Who Said Dental Coding Is Only For The Front Desk Team?

Admit it, if you haven't said it yourself, you've heard other dentists and clinical team members say it dozens of times. Maybe all dentists secretly wish to avoid the procedure codes. My dear friends, this is a myth that must be busted. Let's start today!

Appropriate coding starts with the clinical team. Their eyes witnessed the intraoral photos, x-rays and hands-on exam. Let's enter the age of enlightenment where we chart and code for what we do.

Accurate coding is not only a team sport, but the beginning step in streamlining the reimbursement process. Most claims are delayed or denied due to inaccurate or missing information.

Today's Reimbursement tip:

"A picture is worth 1000 words," yet how many times a day do we take pre- op and post-op intraoral photos? Make this part of your protocol in treating each and every patient and include it as a standard operating procedure in your clinical documentation. This can be a great learning tool for the patient as well. Maybe they don't "feel" like you really did anything to their tooth. Show them photos along the way as well as after their procedure. They'll feel like the most cared about and respected patients in town.

Dental Office Manager Do's and Don'ts

Dental office managers can truly be a blessing. However, if given too much authority and too little supervision, dentists may be in for some unpleasant surprises. Personally, I believe that most employees have great intentions, yet that assumption paired with a lack of communication can be a recipe for practice mismanagement.


For the record, I am very “pro” office manager. Nearly two decades ago, I proudly served in that capacity in a busy general practice for two years.

Here are the top hits of what an office manager can, and in most cases should, do for you:

While you’re busy dazzling patients, diagnosing dentistry, and spinning the handpiece, it’s great to have someone to assist you in the management of your practice. This person can help manage attendance and record it, pay bills, help you track and manage the profitability of the practice, and ensure that things are running smoothly overall. Let’s face it: most dentists became dentists because they loved dentistry, not business.


In what areas should you proceed with caution?


First, unless you have a large practice (let’s say 20 or more employees), it is quite odd for the doctor to allow the office manager to handle performance issues with the other staff members. Not that the office manager cannot help guide other employees or follow up regarding substandard performance, but a doctor who works with a team member every dayshould have the courtesy or courage to talk to that person directly if they are unhappy with their performance.


Next, unless you are married to your office manager, they should not have the ability to sign your checks. Yes, I realize this may ruffle a few feathers, yet I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the instances where dentists have been taken advantage of by doing this. Allowing your office manager to write the checks is another matter and very helpful. Signatures should be for the doctor only.


Be careful with the computer privileges within your dental software that are given to the office manager and other employees. The top level administration should be reserved for the owner only. Sadly, most dental software is installed completely unlocked, meaning all users have access to everything. Also, be sure to contact your dental software provider and give them a password or code that you will use when calling to make high-level changes. Make sure this password is unusual and not easily guessed by your team. Believe it or not, I’ve worked with practices where the office manager’s privileges were altered/reduced, and she phoned in to the dental software company and pretended to the doctor and was able to change it back, no questions asked.


Last but not least, the practice owners must have a list of all user ids and passwords as well as a contact list of major practice vendors and service people. We always want to think positive and look forward, yet you never know when an office manager could walk out… or worse, become ill and leave your practice in a tail-spin. Schedule monthly meetings with the office manager to review passwords and processes.


This list should get you started. Protect your practice. If you, the owner, don’t know how to work your dental or checking account software, take some classes. You need to be able to check in and see how things are being done. You’ll be glad you did.

Is Your Practice like a Pig in a Tutu?

How's business? It's still early in the 3rd quarter of 2010. Are you happy with your results? This is the time of year when kids go back to school and staff vacations slow down. It's also the time of year when many dentists take a look at their numbers to see where their practice is this year as compared to last year.

If you've found yourself a little behind in the game, don't get discouraged. Resist the temptation to immediately shell out a large chunk of change on a classy advertising campaign. External marketing might be the least of your worries and it could be like putting a "pig in a tutu" and expecting to turn it into a ballerina. Tutu's are cute and they get noticed, yet it's the talent within the tutu that gets the crowds to stick around for an encore.

Branding is important, but it won't revive a practice in need of systems improvements as well as excellent customer service. Just like building a house doesn't begin with picking out bricks and the type of landscaping, the best place to start building a successful practice is with the day- to-day operations of the practice.

