DMD Staff

Are you a victim of embezzlement in your dental practice? How would you know if you were? Pat Little, D.D.S, F.A.G.D., C.F.E., CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and 

 describes some of the red flags that may indicate that you are being embezzled. Look out for them to stop the crime in its tracks.

Interview Transcript (Modified for Readability)

“One of the best ways to protect from embezzlement is actually understanding the warning signs of embezzlement. The traditional approach to embezzlement is you try to prevent embezzlement through internal controls. You put a series of steps in place, and as you go through those steps, you can prevent someone from embezzling.

The problem, though, is that there’s so many ways to steal from a dentist that the dentist can’t block every single pathway with an internal control. The embezzler is going to find a way to get around it. Believe it or not, the most effective way to catch embezzlement or at least catch it early in the process is to watch for certain red-flag behaviors, for example, the workaholic, someone who loves to have control. Someone who wants to work continuously over the weekends or after hours.

Prosperident actually has an entire checklist of red flag behaviors. Anyone can go to 

, get this free assessment sheet, go through, and find out how many red flags are in their office. That can let them know if they need to make procedural changes or if there are any real danger zones that need to be addressed immediately.”

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Are you a victim of embezzlement in your dental practice? How would you know if you were? Pat Little, D.D.S, F.A.G.D., C.F.E., CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and Prosperident describes some of the red flags that may indicate that you are being embezzled. Look out for them to stop the crime in its tracks.

Look for Embezzlement Red Flags in your Dental Practice

You may not be as ready for retirement as you think you are. For example, have you talked to your spouse about what he or she will do with you being around the house more often? Kerry Straine, CPBA and CEO of Straine Consulting, says that this is one of two common retirement mistakes he sees dentists making. Discover the second, and how to avoid both, in this clip.

“Over the last 30 years, we’ve worked with over 6,000 practices. In many cases, our clients have taken their practices all the way to a sale, toward retirement. The biggest mistake — there’s two of them – that I see that they’ve made: Number one, they sell it prematurely. I was on the phone with a former client of mine just two nights ago and he’s been retired for nine years. He’s 63 years of age, and he called me and says, ‘Is there something I can do? I need something to do. I’m bored.’

I can also think of another client who one time called me and said, ‘I’ve saved $5 million, I’m ready for retirement, and I’m 60.’ And I said to him, ‘Doctor, let’s talk to your spouse, your wife. Let’s have a conversation with her and see where she stands with respect to retirement.’ We got her on the phone, and certainly they had planned well economically. But, she said, ‘But I’m not ready for you to be around the house. I’ve got things I like to do, and I don’t have plans for us to travel the world for another five to seven years, so you just keep working.’

Shaping Effective Policies for Your Dental Practice

Increase Patient Flow, Profit, in Your Dental Practice

When to Add an Associate Dentist or Partner in Your Practice

I think people, number one, retire too early, and a lot of times were running away from something — the pain of being a business-owner, 

. Just last night, I was speaking to a client of mine who’s got two practices, one in South Carolina and one in Connecticut. I said, ‘If you don’t have the stomach for employee turnover, don’t be a business-owner.’ People are going to come and people are going to go. People do things for their reason.

, consistent with your training, and your leading, and your monitoring, and your coaching, and persistent. Success comes from repetition, from doing things over and over again. You know, I was watching 

, a very famous author of books like ‘Outlier,’ ‘Tipping Point,’ ‘David and Goliath,’ ‘Blink,’ and he said, ‘The key to success is persistence.’ That’s the 10,000-hour rule.

I find that there are things people are running away from in why they sell instead of defining what they’re running toward. Honestly, the fulfillment that my clients get from building a great team and having people say thank you for the time and attention you give in developing us and for creating a safe environment. And two, the positive feedback you get from patients is virtually irreplaceable. Knowing when you’re going to retire is a key step, and what you’re going to move toward next.

I’m having dinner next Monday night in Chicago with a client of mine, and she says, ‘If you want to live to be 100, there’s two things you have to do: Floss and keep working.

