his use of CAD CAM and as a result his return on the considerable investment really took off once he pushed past the initial learning curve and took some advanced courses.

For CEREC users there are many excellent training centers. On of the best is here, in my neighborhood, at the Scottsdale Center. The link below is to some of the advanced CEREC courses they offer.

CEREC Courses at Scottsdale Center for Dentistry.