The Dental Practice Ecosystem

Sometimes it can seem that a dental practice is an extremely complicated piece of machinery. There are a lot of moving parts and human considerations involved in running a successful one.

But there is a simple, universal internal logic that drives success in any practice. It’s what I call a “dental practice ecosystem” and it goes like this:

• You can only collect what you produce.
• You can only produce what’s in the schedule.
• You can only schedule what patients accept.
• You can only get acceptance on what you present.
• You can only present what you diagnose and treatment-plan.
• You can only diagnose what you’ve learned to see.

It’s an unbreakable chain of value, and to really understand it means doing everything with an appreciation for how it all fits together.

That’s why focusing on any one part out of context seldom works. If your focus is the appointment book, you’re going to look for any way to fill in the holes. If your focus is the bottom line, you’re going to obsess over expenses. A lot of times what appears to be the right thing is really the wrong thing because your focus is on the most obvious symptom at the moment. We tend to focus on our pain rather than our possibilities.

Possibilities-based thinking is all about seeing the connections and acting strategically to create new power throughout the whole system.

This is what Dr. Frank Spear is talking about when he says, “You can only do what you see.” If you’re going to be really good at what you do, you have to start from the bottom up and honor every link in the chain.