And the second thing is certainly the economics. I know that today’s return on investments are very low, and they’re not going to change. The government is almost $20 trillion in debt. How can our economy borrow at greater than 1 percent, hence, there’s not going to be any return out there for greater than 1 percent. We need to think through: 

What is our current living budget and determine what it’s going to be in retirement

Most people should plan that they’re going to need in retirement 80-90 percent of what they live on in the three years just before they retire. You could argue that that’s just not going to happen, but it’s going to happen. I certainly remember when my parents retired and I helped my dad think through a budget. They lived in an apartment in El Dorado Hills, California, with two bedrooms and one car and it was still $83,000 a year. I think most people are going to have to come to terms with that and certainly Americans don’t. I would say what contributes to the good thing about that is, there’s a lot of studies about retirees coming back into the workforce, and they’re certainly dedicated people.

, thinking about what are you going to do, how much money you’re going to need, and probably the last thing is the legacy — picking the right person to take over on your behalf. A dentist has the unique experience of having a love relationship with their patients, and they want to pass that on to make sure that their patients and the employees who work for that doctor have the same type of leader with the same type of emotional intelligence to be able to step into a practice and confidently and lovingly continue to lead them on a safe path. When they do that, the future is safer for all.”

Discover more Dentist’s Money Digest® video coverage here

2 Big Retirement Mistakes that Dentists Make

In this clip, Parazynski, who is also the CEO of Fluidity Technologies, explains when it just isn't worth it to risk it.

Astronaut Explains When Risking It Just Isn't Worth It

Scott Parazynski, M.D., is the only astronaut to have summited Mt. Everest. His career in the space program and taste for adventure have taught him a few things about managing risk, a subject he lectured on at the 2017 Hinman Dental Meeting. In this clip, Parazynski, who is also the CEO of Fluidity Technologies, explains when it just isn’t worth it to risk it.

“Making critical decisions in life-or-death situations is very challenging even with lots and lots of experience and training. I think, first and foremost, you have to think about the ultimate goal, which is brining everyone back safely. It has to be the highest-level order for the team. When you have to make a decision whether to pursue a summit or a mission goal in a spacewalk, for example, versus getting everybody back in safely, it’s a pretty simple thing to do. You put all of your resources to crew safety. Most of the time, those decisions are kind of insidious. There’s one setback that happens after another, and the real challenge to a leader is identifying, ‘Things are starting to turn south here. I’m detecting a pattern. We need to stop and rethink or retreat.’

Thankfully, I’ve been trained and developed a lot of experience in a lot of different environments that have given me the sensitivity see some of those raising the hair on the back of the neck situations and making the decision to waive off early.

 in Nicaragua — the youngest lava lake in the world. It’s a very dynamic, eruptive environment. We were looking at magma from the inner parts of our planet and lots of eruptive activity taking place nearby. Making the call to notice the subtle differences in trends and pulling the team out early is just one example that comes to mind.”

Scott Parazynski, M.D., is the only astronaut to have summited Mt. Everest. His career in the space program and taste for adventure have taught him a few things about managing risk, a subject he lectured on at the 2017 Hinman Dental Meeting. In this clip, Parazynski, who is also the CEO of Fluidity Technologies, explains when it just isn't worth it to risk it.

“People that are passionate, one of the things they do is that they tend to look people in the eyes when they’re speaking to them. When people are pragmatic, they tend to look away, and they always find the negative, no matter what. But a person who is passionate, especially in an office setting, they always look people in the eye. They always give them full, undivided attention.

How to turn Your Passion into Productivity and Profit

I tell people this, that when you first come into that practice, you drive into the parking lot and you shut that car door, you’re bringing something into that office with you. You’re either pragmatic or you’re passionate. And I tell them, that first 10 minutes, when you walk through the door, try the exercise of making sure that everything that comes out of your mouth is affirming. Don’t walk in going, ‘Gee, I wonder what hasn’t happened yet, what people haven’t done yet. I didn’t figure they would get that done.’ Instead of that attitude, come in and think in these terms: ‘You know, I’m just going to say thank you to every single person I meet. That changes things. That’s a game-changer.