What do your patients say about you? Ask them. Sure you can use anonymous surveys if you wish, but also begin to ask them when they are completing their visit in your office. A quick, "How was everything today?" or "Do you have any questions about today's treatment?" can go a long way.

Do you pay attention to the patients "in the charts?" Whether you have paper or electronic patient charts, those patients are still a priority. They are second only to the patients in the chair in your office today.

Here are a few "internal" customer service strategies that will have your patients singing your praises to their friends and family members.

Consistently make post-op calls. Either in the evening or day after the appointment, call patients who received local anesthesia for a procedure and see how they're doing. They'll be amazed and happy to hear from you.

Follow up a week or two later. Any patients having something seated (crowns, veneers, onlays, dentures, etc.) should receive a call a week or two after the seating of the fixed or removable appliance to see how they're doing. The patients will be surprised that you remember and in most cases will be happy with the care they received. For those that aren't happy, early intervention is the best solution. Get those patients back in as soon as possible to work on making them feel better.

Ask for referrals and always carry business cards. Every day each team member should ask at least two patients for referrals. Simply thank the patient for choosing your office and let them know you'd be happy to see their friends and family in the practice as well.

If you think there might be opportunities for improvement in your practice, let us hear from you. We're happy to help.

What It Takes To Have A Committed Team

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a group of people who work together and a team? My definition is simple. A team shares a common vision and goals. What makes a team great? Combine a common vision and goals with high standards and commitment.

If you haven't already watched Emmitt Smith's Hall of Fame induction speech, you'll want to take an extra few minutes to click on the link below. You'll be watching the fruits of a committed team acknowledged by an incredibly talented and humble man.

Being on a committed team can be very glamorous at times, when you receive accolades from others or visible rewards. What makes a team great is not the championship game, but the journey to get to that point. The hard work, sweat and discipline of the journey are not greeted with fanfare but require a day-to-day commitment by each individual on the team.

Thankfully, in dentistry, there is no limit to how many excellent practices there are in this country. The limits are only placed on us by ourselves alone. The committed teams who rise to the occasion and achieve their potential are lucky enough to have one great leader who has a passion for building up other leaders.

The most touching part of the Emmitt’s speech was when he had finished thanking fellow superstars Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin and turned to thank Daryl "Moose" Johnston. For those of you who don't follow football, Johnston played fullback for the Dallas Cowboys. Behind every amazing run made by Emmitt Smith was the "Moose" blocking the way for him. Daryl made sacrifices both physically and emotionally. It could have been easy to have an ego or be bitter that he wasn't getting the attention. Yet the "Moose" was out there game after game, making Emmitt's incredible record possible.

Watch this video with your team. How is a dental team coached to this sort of greatness? It starts with the doctor(s) creating a vision and setting high standards, and asking a team to come on board and support them. If you want to know more about coaching for your practice, email penny@reedlimoli.com or call 1-888-877-5648.

How Coaching Can Help You

Think of great sports coaches you’ve admired. John Wooden, Don Shula, Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Lou Holtz, Bobby Bowden, Bear Bryant, John Madden, Tom Landry. Coaching in the present day is patterned after the example set by these leaders. You may have mixed emotions about their teams or methods. You may strong opinions about their top players, or the way they leveraged those player’s talents during a game. But overall, each man represented something tangible to the team they were in charge of: leadership, structure, vision, and resource of accountability.

Coaching and mentoring is designed for people who want to create a better result in less time, with objective outside listening, help, resourcing, and advice.

A dentist would hire a coach to help them:
• Become more organized and streamline procedure(s)
• Make and keep more money
• Get more done in less time
• Attract and deepen relationships with quality patients and staff
• Eliminate the hassles of life: tolerations, stress, poor communication
• Get a handle on: spending, habits, crises, unfinished business, consequences
• Substantially increase quality of life

Having a Vision is essential for success. Coaches help their clients by defining the goal and creating a structured way to accomplish it. A coach can help you with the general and detailed aspects of your vision, articulating exactly what you wish so that you can be better able to realize it.

Four Tips You Can Use to Coach Your Team:

1. Discern What Things Motivate the Individuals on Your Team.
Don’t naturally assume that money is the primary motivation for accomplishing goals. Often your team will be motivated by praise, camaraderie, and the certainty of a common purpose. Knowing what motivates your team will allow you to lead them toward accomplishing practice objectives. Delivering that motivation is the joy of the Coach.

