Ed Rabinowitz

When Edward Zuckerberg, DDS, FAGD first entered dental school, he did so without much exposure to the field of dentistry.

“I think I’d had one filling up to that point,” Zuckerberg recalls.

So when he heard some of the upper classmen talking about a bridge, he didn’t know if the reference was to the Brooklyn Bridge or the Verrazano-Narrows.

“It turned out they were talking about neither,” Zuckerberg laughs. “But then again, I didn’t take the most traditional route to dental school.”

Zuckerberg’s father was a letter carrier, his mother a homemaker. But an aptitude test in high school revealed an affinity for math and science. He was also good with his hands and enjoyed working with people. But when he entered dental school at New York University he found he was an anomaly.

“There were about 200 fellow students in my class, and almost 100 of them had parents who were dentists,” he says. “I guess I went into dental school pretty blind.”

But as a career, he says it has turned out “tremendously well. I’ve loved every minute of it.”

As a practicing dentist, Zuckerberg carved what he calls “a nice little niche out of my practice.”

Zuckerberg initially commuted from New York’s Westchester County to a practice in Brooklyn several days a week, but would eventually spend most of his career in a home-based practice. That proved beneficial for he and his wife, a trained psychiatrist, to build a close bond with their four children—one of whom is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

With his home-based practice “on the verge of exploding” and his wife very unhappy professionally due in large part to how “turned off she was by how managed care had ruined the type of practice she envisioned,” Zuckerberg threw an offer on the table. He needed someone with people skills to help oversee his staff and deal with patients. He also wanted to tackle a problem that had long frustrated him: patients’ fears about coming to the dentist.

“Was I doing everything I possibly could to conquer that barrier and get patients to overcome their phobias and pursue the care they needed?” Zuckerberg wondered.

His wife took him up on the offer, and was put in charge of “everything non-clinical.” Changes were immediate. They knocked down a wall, added more space, and put a 200-pound saltwater aquarium in the wall between two of the main treatment rooms. It proved tremendously relaxing for the patients.

“We would get calls from people, not asking, you know, ‘I’m a potential new patient, is this Dr. Zuckerman’s office?’ They would ask, ‘Is this the office with the fish?’” he laughs.

If a patient had a phobia of noise, they were given noise-cancelling headphones. Zuckerberg made sure the office didn’t smell like dental chemicals. He perfected his craft of giving as painless an anesthetic delivery as possible. And nobody on staff wore a white coat.

“We become known as the dentist that catered to cowards,” he says. “And people with agoraphobia that wouldn’t leave their house or were terrified of the dentist, would often spend two and three phone calls with my wife getting counseling over the phone before they came into the office. She assured them that we would take care of their needs in a comfortable manner.”

Doing so, Zuckerberg explains, made the practiced both recession-proof, and insurance-proof. Patients who were terrified to go to the dentist and then found someone with whom they were comfortable were not going to suddenly leave because their new job had dental insurance that wasn’t on the PPO list.

“I didn’t have to worry about those kinds of issues like a lot of other of my colleagues did,” he says.

Zuckerberg says his practice probably had one of the first office-based social networks. It was the mid-1990s, and fatigued by fighting with his four kids for Internet access on one phone line, Zuckerberg had the entire house wired for high-speed cable. His son Mark then took over.

“He said, ‘Well, you already have everything networked together in the house. I can build you a network,’” Zuckerberg recalls of the conversation with his son. “And in a few days, he threw it all together. We called it ZuckNet, and it allowed my front desk and my other exam rooms to communicate with each other through our own little network.”

Zuckerberg has since become quite the social media aficionado—no surprise there. It began around 2008 when Facebook first rolled out pages for businesses. A colleague complained that he had 5,000 dentists who were his friends and Facebook informed him that he was at his limit.

“I immediately realized that he had set up his dental office or business page as a personal profile, because most people still were not aware what the difference between a business page and a personal page was,” Zuckerberg says. “Facebook did have a 5,000-friend limit for a personal page, but there’s never been a limit for businesses.”

Zuckerberg lectures at dental conventions and to dental societies about how dentists can maximize the benefits of social media for their practices and improve their marketing presence.