When you begin to treat your team like that, it automatically transfers into the life of the clients. But people that are negative, who have no passion, I have been in practices where I’ve seen team members talk to a client in a negative way about the doctor. Or I’ve seen doctors talk negatively to another team member about a team member. That’s all pragmatic. People that are passionate, that type of thing would never happen.”

Discover more Dentist’s Money Digest® videos here

Gary Zelesky is a professional speaker on the subject of passion. He works to help dentists and other professionals use passion to make their businesses more successful. In this clip, Zelesky talks about how you can motivate your dental practice team with passion to improve the patient experience.

How Passion Fuels Your Dental Team

Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S. explains why relationships are vital to your practice's success.

Dental Business Success is Built on Relationships

Dentistry is a business that requires sound relationships. Whether it’s the relationship built with a patient over the course of treatment or the relationship built with a team in the operatory, dentists need to cultivate both. Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S., is the principal of Progressive Periodontics & Implants, an Associate Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, and CEO of the dental consulting firm, The Pick Group. In this clip, Pick explains why relationships are vital to your practice’s success.

“Relationship is a great word. We were talking earlier about my lecture on ‘Powerful Secrets.’ One of the things that came up is Powerful Secret Number Four: Developing the Relationship. When you have a relationship, the whole bar rises. Patients are going to be more apt to go through treatment when they have a relationship. When you have a relationship with your team, you have better team dynamics and better team development. The relationship is something that doesn’t come easily. It’s built over time. It’s built with trust. It comes from starting at the website with proper videos to talk about what you do, what you’re about, your brand. The relationship is key.”

“Mentors are critical for a number of reasons. One, they help you elevate. They help you achieve your goals and get to different levels. In my lecture today on Powerful Secrets, it’s actually the second secret: to find the right mentor. I talk about it all the time. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to do it, but finding the right mentors early on allowed me to elevate my game. And then you go to the next mentor, and the next mentor, and the next mentor. All successful people will tell you they had mentors who got them to the next level. It’s imperative to get where you’re going.” 

Dentistry is a business that requires sound relationships. Whether it's the relationship built with a patient over the course of treatment or the relationship built with a team in the operatory, dentists need to cultivate both. Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S., is the principal of Progressive Periodontics & Implants, an Associate Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, and CEO of the dental consulting firm, The Pick Group. In this clip, Pick explains why relationships are vital to your practice's success.

Pat Little, DDS, FAGD, CFE, CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and Prosperident describes the steps a dentist must take when confronting an embezzler.

What To Do If You Suspect Embezzlement In Your Dental Practice

You suspect that there is embezzlement happening in your dental practice. You’ve confirmed it with an investigation. Now how do you confront the embezzler? Pat Little, D.D.S, F.A.G.D., C.F.E., CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and 

 describes the steps a dentist must take when confronting an embezzler.

“What I would recommend doctors do when they find out there’s embezzlement — now this is assuming they’ve already had the investigation conducted. If I could preface that a bit, the key with the investigation is to make sure nobody walks into the office to conduct the investigation. It’s very vital that this be done in stealth because if the embezzler ever thinks that the investigation is going on, they’ll almost always try to destroy evidence, and we don’t want that. We want an investigation to be conducted in stealth, behind the scenes, and that way the doctor knows for sure if it’s occurring.

At that point, the doctor can bring the embezzler in. But there’s some homework the doctor needs to do first. We have a termination check list, and it’s simple things like have the locks ready to be changed, make sure they’re escorted out of the office.

There are several things the doctor needs to take care of legally and certainly if there’s an employment issue, a labor law attorney is very important. One of the things doctors don’t want to do is just have a knee-jerk reaction, fire them, and get them out of the office because that can open up all kinds of issues.”

You suspect that there is embezzlement happening in your dental practice. You've confirmed it with an investigation. Now how do you confront the embezzler? Pat Little, D.D.S, F.A.G.D., C.F.E., CEO and Founder of Dental Risk Concepts and Prosperident describes the steps a dentist must take when confronting an embezzler.

