As you set up your dental practice, your main focus is to provide quality care. Yet, you鈥檒l also need to be mindful of the financial health of your business. If balancing the two feels daunting, you鈥檙e not alone. Many dentists consult financial experts, like a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and an experienced financial advisor as they grow their business. Ask detailed questions and request tailored advice to get the right support for your practice.
C.P.A. Cynthia Mattson, who focuses on providing dentists a full range of services, including accounting, taxes, litigation support are more, always urges her clients to consider these five important tips as they build a financially secure dental practice:
- Avoid overstaffing your office: Your staffing costs should be 23 to 26 percent of collections. That includes a hygienist, but excludes all payments to dentists, whether they are employees or non-employees.
- Do your best to charge fairly for your services: Be reasonable but you do not want to be known as the 鈥渓ow price leader.鈥 Patients want value; they don't want 鈥渁verage.鈥
- Avoid additional loans or relying on credit cards: Recognize the difference between a 鈥渘eed鈥 and a 鈥渨ant.鈥 High-interest credit card rates are a difficult, downward cycle, and you end up paying far more than if you paid in cash.
- Develop relationships with full-service suppliers: Should something go wrong - the server is down or vital equipment fails - suppliers have the staff to get repairs done in a matter of hours, not days.
- Consider going paperless: Online charts, digital radiography, intraoral cameras, etc. Saves that bulky file cabinet space and it鈥檚 eco-friendly, too!