Today, Zuckerberg limits his hands-on dental work to several days a month, focusing instead on outside interests—including photography and scuba diving&mdash;as well as giving back to his colleagues.

“I consider myself to be a very competent clinical dentist,” he says. “But my expertise is really in everything non-clinical—running the business end of a practice and integrating technology.”

But he still labels the lifelong relationships he has built with patients to be the most rewarding aspect of his career.

“Being the first dentist to get my hands on a young patient and making them a patient for life, not fearful of going to the dentist, that’s probably the biggest thrill,” he says. “And then watching them grow up and have kids and then bring their kids to me. That is incredibly rewarding.”

Articles

Edward Zuckerberg is most famous for being the father of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. But in his hometown, he's known for being "Painless Dr. Z."

Facebook Founder's Dentist Dad Finds Niche in 'Pain-Free' Dentistry

Imagine that you’ve just hired a new member of your dental practice staff. Perhaps it’s a receptionist, or even a hygienist. Regardless, you have no doubt expended time and effort to select the best candidate for the position. But you’re not done.

All the time spent collecting and reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates and maybe even conducting a 

 will be for naught if the new member of your team is not efficiently and effectively integrated into the culture of your dental practice.

And that doesn’t happen overnight. According to Ann Marie Gorczyca, DMD, MPH, MS, owner of 

“It’s a process that takes communication, motivation, and collaboration,” Gorczyca says. And it starts with day one of employment.

Gorczyca says that the new employee should be given the team handbook on their first day of hire. And they should be asked to read it then and there, in the office. She even recommends paying the new employee for one hour to sit and read the handbook. Then obtain a written confirmation they have read and understand the handbook.

What … your practice doesn’t have a team handbook?

“Working in a dental office without a team handbook is like living in a lawless land,” Gorczyca says. “There are no standards. And there are no expectation from the new hire what conduct is expected of them.”

For example, Gorczyca recalls a story from the Mayo Clinic’s customer service book. The clinic had just hired a nurse, but he had tattoos up and down his arms. He was told he would be hired with the understanding his tattoos would always be covered.

“If you have in your handbook that tattoos are not allowed to be shown in the office, or that nose rings are not allowed, this is the culture of your office,” Gorczyca explains. “This is the dress code, and you have a right to maintain the dress code. But if you don’t have that written document, and for whatever reason you dismiss a person because of their tattoos, you could be accused of discrimination.”

Gorczyca suggests that one thing you don’t want to do during the 90-day integration period is overwhelm your new team member. She recommends working on one skill at a time. For example, if you’ve hired a front desk person who will be handling contracts, insurance, payments and deposits, tackle one of those duties at a time.

“Take one thing the first day and say, ‘Okay, we’re going to train you how to do the contracts,’” Gorczyca says. “And work on that until the person says, ‘I’ve got it. I don’t need any additional training on this.’ Then move on to number two, and so on.”

Why is that important? Gorczyca says the number one reason a lot of people quit their jobs is a lack of training. So, thoroughly train new hires, and provide regular feedback.

“I would provide feedback every single day, because the person is new,” Gorczyca says.

In doing so, Gorczyca refers to Paul Edwards, co-founder of 

, a leading firm in developing employee handbooks and HR solutions for medical and dental practices. Edwards recommends six key performance assessments during the 90-day integration period:

     • Discuss performance, not the person

     • Communicate the impact of the performance

     • Review previous discussions on performance

     • Clearly state what improvements or standards are expected

     • Have the employee acknowledge the corrective action required

“The new person has to learn the professional conduct of the office,” Gorczyca says. “They need to know the vision of the office, the goals of the office, the core values and the mission statement.”

Gorczyca stresses that all new hires need to fit into the culture of the dental practice, not the other way around.

“That’s something I think dentists really struggle with,” she says. “They change their schedule to accommodate the assistant rather than hiring the person to fit their schedule.”

As an example, she says that in her practice, seating or placing orthodontic bands on first and second molars is a 20-minute process. All of her dental assistants can seat four bands within 20 minutes.

“I would never hire someone who doesn’t seat molar bands in 20 minutes,” she explains. “I’m not going to change my schedule for a dental assistant who isn’t skilled or has poor manual dexterity.”

