Dentistry with a Vision

Written as a novel, this story reveals how to improve your practice in a few weeks and achieve exponential growth in the first 4 years. 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

The Story
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.

Contents
Part I. The Dilemmas
Chapter 01. Just Another Day in Crisis: Dealing with Staff Challenges
Chapter 02. A Tough Call: Spending Money to Make Money
Chapter 03. No Time for an Emergency: Identifying Scheduling Problems
Chapter 04. The Intervention: Learning from Mistakes
Chapter 05. The First Lesson: Making Investment and Financial Decisions

Part II. Leverage Toward the Goal
Chapter 06. The $100,000 Day: Applying New Principles
Chapter 07. A Difficult Beginning: Learning Step 1 of the Five Focusing Steps
Chapter 08. The "Aha" Moment: Grasping the Rest of the Five Focusing Steps

Part III. Increasing Patient Demand for Services
Chapter 09. Deal or No Deal: Understanding Patients' Six Layers of Resistance
Chapter 10. Harvesting the Gold: Beginning the Dental Sales Process
Chapter 11. Help Wanted: Hiring a Salesperson
Chapter 12. A New Plateau: The Dentist As Constraint

Part IV. Lean, Six Sigma, Scheduling, and Managing People
Chapter 13. The Working Vacation: Learning to Be Lean
Chapter 14. Quality Time: Simplifying Six Sigma
Chapter 15. Working with the Clock: A Lesson in Scheduling
Chapter 16. Hard Science on the Softer Side of Business: Managing People
Chapter 17. One Year Later: Profits for a Purpose