by Dr. Lee Ann Brady
Marketing begins and ends with your unique vision for your dental practice. Just as having a well-maintained and attractive website signals prospective patients to the quality of your services, understanding the details of your finances is crucial to maintaining profitability.
Be in Control of Your Finances
The best way to think about your finances is to visualize three levers that can be adjusted to equal profits.
These levers are:
- Fees
- Time
- Expenses
Each lever can be adjusted depending on the structure of your particular business model. Are you a provider for insurance? How many patients do you have?
If you’ve given part of your control of your practice over to insurance, then you can’t use the “fees” lever to stabilize profits. But you can still control things like the salaries of the people you hire, the cost of materials, and other “expenses” that determine how much you’re really making off of a particular service.
Finally, your time is one of the most precious resources you have. This lever requires both skill and successful marketing. Lets say your new website is attracting more patients to the office, but you don’t have enough time in the day to see all of them. To provide the same quality care, speed isn’t necessarily an option. But you could invest in continuing education that would make procedures more efficient.
In the end, how you manipulate these levers depends on the kind of practice you desire. Profitability can come from a variety of different set-ups and specialties.