Too many patients?

[Frank22]

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Have any of the dentists in this forum ever had an active patient base that was too large to handle alone and how did it effect your practice?

 

[yappy]

I've called around once for a dentist and was told that their office was no longer accepting new patients.

Have any of the dentists in this forum ever had an active patient base that was too large to handle alone and how did it effect your practice?

 

[Frank22]

Okay--so one option is to no longer accept new patients. Any other options?

 

[7 Iron]

You can hire an associate dentist to share some of the workload

 

[jwdent]

You can lobby to open up a new school because there is such a "shortage" dentists

 

[OhioDMD]

I can identify with that problem. The way I am dealing with it was to slow my growth (no advertising except word of mouth referrals. My yellow page ad is one line. My name & office phone # is all that appears. I still get about 25 new pts a month.) I have also started to weed out the " dead wood" patients. The ones you see every two to five years for a problem. I now refer them to the younger guys in town or to Aspen or Comfort dental rather than trying to work them into the schedule in a reasonable period of time. Now keep in mind that I have been in practice in the same town for 31 yrs and quit playing the maximize my income game a few years ago when my youngest child graduated college. If you are younger and overwhelmed by your practices pt pool take a look at the insurances you accept and consider dropping the least profitable ones or if your facilities allow hire an associate.

 

[Frank22]

OhioDMD but don't you think you're losing money by slowing the growth of your practice? It amazes me the measures some dentists will go to in order to avoid dealing with the financial risks (regardless of the awards achieved) by hiring an associate. By hiring the appropriate number of associates (if more then one is required) you'd enjoy more passive income, take more time off, and still earn money while you're on vacation! A practice with 6000 active patients, for example, has enough patients to support four full time dentists and easily net an owner well over a million a year (or provide an income in the high hundreds of thousands for four equal owners) but most dentists will attempt to take on the patient base by themselves or higher one associate and lose out on hundreds of thousands if not millions.