Practice Management Consultants

Do dentists need consultants to advise them on practice business issues?  Well, in my opinion, sometimes yes, sometimes not so much.

There are a myriad of dental practice consultants.  Some are individuals, some are larger firms that advise dental practices on scheduling, marketing, compensation, staffing, customer service, phone skills, billing and other financial and people issues.  Do dentists need to master these issues? Most definitely yes!  Dentists, especially those in solo practice, (which is most dentists) are prone to try to do everything themselves.  In my experience practices can improve if they establish appropriate systems or ways of doing things that are appropriate for their particular situation.  Consultants can help, especially in young practices or those more established practices who are having problems and that have never done a systematic analysis of what they are doing well and what they are doing not so well.  They need good systems.

Over the years, our practice has had many consultants come in and give advice.  We have developed, established, and refined systems. Of course, we still need to adapt and look at new ways of doing things.  Even good systems can become ineffective over time.  Newer staff do not remember the reasons certain methods of doing things were originally established.  Management gets distracted with other issues and lets good systems wilt.  New issues arise.  A good consultant will adapt any analysis and advice to each practice.  Still, I have found that there is a certain point where most advisors simply cannot offer any new or effective ideas.  They tend to charge a lot of money to come in and tell you what you already know.

Good practices, especially well managed larger group practices like ours, have already tried and refined 95% of what is out there.  We have management that is able to analyze data and focus on what works for us.  At this time, there are simply not that many multi-specialty Pediatric Dentistry / Orthodontic practices out there, so consultants do not have a good database to develop useful ideas.  Sometimes I think we could teach them a thing or two.

One time, we specifically asked a well known consultant not to cover certain basic topics we had already addressed, but to focus on certain new concerns we had.  They proceeded to do what they evidently did with all practices, spending an entire day covering the stuff we told them not to waste our time with.  We fired them the next day.  Cookie cutter approaches are not appropriate for most situations.  So, with few exceptions,  practices like ours do not benefit as much from dental practice management consultants.  There is simply a point of diminishing returns.  We can direct our resources, time and combined expertise to determine what works best for us.  Yes, we still need outside advice on financial, technical and legal issues, but for the most part, there seems not much value for unique practices like ours with the management consulting industry as it stands today.  Again, many practices do need advice.  I am not dissing the consulting industry, but a business needs to do what is right and prudent for them.  Sometimes dental practices can benefit from expensive practice management consultants, sometimes not so much.