According to Kerry Straine, CPBA  quite simply, policies are your dental business philosophy as it is to be implemented by your staff.

 Shaping Effective Policies for Your Dental Practice

As the CEO of your dental practice, it’s up to you, the dentist, to come up with the policies your practice will use. According to Kerry Straine, CPBA and CEO of 

, quite simply, policies are your dental business philosophy as it is to be implemented by your staff. Having effective policies means being clear on your philosophy and putting appropriate resources into training your staff. Here’s how to start putting better policies in place in your practice.

“When we explore the systems and policies for a practice, we have to be clear on the definition. Those terms are used, all too often, without clarity. Operating policies have to be established in order to clarify the way the team and the doctor are going to treat their patients — their customers. We break it down into 10 operating policies. Each one begins with the owner’s unique philosophy.

The way that we define philosophy in this case is the system of ideas that reflects that owner’s unique values. Those 10 operating policies, they begin with clinical because that’s where we begin every relationship: the new patient policy. Within that, we might house how many new patients we want, what we’re going to say and do, how we’re going to market. The quantity we need, the dollars diagnosed, the dollars accepted, and who’s going to do what, and say what, and track what with respect to the movement of that patient from their home, to reading whatever collateral material has been created, all the way into that chair, and to reappointment.

We’re going to need a radiographic policy as well. You’ve got to take radiographs, and yet you see a lot of staff members aren’t clear on when to take certain radiographs and with what frequency.

The third would be continuing care for general dentists, and that’s unique to the general dentist, the pediatric dentist, and oftentimes the periodontist and the prosthodontist, because they very often have continuing care departments. That allows us to clearly define the philosophy of the owner with respect to treating periodontal disease.

The fourth is emergencies or what we call problem-focused patient policies.

Once we’ve moved a patient through an exam, the fifth policy is financial policy. Inform before you perform. Make sure you’re going to get paid. Make sure the patient knows what they’re going to pay. Who’s going to say and do what. Then we can schedule it. Not until then. And of course, you have a way of scheduling using your computer with time estimates and a very clear understanding of how we use technology and very qualified associates and hygienists to perform parts of the procedure.

Well, then the day comes when we’re going to deliver the treatment. I guess we need a confirmation policy beforehand. And of course, if anybody doesn’t show up, we have a reactivation policy.

These are our operating policies. Policies are the curriculum according to that doctor’s unique philosophy that will be used in training their employees on how to represent the practice to the patient when the owner can’t do it themselves. It’s often a misstep. There’s very little education going into qualifying an employee to become fit for a position. But the practices that spend the time on training, they’re going to have fit team members able to make the contribution so that they feel fulfilled in the process. And that’s where the system begins.

The management system is to take a new employee and expose them to our philosophy so that they can understand how to bake the cookies, so to speak, do their job — whether they’re assistants, or administrators, or hygienists – and how others interact with them. We have to train. That’s the first step in our management process, in our system of onboarding an employee.

Then, of course, we lead them — leading an employee to understand what to do every day, every week, every month, occurs in your management process. Activities in daily huddles, or planning sessions. Weekly staff meetings. End-of-month department leader meetings and maybe end-of-month training sessions. This guides the employee to know what to do.

These are very expensive, because you’re committing time with respect to educate your team, but you need to make this investment so that they understand how to represent you and deliver to you what they want to in this relationship. Of course, the way you keep that team members always performing at a high level, where they’re putting forth that discretionary extra effort, is with the positive reinforcement they get on a daily basis.

When you walk into a treatment room and see that an assistant has done something and communicating with a patient that really exemplifies exactly what was in the training session, let them know. Give them the positive reinforcement. There’s three As in positive reinforcement: attention, approval and appreciation. And that’s what people strive for. Immediate is better than daily. You can’t be everywhere immediately, so we do those things daily in the morning huddle. If you have a 10-minute huddle, 70 percent of the time should be spent reviewing the previous day’s performance so you can set the tone for people to be fired up and motivated to then implement today’s behaviors. You’re shaping the performance of everyone in your world with that feedback.

