Windham Brannon’s Dental Practices team recently sponsored and attended the Dental Economics Conference in Las Vegas in October 2023, where the theme for the conference was “The Secrets of Successful Dentists for Creating Wealth.” The conference is designed to equip and empower dentists and their practices with knowledge, tools and insight than can help them increase revenue, generate wealth and address staffing challenges. After attending the conference, Melissa Purvis has provided the top takeaways and insights from the agenda, topics and speakers.
Culture and Patient Experience Can Help You Grow
Speakers reiterated the importance for dentists to build a high-performing and patient-centric culture within their practices. Jay Geier emphasized that practice owners should focus on designing a culture versus operating in a default culture. He recommended some counterintuitive rules to eliminate financial stress, including the following:
- The cheapest way to make money is to invest in yourself and your team.
- You cannot get returns without making investments like time, energy and money.
- Team engagement is reflective of your attitude – check yourself first so you can lead your team well.
All three of these rules are reflective more of building a great culture than focused on specifically generating revenue. Essentially, practice owners are in a unique position to create and drive the culture of their practice – a key component of doing so is how practice owners handle and manage their staffing. For example, Gary Kadi actually advises against keeping employees at your practice because they have longevity, or because they are loyal to you as practice owner yet do not promote leadership traits to support the culture you wish to create. By keeping employees based on these factors alone, you risk turning away growth due to a lack of motivation. Both Gary and Jay also recommended that practice owners strive to pivot away from the mindset of “being tired” for themselves as well as their staff.
As part of the focus to build a great culture at your dental practice, patient experience should be a high priority. From the moment patients call the practice or walk in the doors for an appointment to the time they leave and experience billing and payment, your practice should strive to create the best patient experience possible. Gary and Jay specifically called attention to the importance of how front office staff answer the phones and greet patients when they arrive – this simple act of engagement can have significant impact to setting the tone of your practice’s culture.
When culture and patient experience are at their best at your practice, their alignment can actually contribute to the growth of your practice. Why? Because you have motivated staff operating in a top culture environment while at the same time increasing and retaining the number of patients you serve. This strong culture and patient experience can also serve you well in the event you wish to build revenue and cut expenses at the same time – Gary’s advice is to build top line revenues, retain patients and increase your case acceptance rate so that this is less difficult.
Metrics are Important
Business metrics are an important yet forgotten aspect of practice ownerships for many dentists, as many have received training to be a dentist, but they may have no training about how to be a business owner. Roger Levin had much to say to those at the conference about the importance of prioritizing how practice owners run the business as much as practice dentistry. According to Roger, the worst long-term investment is not growing your practice consistently. In his words, practice owners need to “stop managing and start measuring.” Roger said that one of the keys to a successful practice and creating wealth is to have the right business systems and processes in place, and also to update those systems and processes every three years. The Levin Group, Roger’s practice management consulting firm, at one point identified 243 strategies for practice owners to employ in order to increase practice production – 20 percent of those strategies can help achieve 80 percent of the production increase.
Roger also provided 11 ways practice owners can increase practice revenues every year:
- Reactivate all patients without the next scheduled appointment and call overdue patients daily.
- Decrease no-shows and last-minute cancellations to under one percent.
- Keep your current patients and acquire new patients to maintain a larger patient base.
- Focus on acquiring and accepting new patients.
- Work now to build non-insured services.
- Focus on longer-term staff – pay retention bonuses at one-year, three-year, five-year, 10-year, 15-year and 20-year milestones. Paying those bonuses will cost less than recruiting and training new staff as well as any lost revenue related to turnover.
- Focus to build and provide new services.
- Raise your fees five percent each year.
- Accelerate scheduling.
- Increase hygiene by 20 percent.
- Save 10 minutes per hour or more whenever possible.
Metrics are also important when understanding the true value of your business, whether you are interested in selling your practice, acquiring another one or evaluating how your practice has grown and progressed in the past few years. At Windham Brannon, our valuation professionals discovered that dental practice owners using “rules of thumb” to determine the value of their practice were undercutting anywhere from 64 to 207 percent of real value. Our findings demonstrate that valuations completed by qualified professionals are a stronger way to determine true value than solely relying on rules of thumb.
DSO 3.0 from NextLevel Practice
Gary presented a new DSO model he created, known as DSO 3.0, which differs from other DSO models available in the market. DSO 3.0 is uniquely designed to promote generational wealth without compromising a dental practice’s integrity and level of patient care. Rather than selling the practice to a large DSO, practice owners can sell a percentage to a private equity firm while joining a network of dentists, helping to protect your autonomy, team and patients.
Windham Brannon’s Dental Practice professionals understand that there are also other options in the marketplace for dentists interested in selling their practice, whether to a DSO, private equity firm or another practice. The unique dynamic of each practice means your needs are specific when entering the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) space. If you’ve ever received “the call” from an interested buyer, there are several expectations and considerations you should prioritize along with your team of advisors to make the decision that is best for you and your practice.
Rethinking the Flat Tire Model
Windham Brannon also sponsored a presentation by Jim Dew of Dew Wealth Management, who provided insight into wealth management for dentists and practice owners who need a higher level of financial planning. Jim described the traditional financial planning and wealth management model as the Flat Tire Model, in which the practice owner is at the center of all decision-making for finances and wealth. However, Jim proposed a different setup to managing wealth, where the wealth management advisor is at the center, acting as a quarterback for the dentist/practice owner with other professional service providers, providing the full financial picture to the dentist. Jim advocated this as a better practice, since dentists and practice owners must exert much energy into practicing dentistry as well as running the business – Jim’s solution is to hire someone else to run the financial piece of the business.
Windham Brannon’s Insight for Practice Owners
Windham Brannon understands that your practice culture and patient experience are important to your long-term growth strategies. We agree that building a high-performing and patient-centric culture are a key component of how you increase revenue and work to create and generate wealth. We also understand that managing the business of your practice can be challenging – having the right team of advisors by your side can help alleviate these challenges, helping you be more confident in running your practice with the utmost in culture in patient care. Windham Brannon’s Dental Practice team can help you be more confident in running your business, understanding the true value of your practice and preparing for the future, whether through M&A or growing your own wealth. For more information on how Windham Brannon can help support the growth of your dental practice, contact your advisor today, or reach out to Melissa Purvis.
