Every practicing dentist should take a moment to consider the following points:
- – sixty-six percent of all dental practices are operated by one dentist1;
- – solo practices typically do not have office managers handling all management aspects of the practice;
- – the dentist typically controls management of the practice.
Given these three factors, what are the implications for the dental practice? Unless practices have the right management systems in place, this situation can mean that a great deal of the dentist’s time—during operational hours and off-hours—is dedicated to managerial issues related to the practice.
Nonclinical responsibilities in the dental practice can be overwhelming. A dentist can find his or her time consumed by accounting, financial controls, banking and banking relationships, legal matters, human resources, team development, patient relations, customer service and a host of other issues.
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USING TIME EFFICIENTLY
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Most dentists believe they are using time productively if they are busy during office hours. Unfortunately, dentists in many practices do not realize that they are spending a significant amount of time during operating hours (and after hours) on managerial activities. This means there can be a significant loss of production potential and loss of focus on patient care.
Nonclinical responsibilities in the dental practice can be overwhelming. What’s the solution? Create strong management systems and train others to handle managerial and operational issues.
Every moment that the dentist can dedicate to patient-related time will enhance the patient’s perception of the dental team and of the dentist in particular. Focusing on patient care also will boost practice productivity. The way to increase patient time is to streamline practice systems and allow the staff, outside advisers or service providers to perform more of the managerial and operational duties.
The objective, of course, is to take a tremendous burden off the dentist’s shoulders and to improve practice efficiencies. This can be done quite easily once the dentist makes the decision to be released from tasks unrelated to patient care. As an example, a well-trained staff certainly can handle functions such as daily accounting, patient financial monitoring, collections, customer service, hiring and other human resource activities, and benefits administration. In too many practices, however, dentists have not successfully delegated all of these tasks. What’s the solution? Create strong management systems and train others to handle managerial and operational issues.
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OUTSOURCING VERSUS ‘IN-SOURCING’
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Who should handle the managerial and operational issues for you? The best way for the dentist to achieve a higher percentage of the office time spent on patient care is to "in-source," which gives more responsibility to the dental team, operationally and managerially. This can be uncomfortable for many dentists, who believe that they are the best person to handle these functions. Unfortunately, the dentist’s intense involvement in these duties restricts the time spent with patients, limits the level of production and, consequently, hinders the growth of the practice.
Outsourcing, which has become a major focus of businesses, encourages practices to use other companies to provide services that could have been handled in-house. In certain instances, outsourcing is more effective, efficient and less expensive. A perfect example of this would be a payroll service that not only handles all payroll tasks for the practice weekly or bimonthly, but also maintains extensive records. A payroll service is often less expensive than having the dentist handle this function. Many dentists believe that if they do it themselves, the service is free. On the contrary, the time spent is very costly in terms of the dentist’s lost opportunity to provide direct patient care.
Each practice should evaluate all of its functions and ask whether the dentist is the best person to accomplish each task. Simply working with an outside adviser such as your accountant to delineate a list of 15 to 20 operational and managerial functions will allow the practice to evaluate whether each one should be handled by the dentist, a team member or an outside service or adviser. Any opportunity to reduce managerial time that then can be allocated to direct patient care will increase practice production as well as the quality of care provided. This does not take into account the potential added benefits of more free time and improved quality of life for dentists.
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SUMMARY
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Anything that takes the dentist away from patients must be addressed and, when appropriate, delegated to others. A practitioner’s time is too precious to be doing tasks others can effectively and efficiently perform. Look first to staff members and then to advisers and outsource providers when deciding how to delegate various tasks. Once a practice begins to take administrative responsibilities away from the practitioner, chairside time will increase, patient care and customer service will be enhanced, and the practice will have greater growth potential.
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USING TIME EFFICIENTLY
OUTSOURCING VERSUS ‘IN...