Effective integration of new hires, Gorczyca sums up, can have a positive bottom line impact on a dental practice and how it functions.

“The number one thing that will have a positive impact is whether or not you hire a performer,” she says. “It’s all about the work ethic.”

Hiring is only the first part of on-boarding a new hire. Next, you've got to integrate them into your practice's culture.

Integrating New Hires is Key to Dental Practice Efficiencies

For Kent and Corbin Brady, the apple didn’t just fall close to the tree. It landed smack dab in the same dental practice.

Kent and Corbin Brady, a father-son team, own 

. Both graduated from the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. Kent has been practicing for 37 years; son Corbin joined the practice four years ago.

“He definitely left it up to me to decide,” Corbin says of Kent’s influence on his son’s career choice. “I think he really encouraged me to look at everything else. But he was also a very good example of what the job could be.”

And all you have to do is visit the practice’s website, read some of the doctors’ blogs, and check out some of their self-described “cheesy videos” to know that that these two practitioners not only enjoy what they do, they enjoy working together.

Kent wanted to become a dentist every since he was a little kid. He would play dentist with his neighborhood friends, sitting on the porch and picking at their teeth. But there was a time in high school where he briefly had second thoughts. When he saw how much schooling was involved and thought there had to be something easier. But he kept coming back.

“I get to meet with people every day, and nothing that I do is the same,” Kent says. “For each person it’s something different. It’s just a sense of enjoyment knowing you’re helping people.”

Corbin says his father played a huge role in his career choice, but not because he openly advocated for his son to follow in his footsteps. When Corbin was in high school he considered everything 

 dentistry. He even looked briefly at pharmacology, but found that the pull of dentistry—the combination of working with his hands and the application of science—was too much.

What Kent did demonstrate were all the positive elements that a career in dentistry could be.

“He really exemplified the best parts of dentistry, which encouraged me to keep going after it,” Corbin explains. “He clearly demonstrated what the potential was.”

The Brady Dental Care website positions both Kent and Corbin as nationally recognized experts in comfortable dentistry. If you’re old enough to recall dentistry from the 1960s and 1970s, you’ll remember that it was anything but comfortable.

“Most times comfortable dentistry is an oxymoron,” Kent acknowledges. “But I think it’s about making people feel relaxed; the way you speak to them, the way you try to prepare them for certain procedures that potentially may be uncomfortable, by reassuring them that you’ll do everything you can to make them comfortable.”

Decades ago, even the sound of the drill could send chills up and down a patient’s spine. But much of that has changed.

“We offer headphones for that,” Kent says. “When we provide anesthesia, we use a topical anesthetic first; it helps numb the surface of the tissue. I think the whole goal is to keep them from feeling things, and assure them verbally that you’ll do everything you can by keeping a calm voice, and the surroundings are calm and more tranquil.”

Staff plays a huge role there was well. Kent and Corbin understand that they couldn’t do what they do without their staff. From the front office staff to the hygienists, everyone has a valuable role to fill.

“We consider them friends,” Kent says. “We don’t think of them as workers, even though they are our employees. But we enjoy each other’s company. And when somebody is behind, someone else can pick up the slack. We try to make it a good work environment for them.”

To say that Brady Dental Care has been successful in its three-plus decades of existence is an understatement. Before Corbin joined the fold, the practice was so successful it was unable to take in new patients. But recently Kent built an addition to the practice that has enabled him and his son to increase their capacity by more than 100%.

“We’ve started taking all the charts and going digital,” says Corbin, who handles most of the technical and IT issues. “I’ve also got different interests, like doing minor orthodontic, some dental implants, different types of procedures. And I’ve always had a passion about all the systemic issues you run into in dentistry, looking at all the health implications that affect the teeth.”

Father and son also work well as a team. Corbin says he has been blessed, noting that his father is “pretty hands off” and lets his son do his own thing. And Kent loves working alongside his son.

“Both of us bring different thoughts and ideas of different procedures to each other for insight,” Kent says. “That’s been a real help, just having somebody to interchange different ideas with that work.”

