dental

Running a dental practice isn’t easy. And it isn’t made any easier by the fact that the average dentist has little to no business experience when first starting out. But as any experienced dental office manager can tell you, success always comes down to being able to build the right team to support the dentist and see to the needs of every patient.

After all, it’s the office staff and assistants that spend the bulk of their time interacting with patients. That makes them critical to patient engagement efforts as well as in ensuring patient retention. But with so much competition in most markets, building an all-star team isn’t easy. And neither is keeping one once you’ve assembled it.

To help, here’s an overview of what it takes to hire and retain the most talented staff members for your dental office. By the time you reach the end, you should know exactly how to design and execute a hiring strategy that will lead to happy employees and a practice that patients can’t wait to visit.

Begin with Local Market Research

Before you can design a hiring strategy, you’ll need to know quite a bit about the local labor market you’re operating in. You’ll also need to know what level and types of compensation your competitors are offering to the top dental talent in your area. To find out what you need to know, you should do some local market research.

A good place to begin is to build a profile of the labor supply side in your area. Make a list of the dental schools nearby as well as any colleges that offer dental programs. From there, you should be able to produce an estimate of how many new workers will be joining the local labor pool each year. This should give you a good idea of how intense the competition for labor will be. And the contacts you make with the local schools will come in handy later on in the process, too.

Next, do some salary research using sites like Glassdoor or PayScale. They have rich and up-to-date data about compensation levels in most markets, so they’ll help you understand what top-level talent is going to cost. And you’ll also be able to access employee reviews, which can let you know which competitors offer the best employee experiences – so you can replicate and exceed them.

Establish Talent Pipelines

Once you know the contours of the local labor market, you need to begin creating talent pipelines to bring skilled workers to you. This is where those contacts with local schools will come in handy. You can contact them again and arrange to participate in any internship programs they offer to students. And if you encounter a school that doesn’t have such a program, you can help them to start one.

By building these connections, you’ll be able to get to know entry-level dental assistants and other workers that will form the future core of your practice. Not only is this an excellent way to control labor costs, but it’s also a great way to audition workers before committing to them long-term. This will help you to reduce turnover from new hires that turn out to be poor fits. And it also allows your practice to shape each new candidate into an employee with the exact skill set needed for them to thrive in a permanent position.

Create an Employer Marketing Strategy

Bringing fresh young candidates through a talent pipeline will set your practice up for the long term. But it won’t be enough on its own. You’re also going to need to mix in some talented industry veterans with enough experience to operate independently from day one. And that means you’re going to need to create an employer marketing strategy. It’s the primary way that you’ll establish your practice as a great destination for job-seekers.

An employer branding strategy requires a mixture of reputation management, public messaging, and employee outreach. Together, they can shape the public perception of your practice and make it easier to lure the best workers to your team. And it’s not just a matter of goodwill. Research has shown that maintaining an excellent employer brand can reduce employee turnover by 28% and lower your talent acquisition costs by 50%. In other words, it helps you attract the best workers and keep them for the long term, without having to throw excess money at the effort.

Build a Retention Culture

Finding ways to develop the internal culture of your practice into one that promotes employee retention is essential. If you neglect this step, all of the hard work you’ve done up to now will have been for nothing. The good news is that many of the tactics you can employ to build a culture of retention come with benefits that will also make your practice leaner, more efficient, and more profitable.

To get started, talk with your most valuable employees. Encourage them to be frank about anything they feel is lacking from their employee experience. In most cases, this will yield a range of responses, ranging from compensation issues to interpersonal dynamics problems and everything in between. Begin by solving as many of these problems as possible.

But then, get to work looking for patterns in the responses you’ve gotten. For example, if you’re finding that the majority of employees need more scheduling flexibility, consider making changes to the way you divvy up shifts. If your best workers feel like their needs are important to your practice, they’ll be more likely to stay in their positions for as long as you want them there.

