Dental Practice Management Archives - Strategic Practice Solutions, LLC

Patient Engagement Strategies to Improve Your Bottom Line

You As a dentist with a thriving practice in the year 2021, you know that it takes more than top-notch treatments and outstanding service to provide patients with a great overall experience. And the great experience is what increases your revenue. Patient engagement begins before a person ever steps a foot inside your building and follows them after their dental visit. The keys to improving your bottom line are optimizing your communication, developing relationships with your patients by using patient engagement tools, being involved in the community, and utilizing technology techniques to connect with them personally.

Patient Engagement Tools

There are a few key tools to have in your patient engagement toolbelt when trying to improve patient engagement strategies. Some of these you may have started utilizing over the last year’s pandemic to try to connect more with your patients and make their experience in your office easier. The first tool is an online patient portal. Utilizing a patient portal can give patients access to manage appointments, ask questions to providers, pay bills and follow their dental health plans all from their own electronic device. Patient portals can also be accessed in your office by way of a locally connected kiosk.

Another tool is automatic appointment reminders. Many times, patients will make appointments six months or more ahead of time for dental treatments, and this makes them easier to forget. Consider investing in software that works with your electronic dental care records to trigger text or call reminders to patients.

After a patient dental appointment, follow-up communication is important to see what went well at the appointment and what can be better. Use patient surveys as an engagement tool to improve your dental practice processes and patient satisfaction. These can be given out at appointments on paper brochures or sent automatically and electronically via their email address or patient portal.

Community Involvement

Finding ways to serve your community outside of your dental practice is beneficial to everyone and can let the community know about what services your practice offers. Talk to your team about what values are important to them. Reach out to local school boards, shelters, and charities and ask how you can help them help the community.

An example of how you could help is by providing toothbrushes to local elementary-age students and local homeless shelters. Many homeless shelters and similar organizations would welcome free dental clinics to provide advice, dental care tools, and instruction for their clients. By being involved in the community, you are not only helping those in need, but you are also showing current and potential patients that you value people and relationships.

Technology Utilization

In this age, technology often connects people. Use these technological advancements to your benefit by engaging with your patients via telehealth. The use of telemedicine increased during the recent pandemic and is still a viable way to keep patients safe while offering quality dental health services. Encourage patients to call the office and notify staff of their reason for an appointment request prior to requesting a telehealth appointment, as an in-person visit may still be necessary for some patients.

Social media is another way that you can use technology to engage with your patients. You can also use platforms like Facebook or Twitter to showcase your services and educate your patients. Use common FAQs and personally written applicable blogs to catch interest and link them to your website. You can also showcase your positive reviews via social media to peak public interest in your practice.

Technology does not have to be as complicated as telehealth and social media marketing, although those are excellent tools. Taking it back to the basics with personal calls, texts and emails also add a personal connection with your patients. Use these combined methods to prompt patients to make routine check-up appointments. Or remind them of upcoming appointments and important updates. There are other ways to connect with patients by way of technology inside of your building, as well. Use kiosks and televisions that display educational information pertinent to every age level of your dental patients.

Monitor Your Results

Once you have implemented your patient engagement strategies, follow up on your changes and measure the improvements. Schedule weekly and monthly meetings with your team to go over the data and discuss the results. Healthy, personalized communication leads to better patient care and, eventually, improved revenue.

Having access to patient education at one’s fingertips can make patients feel safe. Also, more in control over their dental health as well as develop trust in you as their dental provider. You will create a better overall patient experience if you involve and use these patient engagement tools. What other ways are you engaging with your patients to improve your bottom line? If you need more suggestions or assistance, Strategic Practice Solutions can help. Contact our team today for a consultation.

5 Tips for Growing Your Dental Practice in 2021

Times are changing and standards of healthcare are constantly evolving. What are you doing in your dental practice to keep up with the changing times? Much of health care can now be provided virtually, as we have recently learned. But some methods of care are better left done in person. Some tips for growing your dental practice include building your social media presence, improving communication, improving your office culture, updating your offered services, and improving your team. Let’s discuss these five tips for growing your dental practice in more detail.

