New book released to help general dentists achieve business excellence

Most dentists are good clinicians, but it's the business side of running a practice that stresses them the most and limits their success in the profession. Many of the troubling issues that dentists deal with in their practice are explored in a new book, A Drive to Excellence: Building a High Performance, Patient-Centered Dental Practice.

"We wrote the book to help general dentists achieve business excellence and attain financial success," said co-author Peter Gopal, PhD, President of Visionary Management.

"When you look closely, almost every practice will have one or more genuine opportunities for growth. We've outlined how to spot these opportunities and how to go about exploiting them," said co-author Hema Gopal, MBA, DMD, Vice President of Visionary Management. "It's based on the cumulative experience of running our own dental practice as well as client experiences. The ideas described in the book are executable and were developed after more than fifteen years of testing and refinement."

When it comes to building and sustaining a dental practice, every dentist has questions. In A Drive to Excellence: Building a High Performance, Patient-Centered Dental Practice, you'll find answers to such questions as:

• My dental practice hasn't seen the type of growth I was hoping for. What can I do to increase office collections? How do I increase my margins?
• I'm tired of looking at empty chairs. What can I do to fill my schedule?
• My patients are deferring dental treatment. How can I get more patients to commit to comprehensive care?
• New patient flow to my practice has dropped. How can I attract more new patients? What marketing methods work best? What media should I avoid?
• I haven't increased hygiene hours in years. What steps do I need to take to increase hygiene volume and production?
• I'm tired of low insurance reimbursements and want to stop participating in some PPO insurances. How do I accomplish this in a way that actually maintains or increases office revenue?
• Some of my employees seem to make too many mistakes, lack focus, and don't work well together. How can I get my team to be more productive?
• I'm considering upgrading the technology at my office. How do I go about deciding what dental technologies will provide a good return on investment for my office?
• I haven't saved enough for retirement. What can I do to increase my take-home income?