Welcome to the first in an ongoing series on HIPAA compliance for dental practices. As many of you know, HIPAA rules and regulations have completely changed the ways that dental offices need to operate. There are a number of problems, however. First and foremost, the sheer volume and complexity of the rules can be overwhelming. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of pages of rules, many of them well beyond what a dentist can achieve. Related to this, there are unfortunately a number of companies and sales reps whose sole focus is to sell products and services, quite often based on...

Statistics are like x-rays or a car's dashboard. Statistics tell you and the employee what's going on in a specific area of the practice. Some statistics can be assigned to a specific employee. For example Number of Patients Reactivated. If a statistic is trending down, then it is likely that something changed which means you need to figure out what changed and get it reverted back. Typically this happens when someone new takes over a position and changes things or some successful action is changed or stopped. As an example, you see that the New Patients statistic is trending down and...

It is best if practice owners do NOT spend a lot of time on management.  They should instead focus on servicing patients with the best possible care. Stay focused on helping patients get better; not on the money. The money will come if you stay focused on helping as many people as possible in your community by improving the quality of their lives through excellent dentistry. Revenue normally follows close behind when a dentist really puts attention on communicating with the patient and honestly cares about how he or she can help the patient improve their oral health. Many times, it’s...

As your dental receptionist becomes familiar with patients she will know a little more about them and will be able to talk to them about their interests, etc. This is very important. She should make a point of bringing up what she talked about last time the patient was in. For instance, if the patient just went on vacation, ask them how it went. If the patient had a baby, got a new job, is looking for a job, just got married, had a ballgame, went to a ballgame. . . anything! It makes the patient feel much more comfortable if...