The Coaching Corner
Prevent Embezzlement in Your Dental Practice
You can take these necessary steps to prevent embezzlement in your dental office. It is well worth the money, time, and effort to make sure your practice is profitable and thriving instead of a sinking ship. Mandatory background checks on all employees - Employees...
Closing the Month in Dentrix is Key
Here’s a question that I am often asked as a trainer and Profitability coach: Do I really need to close the month in Dentrix? The primary purpose of maintaining dental records is to document the delivery of quality patient care and follow-up. It is a legal record...
Increasing Hygiene Production
The first time I consult with a practice, we review the 5 key areas all offices should track. One of them is dentist vs. hygienist production. Many times we find the hygiene production is not consitently meeting the following industry standards: A general practice...
Dental Payment Options = Increased Case Acceptance
Dental care can be expensive for patients without insurance. And there can even be out-of-pocket expenses for those patients who do have insurance. Patients will often turn down treatment because they simply cannot afford it. Or sometimes they decide to have the...
How Many People Know Your Administrator Password?
I am consistently surprised at how many dental practices do not use passwords in Dentrix or if they are using them, are using them improperly. Here’s one example: Recently, I was consulting with a practice and the doctor stepped away for a few moments. We needed his...
Third-party Insurance and Collection Vendors
I wanted to talk today about offices that thinking about referring insurance and collections to a third party. While there are benefits to doing so, there are also several things to watch out for. During my time as a consultant, I have had a few offices that were...
Taking Advantage of Cross-Coding
How many times has a patient come into your office and asked if you will bill their medical insurance for a procedure? Most offices usually respond by saying, “No”. This usually is because the office does not know how to bill dental procedures to medical insurance...
3 easy ways to increase production in your dental practice
Growing your dental practice can be accomplished in different ways. To increase production, you can try all three of these, or talk to your team about making one change a month over the next few months. #1: Raise your fees Have you had a look at your fees lately? If...
Tips for a successful dental practice website
Many offices spend thousands of dollars a year investing in their practice so that it looks nice, but they don’t spend the money beyond their doors. They completely forget about marketing services like a custom website. Using a basic templated website platform...
Notes, Notes, and More Notes
As an office, you all should be on the same page as to where notes go in your software program. Nothing is more frustrating than clicking all over to find one note. Making sure that everyone is aware of where notes should be entered will help make your office run more...
Make the time to make your goals
As a Henry Schein One Consultant, I have worked with hundreds of practices over the years. So many times when asking a practice about their goals, I hear: “We don’t have goals,” “We used to have goals,” or “I don’t feel we need goals”. Focusing on patients and...
Inactivate or archive?
A very common question I get from offices is, “What is the difference between Inactivating and Archiving a patient”? This is a good question because the way you use your statuses affects your active patient base. There are 3 different patient statuses in Dentrix. Our...
To use fee schedules or not, that is the question!
Offices often ask me whether or not they should set up fee schedules for insurance plans they participate with. As with most everything, there are pros and cons to consider, and there isn’t necessarily a right answer. But there is a process by which you can determine...
The benefits of using social media in your practice
With approximately 1.8 billion active monthly users on social media, there is no denying its importance when trying to reach out to patients. There are hundreds of statistics that show many platforms work well for dental offices. I enjoy doing the New Patient and...
Decoding the new CDT code changes
Every year, the ADA comes out with new CDT code changes. This means they have added new procedure codes, deleted procedure codes, or revised procedure codes. This year there are 15 new codes, 5 revised codes, and deleted codes. It is important to take time to look at...
Accommodating new and perio patients
Your hygiene department depends on a continuous influx of new patients and the diagnosed treatment of patients with perio disease. But you might be creating a catch-22 with your scheduling habits. Hygiene Most of us would agree that scheduling patients for their next...
Training builds teamwork
“You get the best efforts from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within them.” — Bob Nelson The quote above is a great thing to remember. Too many times, offices end up with a leader who, instead of helping others succeed, tends to let...
Checking insurance benefits efficiently
Spending a lot of time checking insurance eligibility for your patients can be such a time-consuming task for your office. You want to work smarter, not harder! We have all heard that before—and we agree. Using the Insurance Manager in eCentral, you can check the...
Exceptional customer service from the front door to the dentist’s chair
Have you ever walked into a dental or medical office, and the receptionist is so busy talking to another team member that they do not even acknowledge you? Or the reception area is cluttered with old, torn-up magazines and stained chairs that you are hesitant to sit...
See more hygiene patients (without compromising care)
I was recently doing some coaching at a dental practice, and they asked how they could make their hygiene schedule more efficient. They currently schedule all prophy and perio appointments for 60 minutes and, upon checkout, have been adjusting the time on the...
5 steps to patient-friendly case presentation
Communication is key when presenting treatments to your patients. You want to make sure they have a clear understanding of what, why, and how much it will cost them. You also want to give your patients the treatment options that are available to them along with the...
Unplug and reboot
During a recent Consulting Conference, I realized there is a common dominator for the majority of us. We want to work to the best of our ability, and we want to be successful. But what I also realized is that we cannot be our best when we are exhausted. We are...
The power of passwords
It always surprises me when an office tells me they haven’t set up passwords in Dentrix. Passwords are important for several reasons: They reduce the risk of inappropriate people accessing your database. They allow the office to limit access to specific team members....
The right way to handle credit balances
Credit balances are something all practices have to deal with. There are several reasons why you want to know how to do it the right way. One reason is simple: you want to stay on the good side of the law. Over the last 25 years,...
Why month end is so important
To close or not to close, that is the question. The answer? CLOSE! A lot of offices worry about closing out the month and how it “locks down the month and they can’t make changes.” I’ve always compared closing out the month to banking. If you deposit one thousand...
Head trash and how to get rid of it
I recently attended a consulting summit where some of the top consultants in the nation meet for an annual conference. One of the biggest takeaways for me, and what seemed like the theme of the weekend, was “head trash”. We do it often, and it really needs to stop....
Featured Post
Prevent Embezzlement in Your Dental Practice
You can take these necessary steps to prevent embezzlement in your dental office. It is well worth the money, time, and effort to make sure your practice is profitable and thriving instead of a sinking ship. Mandatory background checks on all employees - Employees...
