Profit is Sanity

We, in dentistry, have turned several vital, widely leveraged business terms into taboos. Every other business outside of healthcare uses discounts, advertising, talent management and sales to manage their organization at the highest level. However, just about every dentist gets a little uncomfortable when using these words around their team.

Historically, dentistry has thrived in spite of our focus on traditional business metrics and practices. I have talked to hundreds of dentists that either feel like they cannot talk “numbers” with their teams or that their people are offended when metrics are discussed. Focusing on the financial health of your practice has long seemed self-serving and, in many practices, business performance is mostly overlooked.

Well, my friends, like many slowly progressing trends of yesteryear, the last two years have thrust us forward to a time where I believe we need to unearth a buried concept and highlight its importance to everyone in our industry: PROFIT.

The public vote is out, and most people today believe dentists make too much money. This is blatantly obvious in the jokes that are told. Any news story that involves a dentist also typically focuses attention on our profession, even if it has nothing to do with dentistry. Consider a story about a burglary. If the person involved was a chef at a fancy hotel, their profession would likely not be mentioned. However, if that person was a dentist, that detail would likely be included in the story’s lead.

Even though I don’t necessarily see this view as negative, this public perception is often incorrect, as many dentists today are having trouble financially. Exploding wages, cost of supplies, inflation and the comically oppressive dental “insurance” reimbursement trends over the last few decades have made the business of dentistry more challenging than ever.?

These marketplace shifts have all primed dentistry for the influx of corporate influences that are dominating today. As with the public’s opinion, I do not view corporate dentistry as negative. In fact, there are many positive aspects of dentistry becoming more cohesive.?

The existential crisis that these rapidly progressing shifts cause for dentists, however, lies in the dangers of ignoring them. We can no longer sit on the sidelines of our practices, hoping that our production outpaces our expenses (as I did for decades).?

?As the saying goes, “hope is not a strategy.” For us to provide the best healthcare for our patients, we must ensure we have a healthy practice. You are truly putting patients first when you pay attention to profit. This, most definitely, involves having someone on the team to review finances.?

If you take a broader view of dentistry, the risks become obvious. We cannot hire, train and retain the best people, provide high-quality services and create the best experiences for our patients if we are not profitable. I believe that we have entered a critical time in dentistry where many practices are not profitable and don’t even realize it. Worse yet, when any business has questionable profitability, bad decisions that lead to negative outcomes start happening. As it is said, “revenue is vanity, but profit is sanity”.

I am certainly not saying that we should chase revenue or profits while abandoning or degrading the care we deliver. If we ignore the business of dentistry at this point in time, we will be doing a great disservice to our patients.?

An illustrating point: recently, a dentist was complaining online about others, like myself, who believe we, as dentists, should seek to increase the “value of our care” in the patients’ minds.?This dentist was saying that the average person could not afford a single $1,500 crown and, as I inferred, trying to convince people to spend this amount is unethical.

My counterargument would be that most dentists don’t even know the profitability of that procedure, let alone every other procedure that we do. So, how can we discuss value, if we don’t even know if we are making a profit? In many cases, we can not even control our costs of goods delivered, as we have contracted fees.??

Dentistry is still one of the best and most profitable professions one can choose. Profits, however, are not so ensured today that we can act with entitlement leading us to ignore profits as if they don’t matter.

Thousands of dentists have told me that they cannot afford technologies, such as CBCT, CAD/CAM or even therapeutic virtual reality like Digital Nitrous (aka Opera VR). It is invariably the same dentists that feel discussing the taboo topics of selling, marketing and profitability should be reserved for others. ?

If you are not practicing in a public health practice, profitability is a requirement to provide quality dental care within the United States. It is not a distraction.?

If you want to skyrocket the profits in your practice while simultaneously increasing the quality of care you provide, sign up for this month’s FREE virtual Upgrade Day. You will get instant access to my presentation, "3 Steps To Massively Increase Your Production." You'll also get to watch more than 10 amazing CE presentations from other experts in the field who are opening up to share their own expertise and secrets. By signing up at UpgradeDay.com, you will get access to watch these virtual presentations on your own schedule.

Dr. Bryan Laskin is the founder and CEO of Upgrade Dental and the creator of OperaDDS, OperaVR / Digital Nitrous and ToothApps. Learn more at upgradedental.com .?