If we’re going to create the system to guide people to represent you, the employees ultimately have the responsibility to perform the tasks within the policy that are tied to their job description. The reality is, they can’t be responsible for attaining the results of the organization. The reason is, they didn’t create the strategy. It’s up to the owner to create the strategy for defining what we’re going to do and committing the time and the system of planning, doing and reviewing, to provide a safe environment where the team member can learn, they can implement and nurture, and know they’re going to become the leaders that doctor needs.”

As the CEO of your dental practice, it's up to you, the dentist, to come up with the policies your practice will use. According to Kerry Straine, CPBA and CEO of Straine Consulting, quite simply, policies are your dental business philosophy as it is to be implemented by your staff. Having effective policies means being clear on your philosophy and putting appropriate resources into training your staff. Here's how to start putting better policies in place in your practice.

Scott Parazynski, M.D., is the only astronaut to have summited Mt. Everest. His career in the space program and taste for adventure have taught him a few things about managing risk, a subject he lectured on at the 2017 Hinman Dental Meeting. In this clip, Parazynski, who is also the CEO of Fluidity Technologies, explains how to think critically when approaching a risky scenario.

“Whenever we take ourselves to extreme environments, we have to really understand the threat to the human being as well as to the overall mission. If you can identify threats, you can either accept them as they stand, or try and leverage technology to increase your odds of success. I think back to the early days of Himalayan mountaineering, when they went with really crude wool coats and very crude boots. Now, we have these space-age materials that protect the human being even at these extreme altitudes with reliable oxygen delivery systems. It’s a world apart because we’ve thought really carefully about how we can address those issues.”

RELATED: Scott Parazynksi, M.D., on Rethinking Risk in Extreme Environments

How to Think Critically about Risk

Gary Zelesky is a professional speaker on the subject of passion. He works to help dentists and other professionals use passion to make their businesses more successful. In this clip, Zelesky talks about how passion in a dental practice can translate to higher productivity and profit.

“When it comes to talking about passion, especially in the life of a dentist, it’s hard for them to transfer that sometimes, because they tend to be on the linear side of the brain, so they go, ‘How do you actually make money when you’re passionate?’ I tell them this: That when a person discovers what they really love, they have a passion for something, that it ignites something in them. It’s almost like a human fuel. And when a person is passionate about something, they are definitely proactive, and they’re productive. You don’t have to tell them do do something, they do it out of that sense of energy. We try to motivate people through bonsues, through things that maybe they don’t even care about, but we feel like that’s what they would care about. There’s nothing like passion to get people excited and motivated, which would translate into higher productivity, and of course profit.”

Great business leaders are not made in a vacuum. They have help along the way. Among his many roles, Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S., is the principal of 

 an Associate Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, and CEO of the dental consulting firm, The Pick Group. In this clip, Pick explains how having the right mentors is critical to becoming a strong business leader.

“Mentors are critical for a number of reasons. One, they help you elevate. They help you achieve your goals and get to different levels. In my lecture today on Powerful Secrets, it’s actually the second secret: to find the right mentor. I talk about it all the time. I don’t know how I got lucky enough to do it, but finding the right mentors early on allowed me to elevate my game. And then you go to the next mentor, and the next mentor, and the next mentor. All successful people will tell you they had mentors who got them to the next level. It’s imperative to get where you’re going.”

RELATED: More Advice from Robert M. Pick, D.D.S.

Dental Practice Success Starts with the Morning Huddle

Make the Call that Matters Most to Your Patients

Great business leaders are not made in a vacuum. They have help along the way. Among his many roles, Robert M. Pick, D.D.S., M.S., is the principal of Progressive Periodontics & Implants, an Associate Professor of Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School, and CEO of the dental consulting firm, The Pick Group. In this clip, Pick explains how having the right mentors is critical to becoming a strong business leader.

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