After tending to the existing workers’ needs, the next thing to do is create some internal programs that will continue to foster a culture of retention. Consider:

• Creating a mentorship program to help high-skilled veterans pass on what they know to newcomers
• An employee feedback system that lets workers contribute ideas about how to move your practice forward
• A management training program that provides high-level employees with the skills they need to keep others engaged with their work
• A defined career growth and development path, with employer-sponsored training and upward mobility

With programs like those in place, employees will feel valued and have tremendous incentives to stay the course and not flee for greener pastures. Plus, they turn your workers into better employees, with more skills and knowledge than they would have had otherwise. In other words, you’ll be meeting your retention goals while simultaneously improving the quality of your practice. A win-win.

Continue to Innovate and Evolve

At this point, you should have an end-to-end talent strategy that keeps new skilled workers coming, turns them into the best in your market, and keeps them in the fold for years. That’s a recipe for a successful dental practice if there ever was one. But you can’t rest on your laurels just yet.

It’s important to recognize that your practice doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your competitors will eventually take notice of what you’re doing and work to match and exceed your efforts. That means you’ll have to stay on your toes and keep looking for ways to remain at the head of the pack.

Keeping an open ear to employees’ needs and concerns is a good way to do that. They’ll let you know what will make your practice a better place to work, and you’ll do well to listen to them. If you do, you’ll be able to focus on what you do best – dentistry – and let your team take care of all the rest.

In today’s competitive dental services industry, it’s harder than ever for an individual practice to stand out. When you add that reality to the fact that the average patient isn’t exactly thrilled to visit a dentist, it’s obvious that hitting on a winning dental practice marketing strategy is no easy feat.

But there is a way to use your marketing efforts to great effect, growing your practice in the process. And once you understand the process, it isn’t that hard to execute. It should help you to get noticed, even in crowded markets. And it will turn each new patient into a willing evangelist – spreading the word to other potential patients that your practice is the go-to dental services provider in the area.

What you need to do is to create a marketing funnel. As the name suggests, it’s a marketing strategy that brings in large numbers of potential patients, and then moves them through different phases of the decision-making process until they’re loyal customers. To get you there, here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your dental practice’s first marketing funnel.

Choose a Specific Goal

The first thing you must do to create a marketing funnel for your dental practice is to choose a specific product or service you’d like to promote. In most cases, you’ll want to start with whatever service has the highest upside, profit-wise. That way you stand to gain the greatest possible benefits for every marketing dollar spent.

So, let’s say you’d like to promote a new offering of dental implants, which tend to be a high-margin service. Then your goal would be to increase awareness of your implantology offerings and convince potential patients to come in and seek treatment. It’s a simple, easy-to-track goal that makes an excellent basis for a marketing funnel.

Create Engaging Content with an Opt-In Component

At the top of your marketing funnel, the goal is to attract viewers that already have a potential interest in what you’re promoting. So, you’ll need to create some engaging content around your funnel’s goal that’s built to attract a pre-qualified audience. The idea is to cast as wide a net as possible at this stage by offering the audience something of value that will drive them to try and find out more.

This can be accomplished through paid advertising on social media platforms, or via organic video and blog content created to drive search traffic. The former comes with the benefit of the ability to precisely target an audience. But it can be costly and will only function for as long as you’re willing to pay to sustain it.

The latter, by contrast, offers the possibility of building an evergreen library that you can deploy again and again. What’s important at this stage is to focus on content that will get attention and that leads to an opt-in component. Think something like an email sign-up to receive a checklist to help the viewer determine if they might be a candidate for a dental implant.

Use Live Video Events to Drive Traffic to Your Content

If you’re not planning to rely on paid advertising to drive traffic to your new engaging content, you’ll need to find another way to kickstart your top-of-funnel audience. You can exploit your existing social media presence to do that. A great first step is to host a live question and answer event about your funnel’s goal (in this case, dental implants) using Facebook Live or your practice’s YouTube channel.

You’ll want to promote the event to all of your existing followers and incentivize them to spread the word. Consider offering a small referral discount or another giveaway to make it happen. Then, during the live event, you should instruct the audience to visit the landing page of your previously-created opt-in content. This will begin a traffic cycle to your evergreen top-of-funnel content and begin filling your marketing funnel with potential leads.