Kent says that having his son around has enabled him to take more time away from the practice, which is a nice break. He doesn’t have any specific hobbies, pointing out that he and his wife “are best friends” so they do a lot of activities together. That includes watching St. Louis Cardinals baseball.

“There are mostly Cubs fans here,” he says. “Des Moines has a farm team for the Chicago Cubs, but we’re Cardinals fans because I grew up a Cardinals fan. And my wife is probably a lot crazier about it than I am. We hardly ever miss a game.”

Corbin enjoys hiking, biking and doing some gardening. But next spring he’ll take up a new hobby, of sorts, as he and his wife are expecting their first child, a girl.

“I figure most of my hobbies will have to go on hiatus for a while,” Corbin laughs.

But one thing that won’t take a back seat is the dental practice and the appreciation each of them has for their patients.

“Seeing people when they’re in so much pain and being able to relieve that—I appreciate that aspect,” Corbin says. “And being able to make them smile—that’s something simple that I take for granted sometimes.”

One grew up certain he wanted to become a dentist. The other grew up looking to do anything else. But both halves of this father-son duo ended up in the same place -- indeed, the same practice.

Father and Son Dental Practice Thrives in Iowa

For Ken Tralongo, practicing dentistry wasn’t enough.

Early in Tralongo’s career he found that business networks were instrumental in alleviating many of the burdens he was experiencing. From this realization he knew he needed to establish a centralized system that could potentially mitigate these problems while improving efficiency, cutting cost, and increasing profit.

It started with small mergers in 1993, and progressed three years later when Tralongo sold his three offices to Valley Forge Dental—which eventually sold to Monarch Dental, and is now Bright Smile.

“I saw the evolution of the need to consolidate dentistry back then,” Tralongo explains. “I learned what merger-nomics could do for offices and the efficiencies you could gain on a small scale. I kind of learned from what we did wrong 15, 17 years ago, and as we grow our company we try not to duplicate those same errors.”

Looking at the numbers, it’s clear Tralongo has learned from those errors. He launched 

 in 2005, and the company now has more than 125 employees and combined revenues of more than $60 million annually. The focus is on creating growth of existing offices through continued education, as well as focusing on practice efficiency to improve profitability.

“It’s very calculated,” Tralongo says. “It’s a formula for me. How much is personal income driven from revenue from dentistry? And how much could you make as a manager owning the offices? There is a point where they’ll flip and you won’t need to practice dentistry anymore to make a living.”

Tralongo hasn’t practiced dentistry in about 10 years, but he does miss the patient interaction. When he was young he wanted to learn a skill that he could perform on patients. Dentistry, he says, was a no-brainer decision.

“It’s an interesting thing, because most people just don’t like going to the dentist,” he says. “So you can give people a positive experience and have fun with it. I always enjoyed practicing, and I miss that aspect of it.”

He tried hanging on, retaining Fridays as his day to practice. But he recalls the turning point came on Friday when he had five people sitting in chairs waiting for him, his computer going, his cell phone going, and he was talking on a land line.

“I thought to myself, this is not only unfair to my patients, it wasn’t fair to me,” he recalls. “It was strictly a time issue.”

Tralongo Management provides dental professionals with effective management and ownership tools in a proven five-step process: Train partners; help them find the right dental practices to acquire; assist in obtaining the appropriate financing; work with them during the transition from old to new ownership; and help maintain operational support throughout to maximize profits.

“We went to dental school and had one practice management person speak to us for two hours one day,” Tralongo says of how little business training dentists receive. “And then they just throw you out there.”

Tralongo points to “a perfect storm” that is brewing in the dental industry. Many practitioners are coming out of school with extremely high debt, and a high percentage of them are women who don’t want to own offices. That opens the door to opportunity to consolidate the industry.

“The dentists coming out of school don’t want to buy the $2 million practice that I want to buy,” he says. “What they want is a place to be autonomous, work in a practice that’s very profitable, that makes money for everybody, and it’s predictable. And that’s what we provide for them.”

Tralongo says it’s a win-win situation because dentists get back a better work-life balance.

“We want to run a good business that has some scalability, and give these dentists their lives back.”

