Building a Rewarding Practice and a Balanced Life

Course Outline

Dental practitioners and their staff will find this engaging story an easy and fun way to learn how to implement powerful, scientifically based project management principles into their practice. The story provides a relatable way to understand the approach presented, which encourages dentists and their staff to resist complicated management strategies and cost-cutting techniques and instead implement commonsense measures based on an understanding of the cause and effect that occurs when changes are made in a practice. Dentistry with a Vision will help you to:

  • Identify the few key issues in your practice that are holding you back

  • Substantially increase your profits within weeks

  • Treat more patients in less time without sacrificing quality of care

  • Reduce waste, repeated work, and stress

  • Improve relationships among the practitioners, staff, and outside service providers

  • Work fewer hours performing more of the kind of treatments you enjoy

  • Increase referrals and patient demand for services

  • Develop a scheduling system that fulfills the needs of your practice and your patients

“Kendall and Wadhwa successfully integrate business models into the real world of practicing dentists to provide practical commensense solutions to our everyday dilemmas. Every dentist will have several ‘aha’ moments. Brilliant and easy to read.”

Gary Goldstein, DDS, MBA
Albany, New York

“Although the book is written from a dentist’s perspective, it is a must-read for everyone in the world of health care management. The great strength of the book is the exemplification of process improvement and management methods in a manner accessible to all. Health care professionals reading this book will get an excellent platform from which to spring into action and better their organization.”

Sameer Hasja, PhD
Assistant Professor of Technology and Operations Management
INSEAD, Singapore

As the pressure of running a successful practice threatens to overwhelm two dentists, they turn to a trusted friend, who shares the principles that turned his practice around . . .

Dr. Brian Lerner is stressed out and fed up with the problems at his dental office. The constant staff problems and canceled appointments are a far cry from the successful, patient-centered practice he had dreamed of when he graduated from dental school. His friend, Dr. Joe Armstrong, is not faring much better – in fact, his practice problems have escalated to the point of threatening his once stable and loving marriage. Determined to turn their lives around, Brian calls their mutual friend and highly successful dentist, Dr. Richard Small. Rich helps them see through the distractions of their myriad daily problems to discover the few key root causes of difficulty in their practice and keeps them on track as they address these problems in the face of staff resistance and their own reluctance to change. Brian and Joe both enjoy some immediate relief of stress and improvement in their practice, then continue to reach new heights of success as Rich teaches them sales and marketing strategies to help them do more of the work they love: scheduling techniques that benefit both the practice and the patients; people management skills that improve their relationship with their staff; and quality control measures that reduce waste and enhance their patient care. With the help of their friend and their wives, these two dentists discover that the dream of a successful and rewarding practice can become a reality.

“I have practiced dentistry for 37 years, and Dentistry with a Vision has reignited the spark of excitement about practice that got me into dentistry in the first place. Kendall and Wadhwa offer some real gems- concrete ideas that I will use in my practice.”

Alan Goodman,
DDS Toronto, Canada

About the Authors

Gerald I. Kendall, PMP, is a principal of TOC International in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and a world expert in business improvement with clients across the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Asia. For 40 years, he has successfully worked with companies to help them grow profitably and overcome operational and sales challenges. His experience includes extensive work in operations logistics, marketing, sales, and supply chain and labor relations. He has worked in strategic planning with the owners and managers of a wide range of industries, including medical services. Mr. Kendall is a graduate and silver medal winner of McGill University and author of three books: Viable Vision: Transforming Total Sales into Net Profits (I. Ross, 2004), Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO (J. Ross, 2003), and Securing the Future: Strategies for Exponential Growth Using the Theory of Constraints (CRC, 1997).

Gary S. Wadhwa, DDS, MBA, is a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon and the president of Adirondack Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in Albany, New York. He earned his MBA from the University of Tennessee, where he studied Lean and Six Sigma techniques. He has also earned several project management certificates for methods such as the Theory of Constraints and Lean systems in health care management as well as a black belt and master black belt in Six Sigma. In addition to his full-time private practice, Dr. Wadhwa is a health care quality consultant and the consulting director for the Empire State Academy of Continuing Dental Education (a Seattle Study Club affiliate). In 2005, his practice won the New York State Governor’s highest award for quality and excellence.

Learning Objectives

After completing this course you’ll be able to:

 

  1. Describe how Rich explained to Brian the way to double his income and reduce stress.
  2. Define the additive rule.
  3. Define investments.
  4. Define internal and external constraint.
  5. List the five steps of the dental sales process.
  6. Describe the patients’ six layers of resistance to sales.
  7. Describe a scheduling buffer and a constraint buffer.

Course Contents

Part I: The Dilemmas

  1. Just Another Day in Crisis: Dealing with Staff Challenges
  2. A Tough Call: Spending Money to Make Money
  3. No Time for an Emergency: Identifying Scheduling Problems
  4. The Intervention: Learning from Mistakes
  5. The First Lesson: Making Investment and Financial Decisions

Part II: Leverage Toward the Goal

  1. The $100,000 Day: Applying New Principles
  2. A Difficult Beginning: Learning Step 1 of the Five Focusing Steps
  3. The “Aha” Moment: Grasping the Rest of the Five Focusing Steps

Part III: Increasing Patient Demand for Services

  1. Deal or No Deal: Understanding Patients’ Six Layers of Resistance
  2. Harvesting the Gold: Beginning the Dental Sales Process
  3. Help Wanted: Hiring a Salesperson
  4. A New Plateau: The Dentist As Constraint

Part IV: Lean, Six Sigma, Scheduling, and Managing People

  1. The Working Vacation: Learning to Be Lean
  2. Quality Time: Simplifying Six Sigma
  3. Working with the Clock: A Lesson in Scheduling
  4. Hard Science on the Softer Side of Business: Managing People
  5. One Year Later: Profits for a Purpose

Recommended Reading
Appendix A: Vision Tree for a Dental Practice
Appendix B: Step-by-Step Success in Dental Practice