Create an Email Sequence to Move Leads Along

After your opt-in content has started to grow your practice’s email list, you’ll want to start putting that list to work. The best way to do this is to use an email marketing platform like MailChimp or Constant Contact to create an automated email sequence that engages with your leads over the course of a week or two. There are countless ways to do this, but in general, your sequence will look like this:

• Signup Email – After someone opts-in, the first message they receive will contain the content they requested (your checklist or another giveaway), along with an additional lure for them to go further. You might, for example, offer them a limited-time discount on the product or service you’re promoting.
• First Reengagement – If the person fails to act, they will then receive (the next day, preferably) a follow-up email reminding them of the offer. At this point, you can also include a patient testimonial, either in text or video format.
• Second Reengagement – Regardless of if the person has responded, the next message to send should be a personalized, story-driven email including information on what makes your practice such a great place to go for dental work.
• Third Reengagement – The next message should be a reiteration of your practice’s value proposition. Let the person know what they stand to gain by becoming a patient, and how much they’d be valued if they do.
• Final Reengagement – If the person hasn’t acted yet, the last email in the sequence is your last-ditch attempt to get them to act. Restate a summary of the information in the previous emails, including the discount offer from the signup email. Ideally, you’ll want this message to reach the person just before the offer will expire. That should activate their fear of missing out and get them to schedule an appointment.

It’s important to remember that your email sequence doesn’t have to be set in stone. As you start to see some results from your marketing funnel, you can adjust parts of your email pitches to try and get better results. For example, if a particular message seems to never prompt user action, throw it out and try again. As long as people continue to come through your marketing funnel, you’ll always have opportunities to refine your approach.

Gather Data and make Adjustments

At this point, you should have a decent idea of how your practice’s first marketing funnel is working. If you’re seeing excellent immediate results, you should now understand how powerful a tool you now have to grow your practice. If not, though, don’t give up.

Examine each part of the process you’ve set up to see what you can do better. If you’re not bringing in enough leads with your organic content, try an ad campaign. If you’re losing too many people at the opt-in stage, consider a better content lure or streamlining the opt-in process itself.

And at the email stage, you should already be geared up to keep revising things, just because there’s always room for better conversion. Just be sure to try and optimize each part of your funnel separately. That way you’ll be able to track the impact your changes make, right as you make them. Once you’re done, you should end up with a perfect marketing funnel prototype that you’ll be able to replicate for additional promotions. And at that point, the sky’s the limit for your practice!

Do you remember when you were assigned your dentist? The day you pulled their name from the Hat of Dentistry. Or, if you have a practice, you must have fond memories of your patient selection ceremony.

No? Of course not. People are free to choose their dentist, and practices have to work to earn their business. The primary driver of these decisions is reputation. Rarely does someone make an appointment with the first dentist they see in a Google search.

Instead, they ask their family and friends for recommendations. And increasingly, they search online for positive reviews. They choose a dentist based on the practice’s standing among current and previous patients.

That’s why building and maintaining a good reputation is critical for long-term success. If people aren’t talking about you, sharing your name with others, and if they aren’t singing your praises online, you won’t attract new patients quickly enough to build a thriving practice.

Here are a few suggestions for how to remedy the situation and get your reputation soaring.

Practice Reputation Management

Poor reviews happen no matter how good your practice is. In many cases, it might not be your fault. An insurance snag, a misunderstanding, or simply a disgruntled patient that was having a bad day might cause a small ding in your online recommendations.

When this happens, one of two things can occur. It might damage your reputation when prospective patients read it and choose to look elsewhere. Or, it might barely register against the dozens or hundreds of positive reviews you already have.

Reputation management is a process of actively policing and building your online reputation so that it can withstand the occasional bad remark. And it starts by asking your patients for reviews.

Happy patients are usually amenable to writing a glowing review but don’t always think to do it unbidden. Asking them is often all it takes to spur them to action. Send thank you emails after every visit and include a link to your Google My Business page along with a request for a review. You could also add a short remark like “Please review us on Yelp!” at the bottom of your appointment reminder cards.

Generating a steady stream of positive reviews is the best way to bury the occasional negative one. And when a negative review occurs, answer it quickly. This shows that you care about your patients and that you’re attentive to their needs. Apologize for the negative experience and ask the reviewer what you can do to make it right.

