Solve the business puzzle with Henry Schein Business Solutions

68% of dental professionals surveyed felt that their stress and anxiety levels had increased since the pandemic.(1)

Running a new or existing business is always exciting, especially when it’s something you feel passionate about like dentistry.

However, there is a lot to consider including: • Premises

• Marketing

• Finances

• Training

• Equipment & supplies

• Patients – new & existing

• Your team & recruitment

• In practice services like insurance, patient financing

And the list goes on. This doesn’t take into consideration challenges around future proofing, the economy, regulations, compliance and you and your teams mental health.

Research has shown that occupational stress is common amongst the dental profession and is a key driver of burnout and mental ill health.(2) In this article we talk about some of the key challenges facing dental professionals today and areas for consideration when running a dental practice.

Where to start Having a solid Business Plan Creating a business plan will ensure you put on paper what you want your business to achieve, your ideas and aspirations. By putting this into a business plan you will create your vision with clear goals, objectives, and tactics. You will have a holistic view of your business for not just your first year but for the next 5 years, that you can work towards, sharing this with your team to ensure everyone is working together to achieve the same goal.

This should include an executive summary, business description, details of market strategies, competitor analysis, business strategy and implementation plan, people and financial plan, budget and projections. You should also account for “what if” factors, what changes could you make. By having a firm plan in place, it structures decisions and helps manage the risks you may or will need to take as your business evolves and grows.

Location, location, location The premises can be your first financial hurdle. With the average premise costing around £250K (depending on location) you need to make sure it is the right building in the right location for you.

This will help to ensure you can attract and retain both staff and patients. By creating a solid business plan before you start looking for premises you will have highlighted what your business will look like and identified key factors that need to be included within your location.

You might decide to set up a practice from scratch. You will need to check out the area in which you propose to locate your surgery to establish: • how many other dental practices are already in existence • w hether existing practices offer NHS or private treatment, or both • w hether local residents have difficulty in registering with a dental practice, particularly for NHS treatment • the range of services offered by other practices • whether your local NHS England Regional Team or Health Board is looking to secure a new NHS practice in your area When purchasing an existing practice, does it currently have a high proportion of NHS patients, is there any potential for private practice, where higher fees can be charged?

Thinking ahead, asking questions, lots of research, financial planning and budgeting before purchasing will help to future proof your business for years to come.

Finance Running a dental practice is costly and managing this can be one of the most difficult challenges you face. There are many moving parts and considerations that can make predicting the future tough. The average expenditure of a dental practice in the UK is around £400,000 once up and running.

Added to that:

• Remuneration rates for dental team rising

• Staff retention & recruitment is creating additional cost

• Post Brexit cost still being understood due to supplier costs

• COVID costs to be compliant ongoing for foreseeable future

68% of all respondents feel their relationships (inside and outside work) have suffered as a result of work-related stress.(3) Securing the right finance for your business needs will provide you with a level of reassurance, allowing you to grow your business. By forecasting and having financial projections in your business plan, even when unexpected costs or factors outside of your control occur, you can look where savings can be made to free up cashflow. This could be looking for a new insurance provider, supplies, card terminal rentals, replacing inefficient equipment or reviewing your practice acquisition loan. This will help to reduce some of the stress around running your business and worries about securing the future.

Supplies, equipment & software When it comes to ordering supplies, your current purchasing habits might be costing your practice dearly!

Many practices spend significant time placing their dental consumable orders and are not managing the ordering process efficiently. Following a MediEstates business review we found that 20% of practices were placing more than 8 orders per month!

Think how not only is this very time-consuming but also environmentally unfriendly with all the additional packaging and transport involved!

Using the average rate of £12 an hour*, a nurse who spends 10 hours per month placing orders, costs the practice £1,440 annually.

In addition to this, they are likely to be spending up to 5 hours every week shopping around for prices, which increases the cost by a further £3,120. That’s nearly £5,000 in avoidable costs.

If a clinician was ordering, it could cost upwards of £25,000!

Taking control will free up time which can be used for marketing and revenue-generating activities to drive a better patient experience and attract new or previous patients that were lost during the pandemic.

The additional revenue would allow you to offer more complex and high-value treatments which in turn will bring back any lost patients and acquire new ones!

Part of your plan and budget will also be dedicated to purchasing equipment, whether this is from scratch, replacing existing or expanding, to ensure your practice is running smoothly and efficiently each and every day, because if your equipment is not working, you will not be. Think about key factors like reliability, support around breakdowns, training, will it add value to my practice, usage. This will help you to make decisions about what is suitable for your practice and at what time.

Having the right software can make all the difference between an efficient practice and a disorganised one.

You need to have enough staff to be able to focus on the patients that are in the practice. That means taking tasks that can be done outside of the surgery, such as booking online and completing forms, and have them done before the patient arrives to simplify and expedite the patient’s interactions, particularly at reception and in the waiting room. There are a range of technologies emerging and there is a real step change happening with regards to the advent of cloud-based practice management software solutions. Cloud solutions mean that data is always there, always available, which means patient facing solutions are enabled in a way that they simply can’t be when the data is only in the practice. At the same time, many of these data are highly personal and sensitive, so the increased possibilities go hand in hand with an increased need to protect these data.