2. Great Coaches Insist on Training for Their Players.
The best teams have a roster of skilled individuals who can contribute at a high level. No team can be successful until their weakest member is better than average. Training can be achieved through internal or external methods; often internal training in a weekly meeting setting is most effective for learning. Choose topics for learning that are impactful and create an ironclad forum for addressing problems and issues. Preparation equals success!

3. Create Ownership in Your Team by Involving Them in the Goal-Setting Process.
Winning isn’t a solitary event. Getting the win takes determination, drive and teamwork. Every person on the team must agree on goals and the system that you’re going to use to attain them. Allowing the team to participate in goal setting isn’t just democratic; it’s the single biggest criterion to achievement: as a Coach, you’ll have the buy-in and leverage you need to help your team through the rough spots…and the criterion to recognize opportunity.

4. Give Players the Ability to Share in the Profit Creation.
People like to be rewarded when they win. A bonus structure based on production/collections in relationship to staff salaries will garner results. Being financially rewarded isn’t the whole outcome of sharing profit. Making an investment in the success of the team is a smart idea. Plus, the act of sharing gives you permission to coach your staff on toward the goal.

There are many benefits of Coaching and being Coached. The Top 3?
• The Challenge - You’ll reach for much, much more because of the support and structure a Coach provides.

• The Open Forum - You’ll make better decisions because you can run your ideas by an objective listener(s).

• The Rewards – You’ll start making and retaining more money and get on the path to financial freedom.

Being on a great team requires discipline, training, mindset and an attainable goal. Coaching guarantees you perspective, energy, options, strategy, feedback, and validation. To win, all you have to do is take part in the process.

Creating Value in Your Practice

“Getting things right the first time is more important than getting things done quickly.” - Roger McNamee

The analysts have all spoken and the prognosis is clear…the bear market is upon us. Wildly fluctuating stock prices, layoffs, closures, economic downturn…this is reality for many communities and dental practices within them. Our free-fall financial boom may be over for a while, but its’ demise creates plenty of opportunity for those dental organizations who are dedicated to not just surviving – but thriving - in tough times.

Thriving practices will have the opportunity to innovate, but first each aspect of the business must be scrutinized to determine how necessary, how relevant, how effective each system is in relationship to your practice’s total fiscal health. What could be done more efficiently? What are people buying today? What are they likely to buy more of tomorrow? Is the best use of time given to every system or project? Is the right person in place for every responsibility? These questions are ones smart practice owners are asking themselves right now.

So what is the smart way to stay on track, not lose ground in profit creation, and potentially get ahead in sticky times? Here are three ground rules for creating more value in your dental practice:

Do More Of What Matters:
Recession isn’t a new financial situation; we have had many in the past. The tendency is for fear to overtake us as dentists/business owners, and to hunker down until everything is “over”. Actually this is the best time to take stock of what is working/not working in your dental practice and correct those things that aren’t creating value for your patients or those on your team. Traditionally, recession creates a “what can I cut?” mentality in all types of businesses. Far better to focus on accelerating the one or two points that can get you through the tough times and leave you prepared for whatever is next: brand-building and relationship initiatives, such as chart auditing, are two of the best investments. If you’re not sure what a “relationship initiative” really is, try our Chart Audit Protocol, available at the end of this article.

Formulate Your Talent Strategy:
The easy way out for many companies is to cut positions during recession. Smart dental practices will use this lull in business to train and develop key staff to be their very best. Cross-training team members while running a lean payroll matrix can be difficult but the payoff in increased awareness, flexibility and shared knowledge is invaluable. The investment your practice makes in employee’ development can’t just stop at required continuing education, but must include specific strategies to propel your team forward and address issues. What’s key here is that there is no shortage of great talent available, and this economy creates opportunity for every practice to have the absolute best employees in its lineup. If you aren’t satisfied with your current team, it’s the perfect time to get results either through training or hiring the ideal candidate.

Have What Your Patient Wants:
Within the past year, there’s been a huge shift in patient awareness of products like Zoom© and the availability of porcelain veneers, etc, to the average person. An example? The success of television shows like “Extreme Makeover”, where plastic surgery and aesthetic dentistry transform a few brave individuals. The general public is beginning to understand the options available to them, and how dentistry can change their appearance forever.