Need a Top-Rated Dental Collection Agency with 20 years of experience? Contact Us

Monitor Social Networks

Social networks like Twitter and YouTube are another platform where reputation management is essential. There are tools available that will monitor platforms for relevant hashtags and other mentions of your practice’s name and alert you when they appear.

This allows you to respond quickly. If the review is positive, thank the person for taking the time to share. If it’s negative, ask what you can do to help the situation. The more that you engage with your patients, the better your reputation will be. Positive engagement equates to attentiveness, honesty, and integrity. It demonstrates your dedication to good patient outcomes.

Make Sure Your Staff is Friendly and Attentive

Your practice might have the most talented dental staff ever assembled, but if they’re gloomy and uncommunicative, your patients will leave with a bad impression.

Instead, make sure your front desk staff members greet every patient with a smile. Teach your hygienists active listening skills so that your patients feel their concerns are heard. And be sure that you explain everything thoroughly and patiently so that each patient understands their current dental situation.

Going to the dentist can be stressful for some people. The more your practice does to mitigate that response, the better your reputation will be, all other things remaining equal.

Know Your Craft and Do Good Work

This is the foundation for your reputation management efforts. No one recommends the hygienist that caused them excessive pain during a cleaning. You’re not going to win praise online by missing a cavity. Everything we’ve talked about so far is lipstick on a pig if you don’t run a tight ship.

Ensure everyone on your staff is appropriately trained and keeps up to date with the latest dentistry techniques. Talk with them about their challenges and help them when they’re struggling. You’re the captain of the ship. It’s up to you to make sure they’re doing everything they can for your patients.

If you do that and make sure you’re managing your online reputation simultaneously, you should have no problem building a successful dental practice.

A Dental Office Manager also referred to as a Dental Practice Manager is an administrative position commonly accommodated in dental practices or orthodontic facilities.

A Dental Office Manager is like an overall Administrator, also responsible for running the front offices of dental clinics and managing day-to-day operations fulfilled to assist the dental faculties to propagate a smooth work environment. They accomplish a wide spectrum of duties in supervising the business aspect of dental practice, sometimes even answering incoming calls, scheduling staff meetings, managing office budget and payrolls, organizing charts, and admitting new patients. By skillfully maneuvering their knowledge of orthodontic and billing terminology, they support and assist the dentist and their dental team to attain a sustainable and convenient work routine.

Busy healthcare domains demand specific office management skills, well-blended with high regard for brilliant communication and a special type of individual to undertake these responsibilities. A Dental Office Manager usually holds a background in medical office processes and procedures and advances in the industry with their efficient management expertise. A high school diploma or equivalent degree is required to be considered for this position. This profession is an excellent opportunity for growth and development within the dental industry.

Responsibilities for Dental Office Manager

• Plan or map out dental office operations to ensure excellent patient service and support.
• Address any patient concerns.
• Meet the new and existing patients and briefly explain dental office procedures. Schedule patient appointments, both new and follow-up.
• Hire, train, and supervise newly added faculties
• Evaluate employee performance, promotion, termination, and retention protocols
• Assist in budget preparation and expense management activities
• Ensure appointment cancellations and last-minute appointment requests are properly dealt with.
• Efficiently review patient insurance documents to determine the procedures that will be covered in addition to required deductibles.
• Oversee daily office activities and provide support and assistance to the dental staff when required.
• Organize and maintain patient files and records, retrieve test results as needed for the dentist’s evaluation.
• Coordinate with the patients and other multidisciplinary specialists to schedule required x-rays, dental imagery, or consultations.
• Call patients to inform them of their upcoming appointments and reschedule as needed.
• Prepare patient files and charts prior to procedures being conducted and transfers to other physicians or departments.
• Perform marketing and public relations with professionals if need be.
• Oversee payment collections from patients and contact insurance offices for payment settlements.
• Perform timely payroll processing and organize employee records.
• Review and approve vacations, sick leaves, and unpaid leaves for staff.
• Improve inventory control and management to support initiatives for cost reduction.
• Check the insurance coverage of a patient, submit claims and follow up with insurance companies when needed.
• Implementing procedures and policies for the smooth operation of all departments.

