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Making a practice owner's life easier
Those are words we all want more of. I started assisting dentists in 1989, when being a practice owner was far less complicated.
I'm not waxing nostalgic or saying that things were better then. However, the demands on a practice owner both clinically and to run their practice were less.
One of the areas that has become more involved is the daily balancing activity that your office manager or receptionist should be doing at the end of each day, and your oversight over that process. These activities were simple (and universal) in 1989 but have become so difficult that many practice owners have simply given up on trying to oversee their collections and deposits.
Not exercising this oversight leaves a significant opening for embezzlers, and this abdication is a source of guilt for many of the dentists who call me with embezzlement concerns. They know that they have an oversight role, but the time commitment seems daunting, and they really aren't sure what they should be doing in any case.
So, let's make your life a bit simpler. What if we could divide your supervision into two parts - treatment oversight that takes place daily, and financial oversight that you do once a month? Treatment oversight should take five minutes or less, and financial oversight an hour once per month, and can even be outsourced if the proper setup is in place. You can read more about how to do this in an article that my colleague Scott Clifford and I wrote in Dental Economics HERE.
Shifting from comparing collections to deposits monthly instead of daily will save you a lot of time, will allow many of those pesky "timing differences" to self correct, and will make it easier if you choose to outsource this task.
Want to talk to me about how to reduce the embezzlement risk in your practice? Click HERE.
Yours truly,
David Harris
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