practice management
Time for a Mid-Year
Course Correction
How a
successful practice
is like an airliner
by Roger P. Levin, DDS
Until the Great Recession, dentists thought that once
they graduated from dental school they would have
a successful practice that grew every year. As a
third-generation dentist, I saw this happen with
A passenger plane takes off from Los Angeles and sets a course for the
my grandfather and my father and remember
airport at Honolulu, Hawaii. The flight will cover more than 2,500 miles
stories about my grandfather and his colleagues
and end with the plane touching down safely on a relatively small runway
helping new dentists get established by sending
on a little island in a very big ocean.
them patients.
Imagine doing that these days! It’s a different
world now, one where steady growth, year
after year, does not happen automatically. With
changes in the economy as well as in the field
of dentistry, a shocking 75% of practices have
declined in the past five years.
Quite a feat… especially when you consider that the plane is actually
slightly off course 99% و H [YH[