Build Your Social Media Presence

We now live in an online world. Making your business known on social media and online is essential to gaining clientele. Focus on gaining positive Google and social media reviews. Positive reviews can improve patient retention, as well as call attention to your dental practice. When developing your website, ensure it is mobile-friendly. Research from Hubspot has shown that 61% of mobile searchers are more likely to contact a local business if the site is mobile-friendly.

Also, about 71% of people will leave a business a review when asked according to BrightLocal research. Depending on the average age of your client base, you can also consider using a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, to promote your practice. Patients can use the site to post positive patient experiences and you can use the site to showcase your positive outcomes, before-and-after photos, patient education, talents, and even special offers.

Improve In-Person Communication

Although the world is quickly becoming virtual, excellent in-person communication cannot be replaced. There are several benefits to improved patient communication, including patient adherence, lower readmission rates, improved mortality rates, lower malpractice risk and reduction in care costs. Showing respect for your patients is one easy way to improve communication.

Also, pay attention to non-verbal communication such as facial expressions, hand gestures, and body language. Communication starts from the moment patients enter the door. Greet everyone with a respectful statement such as “Good morning, Mr. Smith,” and send patients off with a statement like “Thanks for letting us serve you today, Mr. Smith. I hope you feel better soon.”

Engage in conversations with patients and get to know each of them personally. Consider investing in communication training webinars for your team. Even the way that office personnel answer patient phone calls makes an important impression. In fact, a bad phone experience can cause a patient to seek dental care elsewhere. What ways are you working to improve your dental practice’s communication?

Make Over Your Office Culture

Reflect on your values, your leadership style, and your expectations for your dental practice. Essentially, your office culture is how you want your dental practice to run. It can also include the décor and physical appearance of the office. Upgrade décor if it has been a while since your last makeover! According to one study, 97% of healthcare patients are frustrated by long wait times and 80% of patients would be less frustrated if they knew how long the wait time would be.

Steps can be taken to reduce wait times and alleviate this primary cause of patient frustration. For example, consider a remodel of the waiting area. It should be roomy and inviting. Include digital entertainment options that are customized to connect with the patient. For example, broadcast information about common dental problems or procedures. Ensure that you and your staff are on the same page about what is important. Improve or make changes to keep patients coming back.

Update Your Services

This includes modernized tools and equipment, in addition to procedures. Patients will be drawn by updated dentist chairs, but patients should not be subjected to outdated, painful procedure methods if there are newer options available. Explore options for updated X-ray machines, sterilization equipment, dental lasers, and imaging systems.

From simple dental cleanings and extractions to more elaborate procedures, patients will be drawn in by your expanding range of less painful procedures and more updated equipment. Promote your new equipment and procedures via your updated social media platform. One concern to consider when updating and expanding is to ensure you are not taking on more than your staff can handle.

Re-Evaluate Your Team

Evaluate your care team. When was the last time they had a training session or webinar on the latest and best dental practices? Continuous staff training is essential to providing quality dental care. Also, evaluate your team dynamics to see if everything is running smoothly behind the scenes. Consider having individual meetings to find out what is working well or not working well. You may need to make a difficult decision to cut someone from the team or hire fresh new employees for the betterment of the overall practice.

One option is to use a professional company to provide leadership training. Some companies, like Strategic Practice Solutions, also assist in hiring the right fit for your team. Contact them to re-vamp your dental practice in 2021!

What You Need to Know About Dental Acquisitions

There are risks and benefits to buying a dental practice. Whether you are new to the business of dentistry, or you have several years of experience, there are a few things to consider before jumping into a dental acquisition. To run your own dental practice successfully, you will need to be fully aware of issues that frequently arise, and how to manage them. This article will discuss risks and benefits to acquiring your own dental practice, as well as some tips to running your practice smoothly and successfully.

What is an Acquisition?

Simply, an acquisition is the purchasing of an existing business or dental practice. This includes the business’ existing cash flow, processes and client base. There are different types of acquisitions. These include a buy-out, a buy-in, associate with a buying option and room to expand. A buy-out may be the most common and involves purchasing 100% of the dental practice from a seller. A buy-in means you would pay 25% or 50% of the practice and buy the rest when the owner retires or moves on.

An owner of a practice may want to hire a quality associate and offer them the option to purchase the practice later on – this is associate with the option to buy. Maybe you have an existing dental practice but are outgrowing your current space. An expand option would be the right dental acquisition type for you. Regardless of the type of acquisition, the risks and benefits are similar.