Tralongo says his system employs a team of marketing and finance professionals who scout not only sources of lower cost supplies and labs, but entrepreneurial dentists who want to own multiple offices just as he did.

“We find them; we train them, with my 12-step acquisition process; we go out and find them the right dental offices to purchase; we help them with the finances to purchase; and then we transition the new office to our systems,” he says. “That’s how we’ve achieved our growth.”

Tralongo says there are several key considerations his team keeps in mind when looking at new partnerships. For example, does the dentist fit with Tralongo Management’s goal structure? Can the dentist benefit from the association? And are they a cultural fit.

“We’re looking for people with an entrepreneurial spirit who can think out side the box, and are willing to make changes in offices that have been static for 30 years,” he says. “That leader, that entrepreneurial dentist, has to be the one to set the direction.”

Tralongo may be focused on providing dentists with a better work-life balance, but he doesn’t deprive himself of the same. He describes himself as a huge fan of Steven Covey, an educator and author of several books, the most successful of which is 

“[Covey] calls things important energy,” Tralongo explains. “Define what is important in your life. For me it’s family, it’s my work, it’s my friends. And those are the only things that I work on. If there’s something that comes into my life that doesn’t have to do with what’s important to me, I do not do it.”

That said, even with his busy schedule Tralongo finds he has plenty of time in a day to accomplish what he needs to. That includes going to the gym for two hours every day, and being a certified level-4 USA hockey coach, having coached traveling hockey for more than 12 years. The latter, he says, has brought experiences that have been invaluable.

“I get an email from a player who’s now 20, and I’ve known him since he was 10,” Tralongo says. “The relationships, the friendships, being a mentor to those kids—it’s awesome. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the company's annual revenue. The correct figure is more than $60 million.

A dentist has turned his knowledge of merger-nomics to launch a business focused on helping practices leverage growth and education to improve efficiency and profitability.

For Dentist-Turned-Businessman, It's All About the Process

Lean manufacturing or lean production is a systematic method for the elimination of waste and improvement of productivity and quality. And yes, it’s traditionally thought of in a manufacturing context.

But those same concepts that are applied in a factory setting to reduce wasted time and motion can be applied in a dental practice. Unfortunately, according to Adrian LaTrace, CEO of 

, a designer and manufacturer of specialty dental and medical operatory equipment, those concepts are often overlooked.

“Progressive designers are now incorporating these concepts, looking at creating adjacencies for supplies being close to the point of use, and where the patient will be located,” LaTrace says. “Design and layout can be one of the top things to facilitate the efficiencies within a practice.”

Boyd specializes in personalizing its products to a specific theme or style a dentist wants to create within his or her office. As LaTrace explains, the days of the old, clinical-looking office are going away. When patients walk into an office they’re looking for something that makes them feel comfortable. That means features like coffee bars and WiFi, but also the general aesthetics of the office.

“Especially as we see a new generation of dentists making they way into the industry, they are more image conscious,” LaTrace says. “The patient has choices. And given a choice of a practice that looks pretty stale and clinical in nature versus one that’s a much more comfortable environment to go to, odds are, they’re going to go with the one that looks more comforting and welcoming.”

There are also many efficiencies that design can bring about. For example, LaTrace says that the average orthodontist practice may see anywhere from 150 to 175 patients each day. And their overhead costs are among the highest in the dental field. The design of the office can create storage locations that are adjacent to the patient so there’s less wasted motion. Also, properly sizing of sterilization centers for the number of operatories so that there’s an optimal amount of instruments can result in added efficiencies.

“By creating a more efficient operation, they can reduce the amount of inventory, maybe even streamline the amount of staff they have per patient,” LaTrace says. “So there are ways [dentists] can enhance their profit margins by being more efficient.”

Advances in technology are impacting the way dentists, orthodontists, and others practice. But it’s also impacting dental equipment. For example, advances in material science have resulted in surfaces with antimicrobial properties. This can benefit a practice in its infection control protocols by having a surface that will resist the growth of any bacteria or microbials.

“We’ve also incorporated technology into our chair products,” LaTrace says.

Specifically, programmable settings much like those in a car can help automatically articulate the optimal setting for a hygienist who’s five-foot-two or a dentist who’s six-foot-four.

