When you imagine your dental practice being exactly where you want it to be, you are likely to envision a successful, balanced dental practice where your philosophy guides decisions and aspects of care. It’s important to know what you need to balance to achieve the success you desire. Viewing the practice as a structure being supported by guiding pillars makes it easier to recognize what we are working to balance.
Compare your practice to a three-legged stool: it can only stand when all three legs are present and evenly matched. When any one of them is neglected (too short) or overemphasized (too long), the stool becomes unbalanced. In relation to your practice, something being out of balance may have a short-term positive impact on that specific area, but ultimately will lead to a negative net result. The three legs, or core values, of practice balance are as follows: Patient Care, Cost Savings, and Team Stability. Each value can positively or negatively affect the others. When there is constant turmoil or turnover within the team, the quality of patient care can suffer. High turnover also drives up costs by increasing training demands, therefore reducing overall savings. If patient care is prioritized above all else, cost savings may be overlooked and conversely, when cost savings are overemphasized, the quality of care may decline.
To visualize this, see the Balanced Practice Diagrams below.
Each of these aspects plays an important role in shaping your practice. In reality, these three pillars often intersect and overlap on a daily basis. How you view them and prioritize them can change year to year and will look different for each dentist. Much like a three-legged stool, stability doesn’t require every leg to be identical; one may be slightly thicker, another slightly thinner, yet the stool still stands. In the same way, one pillar of practice may carry more weight for an individual owner than another. As long as the three concepts remain in balance, the practice will continue to thrive. The first step is discovering the right balance for you and your practice.
Once you’ve determined the right balance and what weight should be assigned to each category for your individual practice—your philosophy—you can apply it when making practice-related decisions about materials, equipment, and even ongoing third-party services. Meaningful modifications in any of these categories can result in financial flexibility that can result in higher profit and the ability to reinvest in the practice, a happier team and a higher quality of patient care. At the same time, you will feel better about the day-to-day knowing that your practice is thriving from your practice philosophy.
Dynamic Dental Advisors has spent time determining our philosophy as well. We want to serve independent dentists and help them to thrive in today’s dental landscape. With this, we are making a promise, or a PACT, to you: we commit to ongoing research in expense areas, among all dental vendors, and find cost savings that align with your practice philosophy. Stay tuned next month as we will reveal how applying our PACT to your practice and philosophy can help you take those next steps toward increasing your profitability.
If you would like help on any of the following topics, please reach out to a member of our team HERE:
- How to reduce expenses for your practice
- How to recruit and retain the best talent
- How to increase your profitability while working within your dental philosophy
If you missed our last blog post about Supply Chain Management and how it can benefit your practice, you can read it HERE.
To request a FREE Practice Optimization Analysis for your practice and to learn more about how to create more profitability in your practice, click HERE.