What are Benefits of an Acquisition?

There are benefits with an acquisition that you may not see with starting up your own practice. One benefit is established cash flow. If the company that you buy out has an abundant cash flow, you are already starting out on a positive footing. Another benefit is an established patient base. Patient retention is important, so your practice broker and seller should assist with the notification of transition in order to maintain client base and avoid disgruntled patients.

Along with established patients comes established insurance contracts. Finally, you will already have established staff in place. Ideally, you will want to retain the existing staff for a while, as they are the face of the dental practice to the patients and those personal connections can be vital. The seller should also help ease the transition by providing notice to employees and an introduction before the change of ownership.

What are the Disadvantages of an Acquisition?

Although there are many benefits to an acquisition, there are some risks as well. When you are thinking of owning your own dental practice, you have your own goals and ideas to implement in mind. You should be aware that when you buy out another practice, you are also buying out that practice’s philosophy, processes, systems and workflow. These are all ideas that can be changed but it will take time.

There is also the risk of losing staff and patients during the transition phase. Keep in mind that you may have to start hiring staff quickly after starting, which may be an investment you were not prepared to make. Another disadvantage may be that the equipment and products used at the practice are not at the standards or modern level you would prefer. If you are wanting more updated equipment or certain brands, this is another costly investment.

How Can I Be Successful with an Acquisition?

When choosing a dental practice that is right for you, it is important to reflect on what is important to you. For example, ask yourself:

“Does this business’ vision match mine?”
“Does this practice provide the same quality of care that I want to provide?”
“Do the existing employees work together seamlessly as a team?”
“Is this organization open to improvements and advancing technology?”

Do yourself a favor and be choosy upfront when seeking a practice to buy; you could save yourself some hassle later.

One of the most important ways to be successful when buying out an acquisition is to take it slow when making changes. This is especially important when there is no transition phase between the exit of one owner and the entrance of a new one. Patients and employees may suffer some anxiety through the new transition. It is important to keep some familiar faces in the office, as well as introduce new processes slowly.

Another key to success is to surround yourself with advisors. By advisors, I mean consultants, attorneys and lenders that have specific knowledge in the dentistry business. These people will know your market and be able to offer you a perspective and strategy for success. Consultants like PPO Negotiation Solutions can analyze the dynamics of the current staff and make suggestions for hiring or changing systems and processes. They specialize in making a change without stepping on toes.

To learn more about how Strategic Practice Solutions can help your acquisition be a success, contact them today for a consultation.

How to Build a DSO

What is a DSO and why should your dental practice be concerned about them? Could your practice benefit from partnering with an area DSO? How could building your own DSO be a profitable and desirable venture? A DSO, or dental service organization, provides contract support services for dental practices. These include:

Human Resources
Marketing & Branding
Recruiting
IT Service
Payroll
Capital & Financing
Tax Services
Accounting
Risk Management
Practice Support

DSOs provide their partner dental practices with advanced technology, career growth opportunities, compliance monitoring assistance, and more vital support that spares each dental practice from the necessity if investing in all these technologies and areas. If you are interested in partnering with a DSO or creating your own thriving DSO, we can help with advice, support, and practical steps.

How Could a DSO Benefit Me?

Are you a dentist or owner of a dental practice? What are some practical benefits of partnering with a DSO? Choose any of the areas listed above and imagine how skilled and talented support in this area could improve your patient care, billing, customer support, or other areas. For example, let’s examine your administrative responsibilities.

The chores of hiring, payroll, and dealing with insurance companies requires experienced and knowledgeable team members. How easy are they to find? When you partner with a DSO, providing these skilled people is the responsibility of the organization and not you, the dentist. Consider how this can improve your balance at work, and allow for more personal time with your family.

Plus, this personnel brings with them the necessary knowledge and setup for using the latest technology, software, and other components that you may not have been able to afford. The DSO provides these resources; they are able to take advantage of bulk purchasing agreements that save money and provide many services for all their partner dental practices. Even simple items like dental floss can be obtained through bulk purchase agreements.