Smart dental practices will capitalize on this shift by having what their patients are looking for on hand, and creating opportunities to buy good feelings right in their consultation rooms. Innovation within parameters is the rule of the day here: buying every bell and whistle won’t make you successful, but having the skill and the technology in place to meet patient requests will set you up for success in lean times - and good ones.

Hiring Super Stars

"Chances are good that up to 66% of your company's hiring decisions will prove to be mistakes in the first twelve months." - Peter Drucker, (Management Consultant)

Every day, dentists tell us how difficult it is to find good employees. Traditional newspaper advertising and posting on Dental Town’s job boards might do the trick for you, but we’ve seen increasingly tougher patterns in hiring over the past year. The prospect of finding someone brilliant to join your team is alluring. Often, however, it’s balanced against the unpleasant thought of having to coach a current employee on their poor performance (in order to turn them around/get a better result) or the daunting prospect of hiring – and training – someone new. While it’s common to attribute a team member’s inability to “make it” in an office to lack of training or low (or possibly no!) motivation, very often the factor most influencing the employees’ success is the process by which they were hired.

A true “hiring process” is more detailed than finding someone who looks good, sounds good and can work the hours of your office. Poor hiring practices create a cycle of attrition. By hiring poor performers, you ultimately ‘reverse-market’ your business by causing patients to wonder, “Why are there different people working there every time I get my teeth cleaned”? In the hiring process, your time is valuable and so is the time of your office manager and dental team. Bringing the wrong person or type of person into the practice can have a seriously detrimental effect.

There is hope! Begin by modeling and implementing a proven hiring system, ensuring you have the best strategy to determine who does or doesn’t need to be on your team, before you bring them in as a new-hire.

1. Empower your existing team to assist in the hiring and interviewing process.
Put the framework in place for interviewing and hiring by creating a hiring committee of at least one person per department in the practice. The dentist should approve any ad before it is placed and review submitted resumes with the hiring committee. The hiring committee will then call potential candidates for permission to check references and then perform reference checks. This will eliminate a great deal of time the doctor must personally spend on hiring new staff.

2. The hiring committee should make a job map for the open position.
A job map merely articulates the skills and personality traits you require for the open position. Most of us who’ve had a bad experience in hiring know exactly what we DO NOT want in a new hire; verbalizing what the new employee must do or be will help you in your search. A job map lists skills, experience and transferable proficiencies required for interview candidates. It also benchmarks easy elimination of likeable (but unsuitable) contenders for the job opening by identifying the core traits the new hire must possess.

3. Review the resumes and have each candidate complete a job application.
Unless the position requires a specific registration or certification, don’t rule out candidates without a dental background. Look for past performance and length of stay at each job over the past five years. When considering applications, get clear on the intended job description. A well-defined job description will let the prospective employee know what is expected of them and also outlines the culture and boundaries in your business. It’s best to have a written, tangible description to ensure all employees have the same rule set governing their behavior. Job descriptions also alleviate the business owner/manager from having to constantly remind employees of their responsibilities; there’s no opportunity to “pass the buck” on any duty if it’s written plainly as an obligation.

4. Call references and past employers.
This is the most overlooked step in the interviewing process. Call the applicant and ask permission to contact current/past employers. It may be understandable if they do not want you to call their current employer, but you must have one or two past employer references. Anyone who doesn’t have the requisite amount of references for contact should be eliminated from your core group of interviewees. Call the applicants who look the most promising after you have checked references, then do a brief phone interview.

5. Schedule a group interview with no more than eight the qualified applicants. This interview should be 45 minutes in length. You will ask similar questions as you would in a one-on-one interview. Pay attention not only to the answers you are given, but also to the level of attention each candidate gives to the person who is talking. This is a good way to evaluate how each individual interacts with a group and how the group dynamic is affected by each response.

6. Administer behavioral/work-style assessments to the top two (or more) candidates.
While it is important that everyone share a similar vision, having a team of people who exhibit mostly dominant and aggressive (or passive and non-influencing) behavior will not make a well rounded team. The assessments we use measure drive, ability to influence, multitasking skills, consistency and attention to detail. There’s nothing more comforting than knowing exactly how a prospective employee is going to behave on the job!

7. Call the chosen individual and offer them a position.
Be sure they understand when you want them to start and get a commitment that you will hear back from them within 24-48 hours on their acceptance of the job. Go over expectations and benefits and any other information they should know before their first day.