Skills and qualifications for Dental Office Manager

• Exceptional knowledge of medical and dental terminology and processes
• Expert knowledge of safety regulations and compliance including Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards
• Secured written and communication skills when talking to patients and staff
• Strong leadership and motivation skills to meticulously guide and supervise others
• Experience working with data entry software such as Dentrix and maintaining reports
• Experience scheduling patient appointments depending on doctor availability
• Experience dealing with patients and providing clear instructions prior to procedures
• Excellent computer skills for email correspondence, financial transactions, and scheduling appointments
• Maintain and order office and medical supplies as requested by the attending staff
• Experience maintaining a professional level of confidentiality in accordance with HIPAA procedures
• Multitasking skills with experience working in a busy environment and managing staff calendars properly

Education and training requirements for a Dental Office Manager

• A high school diploma or equivalent degree is required
• A minimum of 2 years of dental administration experience

It is not uncommon for receptionists to eventually rise to the position of an office manager by demonstrating their capabilities and leadership skills.

Experience requirements for Dental Office Manager

Qualified candidates will be required to have at least one year of experience in the medical or dental industry as a front office receptionist or dental assistant.  Depending on the requirements posed by the organization, supervisory and management experience may also be needed for evaluation.

Dental offices, particularly those that handle high-dollar orthodontics, often face difficulties with their accounts receivable (AR) management. AR is the portion of bills to patients and insurance companies that are outstanding. However, these challenges can be met with strong, enforceable policies and consistent collection procedures.

A good rule of thumb for dental offices is to keep AR from exceeding the practice’s average monthly income. That means if you generate $40,000 on average each month, you should keep your outstanding receivables below that amount.

Additionally, none of your receivables should be older than 30 days. The longer AR sits, the less recoverable it becomes. Getting a handle on your office’s AR improves its cash flow and makes sure it gets paid fairly for the services it renders.

The Best Medicine is Preventative

Putting policies and procedures in place to prevent accounts from becoming delinquent is the best way to manage a practice’s AR.

The process starts when a patient joins the practice. It’s critical that all of their information is entered correctly, and that services are properly coded when procedures are performed. Correct information avoids improper insurance company denials, which can present a roadblock to payment.

Submitting claims quickly, with all required documentation, is equally important. The longer it takes to start the process, the longer it will take to get paid. A significant portion of a practice’s AR comes from insurance company nonpayment. Anything you can do to reduce this amount will help your AR proportionally.

It’s also a good practice to overestimate when you pre-estimate patient insurance. It’s easier to send a refund than to demand payment the patient wasn’t expecting.

Have a Written Payment Policy and Payment Plans in Place

Nothing should be left to chance. You should have your patients read and sign a payment policy that details what they might owe, lets them know they’re legally obligated to pay any amounts not covered by insurance, and describes non-payment penalties.

Having established payment plans gives patients options that you already know your practice can manage. The alternative, working out payments on an individual basis, is difficult to manage and confusing for patients.

That said, it’s always better to collect upfront when you can. Office managers are often surprised how often people will pay what they owe at the time of service simply because they’re asked. They may assume they’ll be billed, and when they learn upfront payment is an option, they may take it.

How to Collect Existing Accounts Receivable

Unlike other businesses, healthy dental practices should be able to collect the lion’s share of their outstanding receivables. Some industry estimates say between 95 and 99% of a practice’s total production measured over a year, should be collectible. Let’s look at how you can accomplish this.

Tackle the Oldest and Largest Receivables First

This accomplishes two things. It removes the oldest AR on your books, getting you above the prescribed 30-day rule noted at the beginning of this article. It also chips away at the accounts that will have the most substantial impact on your total AR.

Insurance oversights, mistakes, and misunderstandings often account for a sizeable portion of large AR balances. These take effort, but they can generally be resolved with diligence. If the patient is required to pay, help them understand what they owe, and work with them to create a payment plan.

As we mentioned earlier, the older AR gets, the harder it is to collect. It’s essential to handle unpaid insurance claims if they’re older than 90 days because there are often rules against collecting after a certain period.

