Amy Morgan, vice president, practice growth strategy at Spear Education, discusses key strategies to drive dental practice excellence in 2025.
Q: What are the most important values for a successful dental practice?
A: To ensure the business is viable, it is essential to do an audit on the 4 dental practice pillars every year for continuous growth. The pillars are:
1. Foundational systems: Do you have and maintain the standard procedures and protocols that support great dentistry, like scheduling, continuing care, patient experience, and treatment presentation?
2. Team alignment: Is your team highly engaged, professionally trained, and synergistic in collaboration when it comes to running the practice systems?
3. Business efficiency: Are you optimizing practice efficiency with focused strategies, goal setting, and cash flow management that promote continuous improvement?
4. Clinical excellence: Do you have plans in place to maintain and elevate clinical growth through advanced training, new technologies, and innovations?
Q: What challenges are we facing this year?
A: The new year brings unique challenges that go beyond annual maintenance. The issues that continue to keep dental practice owners up at night include:
The great team migration: Most specifically, where have all the hygienists and RDAs gone? Practices are continually reporting to us that they are still short-staffed with little to no nibbles on hiring ads.
The changing of the generational guard: Beyond the hiring and retaining issues, dental leaders remain perplexed as to how to motivate the different generations. With more than 52% of the workforce now millennial and Gen Z, we can no longer lead teams with a 20th-century mentality.
Is it the economy or is it me? Fears of rising costs, dental insurance restrictions, and team compensation demands and concerns about profit cause dental practice owners to function in scarcity, holding back on investing time, money, and energy in the entrepreneurial things that will solve the economic concerns.
Q: What are the 3 best strategies to drive growth in your practice in 2025?
A: 1. Do not lead your practice in scarcity. In scarcity, dentists wind up hiring the first person who answers the ad and makes all the intuitive red flags go off noisily because they feel trapped. Should you speed up the interview process? Yes! Should you hire someone who does not fit your vision, values, and strategies? Never! In scarcity, dentists also get stingy with their time and money investments in their practice. We see many offices cut out huddles and team meetings because dentists only feel safe if their chairs are full. When you stop communicating and enhancing your team, you stunt growth and engagement, which leads right back to retention issues that lead right back to scarcity. Entrepreneurs take risks and ensure they get the rewards. Investing in your practice needs to clearly pay off with tangible results. So hold that team meeting, but plan for clear outcomes that reduce scarcity and improve the practice.
2. Know your numbers. In good times and bad, it’s never easy for dentists to engage in data. Managing by the tummy-ache is not a successful strategy. Knowledge equals power, and power provides choice. If a dentist is wondering if he or she can afford the new hygienist based on compensation demands, the first question must be, “What percentage of production is my existing team compensation, and how does that line up to the expected range norm for employee expense?” The second question must be, “If I do compensate the new hygienist at this new rate, what does his/her daily goal need to be so that the wage stays within 30% to 40% of direct hygiene production?” Once you know what you need to produce to return any investment, then it comes down to choosing a strategy that will achieve that new level of success!
3. Catch your team doing things right, almost right, or not completely wrong. If you want to create a culture that is inspirational and aspirational, then you must acknowledge your team consistently and impactfully. Dentists in the best of times have serious issues with perfectionism (that’s what makes great clinicians not-so-great leaders). No matter what generation anyone on your team lands on, they all desire a life of meaning, the ability to make an impact. Acknowledging their efforts creates an environment of trust and respect. The only way to promote continuous growth and improvement is to celebrate successes along the way. That’s what generates energy and momentum.
In 2025, there will still be many team members who want to make a difference in an environment that celebrates success, and there are many patients who want to achieve ideal oral health in an environment that exceeds expectations. Planning positively toward a future “so bright you got to wear shades,” while confronting and solving the obstacles that could get in the way, is the only way to move forward! The Spear learning center staff teaches all of these concepts and more.
Ms. Morgan is vice president, practice growth strategy at Spear Education. She joined Spear in 2018 as vice president of consulting strategy after serving as a former CEO of Pride Institute. A prolific speaker, Ms. Morgan has presented throughout North America and Europe and has been featured at every major dental meeting, including ADA and AGD meetings and those for numerous regional organizations. She has also presented customized programs for various study groups and dental companies.
She can be reached at amorgan@speareducation.com.
