Your dental practice is as strong as its weakest link.

The problem is that the weakest link is probably you.

The good news? Your job as a dentist is safe. The bad news? Your dental practice may not be. The following functions are typically where you find system breakdowns:

a. New patient phone calls
b. Processing new patients
c. Financial arrangements
d. Patient retention
e. Scheduling

Some dentists have a poor dental employee (or two) but think, "It's better than no dental employee at all" or perhaps the thought is, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.”

Nothing could be further from the truth!

Maybe in a large corporation a few bad apples hardly matter. But in a small business like a dental practice they do. If even one dental employee has poor communication skills, a bad attitude or enjoys shouting matches with other staff, your practice can be seriously harmed.

That one employee causing hassles could be 20% of your staff!

So who occupies your attention when you're driving home, playing with your kids or eating dinner? If you thought of one of your current dental staff, then the weakest link is you, not that staff member. Why? Because YOU haven't corrected or gotten rid of the troublemaker.

Kevin Tighe, Cambridge Dental Consultants, Senior Consultant, got bitten hard by the business and marketing bug during long summer days working at his dad's Madison Avenue ad agency. After joining Cambridge as a speaker in the mid-1990s, Kevin went on to become Cambridge’s senior consultant and eventually CEO. Cambridge Dental Consultants is a full-service dental practice management company offering customized dental office manuals. Frustrated? High overhead? Schedule a chat with Kevin at