Is Your Dental Practice Growing Too Quickly?

We know this sounds like a problem that’s too good to be true! How is there such a thing as growing too quickly, when the goal of every dental practice is to become successful! But unfortunately, it’s absolutely possible to grow too quickly because of one word: saturation. This means that you may acquire more patients than your practice can reasonably handle. This could potentially cause patients to become frustrated with waiting for appointments or the rushed and frazzled demeanor of your over-worked staff.

If your growth becomes a problem, it can be difficult to know what to do. But first, you need to recognize the signs that your practice may have a problem:

How To Recognize Saturation

Every office gets temporary busy periods, so how can you know if your problem has gone beyond this? If any of the follow happen on a consistent basis, that may be your answer:

• Your office is booked out 6-8 weeks in advance
• Your hygienists are booked out 3-6 months in advance
• Your office is having difficulty scheduling new patient hygiene
• You find an increase in patient emergency appointments
• Patients are slipping out of their normal schedule and are overdue for checkups

If these are true for your office, you need to find a way to address the issue. Otherwise you risk your patients beginning to seek care elsewhere, damaging your reputation in the process.

How To Remedy The Problem

At this point, you have a decision to make. You can either add an associate to your practice or dismiss some patients. If you choose to reduce the size of your practice, you can find some easy ways of doing this below:

• Limit the services you offer
• Refer out your more difficult cases
• Stop accepting new patients
• Raise your fees

Your other choice is to expand your practice by adding an associate and hiring extra staff to handle this expansion.

It’s important to do some research before choosing either path. Take into account your initial vision for your practice and this can help make your decision an easier one.

For all of your dental bookkeeping needs, please contact Dental Bookkeeping today!

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