The right team As small businesses grapple with inflation – it’s adding to other challenges they’re already facing.(4) Recruitment, hiring and retaining qualified workers remains the top challenge cited by small business owners, especially in the current climate where we are seeing a shortage of dentists. We have seen working patterns change, less candidates coming to the UK because of EU exit, 5,000 DCP leaving the profession and 1,600 unfulfilled vacancies in the dental team.

80% of small-business owners say their business’ financial health has suffered due to inflation over the past six months, a new Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Voices survey found. Of those, 67% have increased wages to retain employees, and 61% have increased wages to attract new employees.(5) By making your practice a more competitive, flexible place to work, you can help to attract the right people to become part of your team. The key is to understand individuals and figure out how to be more flexible about the working environment. Solutions are now available that enable practices to offer dentists the opportunity to complete some of their work at home. There are capabilities that allow the practice team to work in a very different way – care coordinators and receptionists for example – these roles can now be done effectively from outside the practice, offering flexibility.

Patients Patients have over the last few years become acutely aware of their smiles. More than half (58%) of British adults surveyed responded that they have changed the way they see their smile as a result of online video calls, with a third (33%) now more aware of the colour of their teeth and nearly a quarter (24%) more conscious about the alignment of their teeth.(6) With this affecting patients’ mental wellbeing as well as their dental health, more and more patients are considering visiting their dentists more often for treatment.

The average practice misses out on converting 50 to 70% of its leads which are coming out of hours.(7) Do you have a system in place to capture and convert these? If not you are missing out on new patients which are potentially looking for these higher-end, private treatments.

Thinking about this in your business plan, including digital marketing as a key vehicle to gain new leads, will ensure you are capturing and growing your patient list.

When these patients do book an appointment and come into practice they are looking for flexible finance options.

Many businesses have lost out on treatment uptake when patients have felt they cannot afford the treatment they want. This can be made possible by offering patient financing in practice, making it easy and affordable for patients to say yes.

By providing these options patients feel they can afford the treatment within their budget and are more likely to go ahead. This increases cash flow and revenue for you plus creates a great patient experience.

Practices that offer flexible payment options show an average increase in appointments of 25%, leading to an increase in revenue and higher spend per visit. (8) Do your patients also know they could use their existing credit card to finance future treatment interest free?** There is no credit search, patients repay in affordable, monthly instalments and you are paid upfront.

What would that do to your treatment uptake figures? With many finance options available that can be easily integrated into your practice, you open up treatment avenues that previously may not have existed.

The importance of having your practice valued You may think you only need to have your practice valued when you are looking to sell or make a change, but that is not the case. You are running a business and having your business valued regularly should form part of your plan.

This will ensure that you know the true value, allowing you to make informed decisions and take action to improve that value, as you never know when it will be time to sell, the opportunity may come out of the blue. By strategically valuing your practice regularly and investing you can achieve the highest price. Valuations also help to ensure adequate insurance coverage is in place, with tax planning and additional practice acquisition financing.

51% of practice owners feel they haven’t enough time to innovate and develop their business.(9) It is difficult to quantify your time and what that means for your business. It is vital to regularly refer to your business plan, review and adapt as needed, and look for ways to innovate. By implementing new treatments like clear aligners and implants you expand your patient reach, growing your practice and revenue. This will also add value to your practice financially.

So, after all this you might be asking yourself if running a dental practice is worth it? Definitely.

By working with Henry Schein and our expert partners from all areas of the business sector we can help make running your practice efficient, profitable and most importantly enjoyable. By taking some of the everyday stresses away, from marketing to helping you build the right team and plan effectively, it means you can concentrate on the key elements of your business that matter to you as well as giving you back valuable time to develop your business and solve the business puzzle.

If you wish to enquire about any of the services our partners provide visit hsbusinesssolutions.co.uk or speak to your local Henry Schein Field Sales Consultant.

Sources: (1) GDC UK - Mental health and wellbeing in dentistry https://www.gdc-uk.org/news-blogs/blog/detail/ blogs/2020/09/17/mental-health-and-wellbeing-in-dentistry (2) Wellbeing Support for the Dental Team - A UK wide resource (3) Dentistry White paper 2022 (4, 5) Small business owners report feeling inflation squeeze – Yahoo News April 2022 https://news.yahoo.com/smallbusiness-owners-report-feeling-171912990.html

(6) Dental Health Organisation https://www.dentalhealth.org/ news/the-tooth-on-how-the-pandemic-has-affected-oursmiles (7) Xcelerator Dental (8) Finance 4 Patients (9) BDA Survey

Additional resources Interview with Ben Flewett https://the-probe.co.uk/blog/2022/04/interview-ben-flewettmanaging-director-software-of-excellence/ * https://uk.jobted.com/salary/dental-nurse shows average dental nurse salary in 2021 is £25,000 **Subject to status. This is available using patient finance from Splitit via our partner Finance 4 Patients. Terms and conditions will apply.