If you are a new dentist, working at a DSO could be a good option when starting your own office right out of school is not. Paying off school debt could be your priority, while also gaining the needed experience and knowledge to open your open practice. You also get the opportunity to learn the latest technologies and practices and see many different dental practices in operation. You can use this knowledge and experience when the time comes to design and open your own dental practice.

What Does it Take to Build a Successful DSO?

Remember that a dental service organization is a support organization that provides a primary resource – people. Your successful DSO must be a people business that focuses on building strong relationships, both with your employees and your partner dental practices. Keeping this fact at the forefront of all your decision-making will keep you focused on the main thing even as you build different aspects of your DSO. What does that look like in practice? Here are four principles for keeping people as your primary focus.

Be a Leader

Lead with passion. Enforce your organization’s purpose, mission, and values on your team. Be a role model for your values. If your aim is to serve others, serve others passionately and respectfully. And expect these values of your team. It is important to have open communication and effectively communicate your expectations to your employees across the board. Maintain a positive attitude about your company and its goals and expect this attitude from others with whom you work. Enforce a “team player” attitude.

Being a good leader also means ensuring your team is adequately trained and has the tools needed for their jobs. An open-door policy is essential to ensuring your team knows that their needs can be voiced. Let others know that you can appreciate constructive criticism and can use it to the company’s advantage. Invest in your team because they will help get you to the top.

Ensure Financial Stability

What kind of financing or investors do you have in the works for your DSO plans? Your financial plan is a staple in your DSO journey. Often, dental loans provide up-front financing for new DSOs. But this may limit you when your business begins to grow and thrive. The right investor could be an option. Consider contacting a financial adviser with your goals and plan prior to starting your organization to ensure safe and reliable financing that will not inhibit your company’s growth.

This feeds into how you are able to provide for your team members. Those professionals who work for you that will go out to serve your partner dental practices must be adequately compensated. When planning your DSO, you need to pay close attention to the pay scales for the different professionals in all the regions you plan to serve. Plan appropriately to support your team and offer good benefits to help build loyalty and professionalism from the beginning.

Invest in Your Team

Your people are your profit. Strategies and processes are important, but if you do not have top-notch people working with you, your business will suffer and partner dental practices will vanish. You need experts in every area of your organization – not just excellent dentists. This includes your hygienists and clerical staff.

Hire well but also train well. Webinars or training sessions are a start. Consider using a third-party company to help train your team for excellence. Select carefully who you want serving in management positions. The right leadership can make or break your business. Remember, investment equals growth.

Create a Culture of Excellence

Make it a goal to standardize that culture of excellence at every location. Patients should be the top priority at every partner dental practice. The morals and high standards of care should be the same at every place of business. Try standardizing your processes as well, not just the way you treat your patients.

For example, the way the staff greets patients, the way the phones are answered and the theme of patient-centered care should all be the same within the organization. That way, patients will recognize excellence and this trickles back through the dental practice to your DSO. Patients are your biggest marketer. Make your DSO stand out by creating a culture of excellence.

Could a dental service organization considerably raise the quality of your dental practice while alleviating many of your headaches? Contact Strategic Practice Solutions, LLC for more information about what we offer to help your dental practice become even more successful.

How to Make Your Dental Practice Transition Go as Smooth as Possible

Transitioning to a new dental practice can be a minefield for both the practice owner and medical staff. Although everyone involved will likely want the process to happen as quickly as possible, several steps are integral to making it all happen. Plus, you want to avoid as many headaches as you possibly can.

Every dental practice is different and transitions often follow varying paths according to the situation and personnel involved. Strategic Practice Solutions LLC can be a valued partner as you transition to a new dental practice. Our experts offer the following tips to help your dental practice transition go as smoothly as possible.

Start with Where You Are Right Now

All transitions begin somewhere, and it may seem obvious to begin where you are now. But far too many dental practices facing transition jump into the process without fully evaluating the current situation and what needs to happen in the transition. Your unique situation will in large part dictate how long and what must happen to facilitate a smooth transition.

For example, if you intend sell a fully updated dental practice in a highly profitable location with no debt service or other financial restrictions, your transition could need little and go fast. Anything less (large debt service, bad location, confusion about documentation, outdated equipment) can take considerably longer and much more effort.

