Challenges in Owning Your Own Dental Practice

If you know me at all, you know that I am a huge advocate of dental entrepreneurship. I believe the autonomy of being your own boss creates a life of freedom, flexibility and the opportunity for unlimited financial success.

The reality is, there will be significant challenges along the way.  The biggest learning curves for me happened in the areas of systems organization, human resources, and vendor relationships. Ironically, patient care was the least of my troubles!

Dental school did an excellent job preparing me to care for my patients, but the majority of my business knowledge came in the form of on the job training.

1. Organization

When I transitioned from associate dentist to owning and operating my practice I jumped right into patient care. I was confident that I was serving my patients well, but I didn’t have systems in place for the daily operations of my business. As a result, I didn’t receive timely compensation. I was contacting each patient’s insurance company for the first time on the day of service. The patients were not being asked to pay upfront.

I have since learned that a bit of research into the leading insurance companies can streamline this whole process. Forms and documents are available online to register as a provider with the insurance companies, as well as the necessary forms for the patients.

Create a checklist for your staff, to confirm the insurance company has everything they need to process your request. You can receive electronic payments from most companies. This can reduce the wait time of compensation from weeks to days.

Before your doors open, spend some time researching how you will organize your systems. There are many software options available to ease daily operations and workflow, and it’s much better to have these systems in place before you ever see your first patient.

 2. Human Resources

As a new practice owner, I suddenly found myself hiring and managing employees.  From the person who greets the patients at your front desk, to dental assistants, hygienists, and associate dentists, each team member will affect the success of your practice. I was not prepared for the reality of hiring, firing, and the difficult conversations I needed to have regularly.  Dental school did not teach me how to confront employees who were not behaving professionally or how to negotiate salaries.

One piece of advice I can pass along is to have a clear job description for each staff role, as well as a salary cap. Know exactly who you are looking for to fill each position and an explicit parameter for each salary.

3. Vendor Relationships

To run a successful dental practice you will need to build relationships with a wide range of vendors. From website development to dental supplies and everything in between, knowing who to hire and how to negotiate can save you dollars and headaches. I learned the hard way that you can’t always trust people. I poured a lot of money into a website design only to find out that the marketing person plagiarized the content from another dentist’s site in Texas. You don’t know what you don’t know! Or as Maya Angelou said “When you know better, you do better.” Having a mentor who is experienced in running a dental practice is invaluable. A mentor can introduce you to vetted vendors and you can avoid making costly mistakes.

You can avoid the tough, new business owner lessons . I can help. Let’s connect.