Who Taught You How to Run a Dental Practice?

One thing that probably wasn’t part of your clinical education: small business management. Here’s how to take the right steps toward running a dental practice that’s profitable.

When Dr. Joshua Austin (DDS, MAGD) opened his dental practice in San Antonio, Texas, in 2009, his business knowledge was a bit limited. “I’d say it was in the range of zero to none,” he says. “Dental school tries to prepare you, but you’re likely not ready at all for what’s coming.”

By his own admission, the challenges seemed overwhelming. “The biggest thing is people management,” he says. “Beyond the basic accounting, that’s the toughest thing to learn.” His second issue was a lack of analytics: He didn’t really know where to find comparative information on his practice in relation to other dental offices. “It’s not like Major League Baseball, where you can measure your batting average against someone else’s by looking at a card,” he chuckles.

Dr. Josh Funk (DT), founder and CEO of Rehab 2 Perform, a multi-location physical therapy practice, had a similar experience: He didn’t know what he didn’t know. Funk has this advice for his fellow clinicians starting a business: “I went and got the education nobody assigned me,” he says in a webinar titled “Clinician to CEO.” While that presentation digs into scaling a business up, Funk has some sound advice for practices of any size: start with the free resources available to you.

Three Resources

“There were three places that taught me the business side,” says Funk. Funk visited a local Small Business Development Center (SBDC), an organization with locations all across the country. At the SBDC, Funk met an individual that had a huge impact on his approach to his business, an executive coach named Russell Teter. “Meeting Russell Teter was pivotal,” Funk explains. “He ran a growth accelerator and a CEO accelerator.” Among his other nuggets of advice, Teeter recommended that Funk take days where he stepped away from patient care to focus solely on his business, especially at the start. 

Funk mined another resource, finding his first business mentor at an organization called SCORE. Those two resources, SCORE and SBDC, gave Funk the basic business literacy he needed. “Both of those places have free or relatively inexpensive resources,” says Funk. “I highly recommend using them. I can still remember speaking with them about early business and marketing plans, which I knew nothing about before I originally opened our doors in 2014.”

Funk is also a fan of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program, recommended to him by Teter. “For us in Maryland, it was run at the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University in a collaborative effort with Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, and some of the local colleges.” This free program offered him tools to improve his skillset as a business owner (and eventual CEO) free of charge. “Once again, all I had to invest was time,”he notes.

Soft Skills, Hard Skills

As for Dr. Austin, his accountant has been a huge help. “My accountant is part of a firm that handles dental practices specifically,” he says. “They can compare me to 800 other practices and tell me where we stand on rent, on student loans, all of it.” Austin no longer feels like he’s accounting in a bubble: He has industry standards that go way beyond a Google search, and that comparative knowledge lets him determine if he’s on the right track.

For the “people management” aspect of the practice, Austin has put his faith in an office manager that handles scheduling, hiring, and even disciplinary issues. “It’s worth having a dedicated person to take care of those HR and personnel issues,” he says. 

He had another advantage, one that was baked right into his business and personal life. “My wife was with a Dental Service Organization (DSO) before she came to our practice,” he explains. “She understands analytics and KPIs and all those things I was never exposed to, and that’s been a huge plus.” Austin finds that separation of duties vital. “I am much more about putting energy into how we present treatment in certain ways. I’m very much the ‘soft skills’ person, and she’s the ‘hard skills’ person.”

Offsetting “People Costs”

One thing that Austion had to be especially mindful of was his desire to create the best possible patient experience while keeping his “people costs” in line. Austin’s found that he can save some of those people costs via automation. “I’d say that modern tech has allowed us to offset one employee,” he notes.

“We have an AI receptionist answering the phone,” he says. “Her name is Sam (which I’m assuming is short for Samantha), and Sam, coupled with our text-message patient communications, makes for an extremely efficient system.” Austin estimates that 80 to 85 percent of his patient reminders and confirmations are handled via text, something the modern patient is clearly comfortable with. “Nobody wants to answer the phone anymore, right?” he says.

“Although, I will say the phone in the office does sure seem to ring a lot,” he adds. “But we don’t miss many calls with Sam — when we do, that automated text message that begins ‘Sorry we missed your call’ fills in the gap.” Automated recording of calls is also a plus for Austin. “We can settle any disputes that might arise from a mis-remembered conversation or use those recordings for coaching,” he says.

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For someone starting out, Austin has these words of advice: “I think the patient experience is really important. If patients have good experiences and you communicate well, they’ll say yes to treatment more often.

“Beyond that, figure out what numbers matter — the right employee in the right place can be more valuable than what the raw math might tell you.”