“It’s not a leading edge concept or idea,” LaTrace admits. “We’ve had it in the auto industry for a number of years. But it is relatively new to the dental space.”

Whether you’ve decided to refurbish your existing practice, or have merged with or purchased a second location, LaTrace says the first step with regard to design and equipment is to have an expectation of the size of the practice.

“Once you start putting up walls, it’s difficult and expensive to expand,” he says.

That can be challenging, of course, especially when a dentist is starting out in a new practice. There are big expectations, but LaTrace cautions to step back and take a rational calculation on how many patients you realistically expect to see. Even for an existing facility, design architects can help redesign the existing footprint to meet the anticipated capacity.

“And one other thing they need to think about is branding,” LaTrace adds.

He calls them “serial practices” where one facility after another is built, and stresses the importance of how each location has the same look and general feel, right down to the layout.

“We work with doctors who are doing this,” LaTrace says. “It gets back to efficiencies. You can go from one office to another and the equipment is the same.”

He says that a doctor and his or her equipment is very much like a musician with an instrument. When a pianist plays, they don’t sit and look at the keyboard. They know where the keys are, and they can focus on their audience. Focus on their music.

“We see this a lot in the oral surgery space,” LaTrace says. “They can focus on the patient. Focus on the procedure. That’s important, and should be thought of before breaking ground.”

Dentists are increasingly considering the look and feel of their offices. It turns out such considerations can also boost a practice's efficiency.

Equipment and Design Have Positive Impact on Practice Efficiencies

From computers to dental equipment to practice management software, dentists face considerable challenges when it comes to keeping up with evolving technology.

But if you’re looking for a place to start, an adoption of technology that will have the most positive impact on your dental practice, replacing paper forms, phone calls, and mail with online portals might be the way to go. According to Matt Martin, manager of the electronic outreach department for 

, a dental benefit administrator, using online portals can help dentists run their operations more efficiently while delivering better service to patients.

So why aren’t more dentists using them?

“If you’ve always had to chase down claims and go after payments, that’s all you know,” Martin says. “But once they open their mind a little bit to see what the possibilities are, [dentists] are absolutely taken back by what they can do.”

Martin says that dental practice staff spends “obscene amounts of time” on the phone trying to track down a claim, trying to get payment, or simply checking eligibility on a daily basis. The process can last as much as an hour.

For example, Martin recalls one provider who was phoning into Scion Dental’s call center an average of 400 times a month just to check eligibility and claim updates.

“If you look at the math on that, even if it was a short phone call lasting eight or nine minutes, you’re looking at 46 hours every month spent on the phone,” Martin says. “I went out and did a complete training with all of the locations, and now they are down to fewer than 60 calls a month from 400. That’s a reduction of 39 hours spent on the phone.”

To illustrate, Martin explains that Scion Dental’s system updates information instantly. So if a practice needs to check a patient’s eligibility, the staff is literally two clicks away from verifying the patient’s status. The process can be done in a matter of seconds compared with about seven minutes on the phone.

“I have one provider who on a regular basis checks roughly fifteen hundred claims a month on a portal and twenty-two hundred authorizations on the portal a month,” Martin says. “If they didn’t use the portal, they would have to call in and check on each one of those. You’re looking at hours spent on the phone.”

Martin explains that when it comes to cost, you can’t get much cheaper than free—there is no cost to use Scion Dental’s portal. He compares that to approximately three cents for every page you might otherwise be printing out, and for a large dental practice that’s a lot coming out of pocket.

“And since we’re web-based, there’s no software to put on your computer,” he says. “It’s all free. Training is free. And as a provider, you get paid much faster by using the portal—anywhere from five to 12 days faster.”

Martin relays the impact on dental staff as experienced by one woman at a practice in Massachusetts. He visited the practice and asked if she had time to meet with him regarding the portal. The woman, who had attended a seminar Martin had given earlier that day, smiled and began jumping up and down.

“I could physically see the excitement on this woman,” he recalls. “She told me that she submitted an authorization during that training, and she had already gotten a response to that by that afternoon. She was absolutely blown away because normally that would have taken weeks to get back, and now she has that back in five hours. And she was just so pleased with not only herself learning the technology, but how fast the technology worked for her.”

