Other News

  • Dental Practice Management

    Help your collections agency to help you

    “Help me, to help you” – I love that line by Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. In fact, I feel like I say that to my staff a lot. Here’s the clip in case you don’t remember this movie: I had no idea how true it is for our collection agency! Collections agency results Just last week I talked with our collection agency about their performance on our accounts over the past few years and requested a more thorough review [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Practice Management

    Treat your dental suppliers professionally

    Who are your top suppliers? Who are you writing a significant check to each month? Take a look at your credit card statement and business checking account and make a list of your top 10 dental vendors. One of the principles of the national Baldrige award (http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/) is to develop a long term win-win relationship with your “key suppliers/partners and collaborators”. They ask questions such as: What role do these suppliers play in delivering your services to patients? How do [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Public Health Oral Health

    Great book for parenting: NurtureShock

    Although I normally write about dentistry and business management, I just finished a great book that shares unique insights into children – and for every dentist, hygienist, assistant and office manager raising children – I hope this is helpful. The authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, are journalists who realized that over the last 10 years there had been some revolutionary scientific research on children that might affect the way people parent. However, this great research was shared in 5 [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Insurance

    Are you leaving money on the table? Submit your full fee to dental insurance

    Dentists agree – dental insurance is a necessary evil. Necessary to help fill schedules since we’re all trained (thanks to health insurance) that we must follow our insurance plan. Evil because it almost physically hurts to write off 15% – 40% of our fees. We all know that we’re taking a huge hit thanks to dental insurance, but are we also leaving money on the table that’s our own fault? Depending upon your set up for submitting claims to dental [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Practice Management

    Have you integrated your faith into your work?

    I recently attended the University of Dayton’s Faith at Work breakfast event – sponsored by the Center for the Integration of Faith and Work in the School of Business. Our speaker shared his ‘pilgrimage’ with faith and work. Influenced by his Catholic father who assembled headlights for Chrysler, he went on to teach in a Catholic school and later created a company that provided job training for displaced workers – particularly those from the manufacturing sector. He came to see his [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Practice Management

    How the Dentrix appointment history paints an accurate picture

    Here is an actual email I received a few weeks ago from a long term patient: My husband had an appt on 2/7. He’s been away on business since 1/4 and when we realized that he would not be back until after 2/7, I called and rescheduled his appt. I called on Jan 25. I had joined him on his trip the day before. It was rescheduled for March 6 at 8:30 am. I do not know who I talked [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Practice Management

    Dental politics: Do you know the scoop?

    Every year our state dental association hosts a “Day at the Statehouse” where dentists are invited to spend a day learning the top legislative issues in dentistry – and then to share these topics with their state senator and representative. The dental association staff provides written materials to the dentists that clearly explain the 2-3 hot topics for that year. These talking points guide the individual meeting between the dentist and his/her legislators. When a dentist registers for this Statehouse [...]

    Read more →
  • Dental Practice Management

    What I learned at Chicago Midwinter Part 2

    A dental office manager’s perspective Here are the rest of the ideas I picked up at the show: CareCredit updates – Always nice to meet with these reps who show us our applications and credit used in our practice last year, plus, when you spend the time to review this information, they give you a special gift. This year it was a pillow pet – which we took home & gave to our pediatric dentist, of course! Colgate rules change [...]

    Read more →