Owners vs. Associate: Both Are Often Wrong

It is always sad to see the disagreements between dentist owners and associates. I frequently see many posts about this issue in several groups on social media. The truly sad part is that, in most cases, both sides are wrong, and it often comes from a lack of understanding of the entire picture. Let's make this simple: there is one main job for each side. If either side fails, both sides are unhappy. If both sides accomplish their one task, both sides are typically happy.

Now, this post is likely to make some people upset because it highlights failings. The thing to understand here is that MOST dentists have these failings. The successful ones are those who learn to recognize them and then do something about it!

Owners: Your number one job is to develop a good new patient flow of non-HMO patients (50+ if you aren't at capacity, 20+ if you are).

Associates: Your number one job is to diagnose and achieve high treatment acceptance. 

These tasks are simple in concept but not as simple in practice. Let us highlight owner failings first. If you are neither full on the schedule nor bringing in a lot of new patients each month, you are failing both your associate and your team.

Setting up a sign as a dental office does NOT work in most places anymore. Getting patients to come requires marketing and branding. This is a huge topic in itself, but the first two things you need to understand are:

1) reviews are everything, as much as we hate to admit it, and

2) you need to spend around 10% of the collections you want in order to get enough patients to grow. The good news is that the reviews side is simple; there are a couple of great companies that can handle this for you.

Now, associates, part of this new patient flow also depends on YOU. You need to be able to deliver a good experience to the patient to have them wanting to come back, get work done, refer friends, and leave online reviews. This requires LISTENING to the patient, developing even a basic relationship with them, and finding a treatment plan that matches both their wants and needs (cannot focus just on needs).

Diving into this a little more, associates often have HALF the treatment acceptance of an owner. Why? Because too many associates treat their patients like part of a job instead of as people and a long-term career choice. Too many dentists still follow the outdated and absolutely wrong way of talking to patients that they learned in dental school. You need to learn to ASK more questions, LISTEN more, and talk less. Let the patient tell you what they need through strategic questions.

The patient will essentially treatment plan themselves. What the dentist now needs to do is acknowledge their choice as reasonable, put it to paper, and then INSPIRE the patient to get it done. The average dentist has a 30% treatment acceptance rate. The highly productive dentists have 80%. Can you see what a difference that would make? That’s less wasted time in low-cost/free consults and more time spent on high-productive dentistry, helping your patients, and making money.

Now, I have heard some dentists claim that their treatment acceptance goes down because of the team. While this may be partially true, if YOU truly INSPIRE the patient and set VALUE for treatment, it is very hard for the team to mess that up. What this means is that it is almost ALL on the dentist. Let that sink in (both owners and associates).

Here is the magic in all of this: If you have good patient flow AND good treatment acceptance, the other stuff is so minor it almost doesn't matter. Who pays for lab fees? Who pays for financing fees? Who gets production for x-rays? All those things people fight over are insignificant! These fights only arise because the associate is not taking home a big enough check. As you can hopefully see, that requires BOTH the owner AND the associate knowing their primary role.

Owners: Look at your office and see if you are even capable of supporting an associate with your CURRENT patient flow. If you aren't, plan out a marketing strategy FIRST.

Associates: Track your treatment plans. What percentage of them are getting scheduled vs. not? What dollar amount is getting presented vs. accepted? If it isn't over half on both counts, NO OFFICE is going to make you happy until you fix your own issues. 

So how about, instead of fighting over the details that barely matter (such a dentist thing to do), we focus on the bigger picture and the things that will make everyone happier quicker? Higher production through higher patient flow and higher treatment acceptance!