Ask yourself some preliminary questions from your perspective:

What is the practice’s overall financial status? Organization? Debt status?
Does the potential buyer have financing in hand?
Are there medical practitioner contracts in place and ready for hiring?
Is there a smooth process for onboarding new team members?
Is all the practice documentation up-to-date and compliant? When was the last review?
How do you plan to locate team members that align with the practice’s goals?

These and other basic questions can help you determine the true state of things in your dental practice and how ready you are to make a new transition. They will also give an indicator of how long the process could take so you can set realistic expectations.

Identify Your Practice Goals

Identifying goals is a process of understanding what you want to get out of your dental practice – and what you wish to avoid. When the owner knows what they want, it is much easier to locate team members who share that vision and desire. As a practice owner, what are the non-negotiables? What about second-choices? Where can you afford to give and take?

Prime location
Modern facilities
State-of-the-art equipment
Experienced physicians/practitioners
No debt
High profitability
Skilled and experienced support team

Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? What if you cannot find all that? Where can you afford to be open and flexible? Don’t be too fast to rule out a potential practice because of certain aspects. It is wise to take each factor individually and evaluate them as how they contribute to the whole. Some team members may have skills you had not considered, or a location can offer opportunities that many have overlooked.

Organize Your Finances

Few will go through a dental practice transition without needing the appropriate financing. Lining that up early is a key to making or breaking the entire transition. The process of financing involves researching the best terms, learning about the process, and collecting everything the lender will need to influence a favorable offer and approval.

Buyers and sellers will need to have the proper paperwork in order for the transition. Your trusted accountant and financial advisor, as well as any dental practice transition advisors, can be invaluable here with collecting and sorting the paperwork necessary to foment a smooth transition and close the deal. This can include tax returns, bank statements, practice records and more.

Build Your Dental Practice Team

Your dental practice team includes everyone involved in making the transition and running the practice, including an attorney or legal team, financial advisors or accountants, practice advisors, and even local representatives from state or local societies who can help you get settled.

Many of these transition team members can help you build your actual dental office team of professionals. They can make recommendations or point you to valuable local resources for finding and attracting skilled and experienced practitioners and office staff.

You will also want people on your team who are well-versed in the regulatory and compliance aspect of dental care and dental practices. This includes those on the state level as well as those charged with compliance issues on the federal level. Those who are skilled with insurance companies and billing practices are also a must.

Before you enter into the actual hiring process, you should construct job descriptions and a set of expectations for each. Candidates will want to know what hours they are expected to work, how their work time and time off is to be scheduled, the process for handling patients, insurance and benefit information, and practice expectations.

You must also consider how each team member will fit into the practice hierarchy and family. Who is in charge? Who handles personnel problems? Client problems? Vendor problems? Compliance problems? Patient scheduling? Treatment determinations and scheduling?

Every employee will be involved in several processes that combine to keep the work, patients, income, and relationships flowing smoothly.

Transitioning to a new dental practice can be challenging. Strategic Practice Solutions LLC can make the process smoother by providing assessments, training, staffing assistance, and more. Contact us when facing a new dental practice transition. We can help smooth out the bumps and make things much easier.

How to Win a Google Answer Box and Bring in More Patients

Dental care is one of Google’s most in-demand search areas. Information about teeth and gum problems as well as dental services is highly sought after on the internet’s biggest search engine, but it’s also highly competitive. Despite the crowded playing field, a great way to get better positioning for your dental website is by getting featured in one of Google’s answer boxes.

Back in 2015, Google started displaying answer boxes in response to questions that a lot of people were searching for. Answer boxes give you short and sweet snippets of information that Google’s algorithms have deemed most relevant to your inquiry. They started as a trial feature and quickly caught on.

Today, nearly 15% of Google searches display an answer box at the top of the page. People seem to like answer boxes so much that Google started displaying them above the top site on the search engine results page (SERP).

In this article, we’re going to talk about a few tips and tricks for how you can get content from your dental services website featured in one of Google’s answer boxes.

Kinds of Answer Boxes

Answer boxes come in three styles:

Paragraph boxes
List boxes
Table boxes

Paragraph Boxes

Paragraph-style answer boxes are the most common kind. They give a short paragraph of information that Google thinks provides the best answer to the question asked. These paragraph are usually skimmed from one of the sites on the first SERP.

