A few questions you will want to include: 1. What expanded duties did you do at Dr. X's office? 2. What brands and kinds of cements and bonding materials are you familiar with? 3. Per OSHA regulations, how do you sterilize instruments? 4. Explain how you handle a patient who shows signs of being afraid. Keep in mind that until you see a new hire in action you really won't know what kind of employee you have.   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...

A few thoughts about having a spouse work in a dental practice: a. It can be the worse of times for obvious reasons. b. It can be the best of times as the spouse has a vested interest in the practice.  c. The spouse can never use the "spouse card" in interacting with the other staff. d. Just as you would not interact at home with your spouse as if he or she is an "employee" you shouldn't interact with your spouse at work as you would at home. In my opinion, the ideal situation is for the spouse to learn...

Buying charts? Then a chart audit is a must. What's most important is how many patients have visited the practice at least twice in the last 12 months. Then you want to know how many have been in only once in the last year, twice in the past two years, once in the past two years, etc. From there a formula can be devised to give value to each type of patient/chart. You could also value the charts at somewhere around 40% to 50% of collections.

Statistics measure habits, good or bad. They’re like gauges on your car's dashboard. They can tell you and your staff in an unbiased way what's going on in a specific area of the practice.  If a statistic is trending down, then it’s likely that something changed, which means you need to figure out what changed and get it reverted back. This typically happens when someone changes things because they’re new to a position. As an example, you may notice that the new patient statistic is trending down, and you learn that the new employee who is overseeing your internal marketing is...