Giguere

(A two-portion series on "Dental Associates and Your Practice")

Immediately after thirteen years in private practice and a trainer/consultant for about as extended, I have learned one hardbound rule: there is undoubtedly a right and wrong way to go about adding a dental associate to a practice. As a consultant, I frequently answer inquiries from Dentists feel they need to have a dental associate in their office right away or are pondering about adding one in the future.

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Right here are some of the crucial elements to take into account when seeking at adding a dental associate:

1. When must you get an associate?

2. How would you structure compensation?

three. What's the best way to discover a single?

4. What are the critical factors to cover when interviewing?

five. How will you integrate them into your practice?

Let's start off with number 1: "When really should you get an associate?"

Not only is this almost certainly the most crucial question, it is also where I see Dentist creating the most errors. Let's say you are carrying out moderately nicely, nonetheless have some openings in your schedule and get about 10 new patients per month. You decide to expand your hours and bring in an associate to grow to be far more productive. The reasoning seems sound you are adding much more hours and delivering much more therapy possibilities for your patients but this rarely functions. New individuals don't magically show up, the associate is unproductive and unhappy. You either a) let him or her move on or b) commence moving work from your schedule to make the associate busier/happier. The net outcome is less profit and a problem, i.e "how do I keep my associate busy?"

In this situation the office was in no position to justify adding an associate. As such, this begs the question: How do I know when the "proper time" is? To answer this question, ask your self the following:

a) Is your practice expanding (or has it grown up to now and you just appear to have "maxxed out")?

b) Are you scheduled effectively?

c) Is your business profitable?

d) Is your schedule reasonably full?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above, now is most likely a good time to add an associate.

I'll give you this scenario: Your practice has swiftly (or steadily) expanded up to a point exactly where you can not take in more sufferers than you at the moment are. You are operating efficiently and the workplace is lucrative. You just can not see much more folks and items start off to book out a couple of weeks in advance. Now is the time to add that associate to serve three purposes:

1) To offer more rapidly and a lot more productive service to your sufferers,

two) To lighten your schedule so you can concentrate on the kind of work you want to do and

3) To enhance practice productivity.

If my practice was in the above scenario, I would search at adding an associate probably one to two days a week to commence and roll from there.

From a sensible standpoint, I would also search at how many charts I had. In my experience 1,000 charts, if handled effectively, can possibly keep a physician and hygienist productive. Also, preserving a ratio of one particular physician to 1 hygienist seems to operate best. If you are currently have two full time hygienists (who are booked), chances are you need an associate now. Nevertheless, you also want to think about the other points above.

Organization survival is inexorably connected to expansion. If the office is properly-run (which would imply that it was expanding at least a small bit), there would come a time when you could not create any more your self and would require an associate. The level of production that will need an associate will be based on your style of practice, charges, kind of dentistry you do, and so on.

At MGE ( we suggest you get an associate when there is a lot more perform than you personally can handle and individuals are being pushed out on the schedule also far.. How extended is too lengthy for them to wait? Although this is eventually your choice, it should not be far more than a couple of weeks. Too lengthy of a wait is just not excellent service!

A single of the inquiries asked above when deciding no matter whether or not you should add an associate, asked about expansion. How a lot expansion do you need to have? To begin, are you even acquiring sufficient new individuals to assistance your self? How several ought to you be obtaining? This depends in a big component on how you practice, but I'll give you a fundamental formula to use:

a. Take your total quantity of active charts

b. Multiply this by 20%

c. Divide "b" by 12 (months in a year)

d. The figure from "c" above offers you the minimum quantity of new sufferers you really should be finding on a month-to-month basis to preserve your practice's wellness. Note that this is just to keep you going. You would absolutely want to exceed this number to add an associate.

Example: Dr. Smith has 1200 active charts. 20% of this is 240. 240 divided by 12 is 20. To preserve a healthy practice, Dr. Smith ought to be obtaining at least 20 new individuals each and every month.

Preserve in mind this formula assumes a couple of circumstances exist:

a) The new sufferers are fee-for-service.

b) The physician has an acceptable ability level when it comes to therapy presentation and acceptance (which is reflected in production and collections).

If you want an associate, I would advise that you far exceed this 20% factor. This is exactly where the "MGE New Patient Workshop" ( comes in handy regardless of whether you want an associate or not. If you want more fee-for-service new individuals to keep your practice wholesome, to expand or to make it achievable to add an associate the "New Patient Workshop" is the resolution.