For the oldest receivables, you may consider forwarding the accounts to a collection agency or writing the amount off. If payment is unlikely, getting them off your books may be your best option.

Manage Claims Denials Quickly

Denied claims can dramatically slow insurance payments. When a denial happens, contact the insurance company immediately to determine the cause. Look for any documentation or coding errors that may have contributed.

Insurance companies are happy to delay payment as long as possible. By keeping them accountable, you can limit impediments to collecting.

Keep Collections Calls Friendly

It’s best to give patients the benefit of the doubt when calling to collect outstanding bills. The healthcare system can be confusing. The patient may have assumed their insurance company would be covering their bill. Financial difficulties may also be to blame.

Try to understand the patient’s position first. It may be that a simple explanation is all it takes to procure payment. Approaching collection calls with sympathy and compassion is much more helpful than using aggressive or combative language which puts people on the defensive.

Giving an incentive to patients who pay ahead of time will significantly reduce your AR.  Remember that healthy dental practices regularly collect nearly everything that’s owed them. The right methods make it possible.

As a dentist, you have chosen a fulfilling line of work that is constantly evolving. Dentistry has made rapid strides with innovation and advancements in technology over the years, so the learning curve of this professional always remains steep, fully engrossing you in the process. While being a dentist is an honorable profession, it is also highly competitive. Opening a dental practice can be an intimidating idea in itself especially when you are just starting your career as a certified dentist but it doesn’t have to be. Dentist demographic reports suggest that there are currently more than 200,000 practicing dentists (including dentists using their dental degree in some fashion) in the United States. This might give you cold feet to start your own practice but there is a loophole to building a successful dental practice by sufficiently being proactive with some significant steps.

If you are considering striking out on your own and starting a dental practice, you may have a lot to think about. Fortunately, we have identified ten easy steps any dental professional contemplating to start their own dental practice should know and implement.

1. Create a plan “after” talking with your dentist friends

Dental practices are known to have very high success rates but this may only be the case if you are doing intense research to skip out on all the mistakes made by experienced dental professionals that led them to their failures. By knowing challenges that other dental offices face and what steps do they take to address those challenges. May be you can do things differently. Now that you have made up your mind that you want to be a dentist and your own boss, you need to start exploring the unknown that lies ahead. Talk to dentist friends who are currently practicing and extract information about the complications and challenges you may face during the course of your dental venture.

Make a cohesive plan to overcome these barriers and prevail by asking them about what they would do differently today. It is utter madness for you to go into such a business pursuit blindfolded. Make sure you do your homework, considering all odds and setbacks.

2. Put your finances in order

The cost of starting a new dental practice is outrageously high, averaging well over $250,000. That’s a large sum capital for some people to access. Many banks are readily available to lend money to dentists considering the cost and funding allocation requirements for a start-up practice. It is crucial, however, to remember that you should not base your loan decision solely on the interest rate. Although the rate is important in keeping your payments lower, it should not be the lone factor in your decision-making process.

Explore the various loan features such as prepayment and lender service levels to allot the best loan for your practice. Estimate as best as you can the initial costs of getting your office up and running. You may also find it best to calculate the expenses that would accumulate for the day-to-day operations for the first few months. Most importantly, anticipate any unexpected costs to ensure there is financial aid available, just in case.

3. Develop an airtight business plan

Irrespective of whether you are a general dentist or a specialist, you should build a plan for your business that is clear-cut and organized. You should understand the importance of specific, comprehensive treatment plans for your patients. A solid business plan is instrumental to your success and can help build popularity for your dental practice. You can get a business plan template from the ADA Resource Center to help guide you into the right path of business development and flourishment.

4. Decide on the location

Have you thought about where you want to set up your dental practice? Maybe it’s near where you live or in an unknown neighborhood. Finding the right location for your dental practice is key in determining the number of patients that come into your clinic and further your business. Additionally, the right location of your dental practice will also help convert more prospects into loyal clients.

Before getting comfortable, it is a good idea to research the area to gain an understanding of the local patient market. Does the demographic align for your dental practice? Making your dental practice easily accessible, in proximity to your targeted patients, and within your budget. These factors can impact your potential consumer base and your revenue stream.

