How Dentists Waste Their Educations
“If you’re not moving forward,” says the old adage, “you’re moving backward.”
This is true in every industry and field, especially in dentistry. You have to constantly be learning if you want to stay competitive as a business owner and healthcare professional.
Usually, this means taking courses to learn new technology, skills and procedures in order to offer new services to your patients (and therefore make more money).But usually, things don’t go as planned.
The good news: As a consultant, I see other dentists embarking on this journey of self-improvement often. Lots of dentists make a point to integrate skill-building seminars and classes into their yearly schedules.
The bad news: These efforts don’t pay off as they should. At least not immediately. There’s a fiscally unhealthy trend I’d like to address that is really taking a bite out of dentists’ profitability.
More often than not, I see a time delay from when one of my clients takes a course and when he or she finally applies (and is able to bill for) the new knowledge. In fact, there have been occasions where the time delay was so great, the dentist found it necessary to take a refresher course prior to scheduling the first treatment case.
The reasoning for this delay varies from dentist to dentist. Sometimes they aren’t confident in their skills. Sometimes they get caught up with other work. And some even forget to tell their team and their patients that they offer the new service!
For procedures such as Lumineers, Six Month Smiles, and Invisilign it’s critical to have interested patients “ready-to-go” as soon as the training is completed. I suggest that the appointments be scheduled prior to the course dates. There are numerous advantages for this:
- By minimizing the time delay between training and providing treatment, there isn’t time to forget any of the techniques, or nuances that were learned during the initial training.
- It’s easier to gauge the interest of your patients. If patients are not interested in scheduling prior to you taking the training, they won’t be interested three months after.
- Having new procedures scheduled assures you that the tuition will be worth it, and reassures you of its worth.
- Lastly, by marketing the new procedure in advance, you’re assured that the entire team is skilled and comfortable at presenting the patient benefits for the treatment.
A great way to gauge which trainings will deliver the greatest ROI to your practice is to track the procedures that (a) your patients need, and (b) you aren’t currently offering. You’re probably referring many of these patents to various specialists for care – maybe without even realizing it – and it could be costing your practice heavily.
Dr. Michael Goldstein
Goldstein Management
