Team Compensation, Personal Power, and Prosperity

For Twenty-first Century Private Practices

Jason B. White, M.B.A.

How do we plan for the prosperity of the doctor, the team, and their families, when we find, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a decline of the disease-centered practice?

As never before, there is a need to understand how patients come to say “yes” to the increasing number of elective procedures, procedures people value because they “choose” to have them, not because a clinician says they “need” them.

The answer lies in creating a team of caring, creative, and entrepreneurially committed individuals whose prosperity is determined by the exercise of their own talents and skills and who choose to risk just as the doctor does.

How these people are paid, as well as what they are paid, will play a major role in private dentistry’s transition into a marketplace increasingly emphasizing values and choice over cost and needs.

To most patients, dentistry is a service which deals with intangibles, i.e., patients do not know what they are getting until they do not get what they want.

On the part of the practitioner, on the other hand, the most frequently asked question in dentistry is, “How do I get my patients to perceive the value of my services?”

The answer is not fine margins, occlusion, or the quality of impression material. Instead, it lies in the practice’s ability to foster highly personal, long-term relationships, first within the team itself, and then with patients. SEE MORE