5. Secure licensing and legal

Get your hands on the dental license for your dental practice. Don’t wait until the last minute to take care of the legal aspects of owning a business. It can take anywhere from weeks to a few months for the private and government insurance establishments to provide you with the appropriate credentials. You will also need to be properly licensed in your state, have a national provider identifier number, are registered with the DEA, and comply with all other local regulations specific to your area. Check the type of dental malpractice insurance is best for you.

6. Hire competent staff

Leadership means that there will be people under your wing who will be looking at you for guidance. As soon as you lay out a blueprint of your dental office, you should consider employing diligent dental staff who can do your bidding and help you around your dental office. A growing business also signifies growing responsibilities and a growing dental team. It is important to start planning out your hiring process and strategies before you make a move into your new office. Coordinate with your town newspaper or blog to put out an ad for zealous dental professionals and assistants who are responsible and driven.

Make time in your schedule to properly screen and hire candidates. Beyond salary, you will also have to discuss and budget for health insurance, time off, and other employee benefits. Just as you are trained in your technical skills, you will also have to work on your leadership skills to lead your practice to success. Your attitude, decision-making, and initiatives will determine the company culture and the office environment. Employees only follow leaders who are capable and proficient. Your employees should not construe your leadership skills as inept and irresponsible. Rake as many leadership qualities as you can by looking into classes and conferences that specialize in teaching individuals to become good leaders.

7. Select a billing software

When you get into the nitty-gritty of dental appointments, you will realize that it has a lot of components. Billing, for instance, can be equally as complicated to process as it is necessary. Dental billing software is specifically designed for dental claims billing. If you disregard integrating an efficient dental billing software into your practice management system, you are risking increased chances for errors, missed claims, or denied payments. Traditional dental claims filing through postal service or fax can take weeks to process, leaving a physical paper trail that requires additional service and shipping expenses. Dental software like Dentrix or Apex EDI helps your practice get paid quicker with significant cost savings.

8. Create your dental website

As a dentist and business owner, you should never underestimate the power of social media. Creating a structured and coherent dental website for your practice can help you gain more patients. Build a professional website with clear directions for setting up an appointment for new and recurring patients to easily access. You can also drive traffic to your website by incorporating backlinks and registering with dental directories that can help promote your dental practice. Effective blogging with engaging articles can also help you gain social media following and in turn bringing in more patients to your practice. You should also make sure that your blog content is SEO optimized by adding appropriate links and keywords.

9. Engage in search engine marketing

One of the biggest mistakes beginner dentists make is not putting adequate effort into marketing. Word of mouth and referrals from your current patients can only take you so far. It has been statistically reported that there are six times as many dental clinics today as there were ten years ago. That means that your neighborhood now consists of more dentists that can threaten the viability of your practice. Complete SEO optimization and implementation can take about six months to a year. Until your website gets optimized, you cannot let your business run its course. You need to generate leads right away! For this purpose, a lead generating tool can be your savior. Invest in Google Advertising for managing your search engine optimization.

Once your dental practice is registered to Google Ads, whenever a potential patient searches the word ‘dentist’, your dental practice will be spotlighted and your website will begin to generate clicks and increase the conversion rate. It is also wise to drive traffic to your website by registering for a free Google My Business listing. An optimized Google My Business listing has been found to get seven times more visits than an unregistered one! Try Yelp or Yellow pages directories to help your patients find you easier.

10. Attract patients

Your practice needs patients to run. Attracting patients is the most important part of owning a practice. Make sure you advertise your practice well through local marketing agencies who can put together a comprehensive team to run campaigns for your dental practice all year round. This ensures a steady and consistent flow of patients without seasonal droughts. Also, you can consider implementing a social media marketing plan through ads on Facebook. Local prints, TV, and radio stations will also be able to widen your reach.

Dental practices may be a challenge to build from the ground up but it is also a thing of great pride to be your own boss! Setting up dental practices with the help of professional advisors can also make your experience much easier. Let go of all rues by implementing these helpful tips before getting handsy with your dental practice. Good planning can help you build a better business module and bring in patients who match your audience type.