Some paragraph answer boxes feature an image beside the snippet of text. The image can but doesn’t always come from the same site as the text. If your site has a great dental-related image that you want featured in an answer box, make sure you optimize the picture as much as possible by giving it a relevant image alt attribute and an accurate, concise file name.

List Boxes

The next most common kind of answer box is the list box. List boxes usually come with either bullet points or numbers. Answers that have a number of directions or consecutive steps usually get list boxes.

Table Boxes

The final kind of answer box is the table. Table boxes usually show up when the question asked involves some kind of comparison. They generally resemble a chart with rows and columns so you can see how different variables match up across different products, methods or services.

How to Win a Dental Answer Box

Answer boxes are prized search traffic hot spots. If you want to give yourself the best chance of winning one, it’s important to be familiar with all the ins and outs.

To start with, you need to find a dental question to respond to that covers a broad topic but doesn’t take too much space to answer.

Keyword Research

You can find good questions to answer by doing a bit of research. Create a list of ideas by brainstorming a few topics that are popular and fall inside your area of expertise.

Run your list through a keyword app like Ubersuggest or Keyword Tracker to find out how often people ask those questions on Google. If you already work with Google AdWords, you can use your account to access the Google Keyword Planner and get Google’s suggestions about popular dental questions.

Win Existing Answer Boxes

Google continually creates new answer boxes for new questions. If you’re just starting out, it may be easier to try to win an existing answer box.

Targeting a dental keyword that already has its own answer box can give you a good template to work around with a tangible prize that you can focus on. Use a bulk search tool like SearchOpener.com to whittle your question keyword list down to only ones that already produce answer boxes.

What Google Wants

More than anything else, Google wants accuracy. You can win an answer box if you can write an answer that’s more accurate and higher quality than the current winner. A good strategy is to start by looking for inaccurate or out-of-date answers. These are the easiest to improve.

If you’re trying to answer a subjective dental question, make sure most of Google’s top trusted sites on the topic agree with you. “Are crowns painful?” is a popular question with a subjective answer. Check out what the top Google results have to say. If WebMD, Healthline and the American Dental Association all agree that getting a crown is generally painless during the procedure but may hurt for about two weeks afterward, then the Google algorithm probably thinks the same.

Besides looking for accuracy and consensus, Google also loves clear and concise answers. Instead of keyword stuffing, write an answer that is specific, enjoyable to read and near the top of a paragraph.

How Google Wants It

You can get a pretty good idea of the kind of formatting Google is looking for by clicking through to the website of the current answer box. Once you have a general idea of how Google wants it, you can work on formatting it even better.

One way to improve your formatting is to put the question’s exact keywords in your page’s H1 or H2 tags and your answer in the text directly below. Don’t change the keywords or your chances of winning the answer box will go down.

If you’re targeting a paragraph box, write a heading involving the exact keyword format and try to repeat those keywords in your answer in the paragraph immediately following. If you’re targeting a list box, use the keywords in the list’s heading. If you’re trying to win a table box, use the keywords in your table’s title.

First or Bust?

Sometimes in life, if you’re not the best, you’re nothing. Google answer boxes have a different philosophy. The algorithm scans for the best information from any of the sites on its top results page.

This means that even if you’re the last site on the first page of the search results for “do root canals hurt,” you can still cut the line and become the top result if you win the answer box. Once you get the answer box, your site will be listed twice on the first page, and your chances of getting customer click-throughs will double.

Exceed the Maximum Length

Speaking of click-throughs, winning one of Google’s dental answer boxes won’t do you much good unless you can use it to get more traffic to your site. One counterintuitive hack you can use is to write an answer that exceeds Google’s maximum answer box length.

If your full answer is shorter than the maximum answer box length, people won’t need to go to your site to find out more. An interesting and accurate answer box with a cliffhanger at the end will incentivize casual searchers to visit your site.

Don’t let Google exploit your precious information and hard work. An answer that is too short may give you bragging rights to the answer box, but you’ll lose an opportunity to increase your visitors and customers. If you’re writing a list or table box, make sure your answer includes more than five bullets or rows.

Conclusion

Answer boxes are complicated. It’s impossible to guarantee that you’ll win one, but you can maximize your chances with clear, concise and accurate answers that reflect consensus information.