Scion Dental’s own statistics indicate that 64% of their payees have registered for their provider web portals, meaning that a little more than one-third still have not. Martin says therein lies the challenge. And the challenge is nothing more than helping them overcome the fear of technology.

“We still talk to providers who, crazily enough, don’t even have computers or the Internet in their offices,” Martin says. “But with our approach, being able to train people one-on-one, we try and break down those walls.”

Faster authorization of services, getting paid faster and reducing errors on claims, and increasing productivity by reducing time spent on the phone are sound reasons to consider portal adoption.

“Speaking completely away from the company, if you have an opportunity as the provider to become electronic, you at least have to give it a shot to see if it works for you,” Martin suggests. “Because you’re doing not only yourself, but really the people who work for you and the people coming into your office a huge disservice if you don’t.”

Online patient portals have the potential to make practices much more efficient. So why aren't more dentists using them?

Online Portals Enhance Dental Practice Productivity

There’s no question that the hiring process is one of the most important procedures that can be put in place in a dental practice. The quote, “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link” certainly applies here. For that reason, if no other, it’s critical to take your time and not rush through the hiring process.

“[Hiring] is a big decision,” says Ann Marie Gorczyca, DMD, MPH, MS, owner of 

.” “A lot of dentists lost a vital person and they think, I have to hire someone immediately because I don’t have someone to answer the phone. Well, you’re better off hiring a temp until you find the person who will do the job the way you want it done.”

 last week the first several steps in the process were covered, including: collecting resumes; contacting candidates; and checking references. The value of a Skills Assessment was also discussed. Now you’re ready to bring the candidates in for an office meet and greet.

Candidates should receive an office tour, during which Gorczyca recommends that every member of your practice team meet each candidate. The dentist, either with or without the office manager, should then interview each candidate.

During the time spent with each candidate, ask yourself several questions: Is this person pleasant? Do they have a positive attitude? Are they enthusiastic? Do you like this person? And perhaps the most important question, will you be happy spending eight hours a day, five days a week with this person for perhaps the next 20 years?

“Who you hire for your office is an important decision because you may spend more time with them than your own spouse,” Gorczyca points out.

Make certain throughout the interview process to only ask legal questions. For example, in the state of California it’s illegal to ask, “Who will take care of your children while you’re at work?” It’s also illegal to ask a candidate their age.

When candidates make it through the interview and Skills Assessment, Gorczyca pays her team members for one hour to take the candidate out to lunch—without her.

“This new candidate has to gel with the rest of the team, and the team has to like the candidate,” Gorczyca explains. “There are going to be many times when the team is working together and the doctor is not part of what’s going on. So it’s important that the team members assess the person without the doctor.”

Once lunch is over, take a team poll. Ask your team, “Should we hire this person?” What you’re looking for is a unanimous decision. If you get that, consider doing a final background check, above and beyond speaking with the candidate’s previous employer. This could include checking criminal records, credit history, education and license verification, and even digital dirt.

“Look at someone’s Facebook,” Gorczyca suggests. “And if one candidate had a very nice Facebook where they showed they are a family person and have been working in dentistry, continuing education, everything is positive, versus a second person where you go to their Facebook and it’s blocked. You would hire the one with the open Facebook because it indicates this person is who they say they are in the office and outside the office. They have nothing to hide.”

Now it’s time to make the final job offer to the candidate of your choice. Gorczyca recommends that you don’t “sugar coat” the job description or related duties. In other words, don’t make the job sound easier than it is. Rather, make the job sound more challenging than it actually is.

“You give the job offer, you outline the challenges, you ask if they feel this is the position they would like, and can handle, and a good fit for their talents?” she explains.

When making the offer, be careful what you put in writing because you are creating an inadvertent contract. Gorczyca suggests simply including the rate of pay, not the number of hours each week the candidate would work.

“You can discuss them,” she says. “But if you write in 40 hours a week, heaven forbid the person gets 35 hours. So, be careful what you put in writing.”

And remember, Gorczyca adds, there’s no need to set an arbitrary deadline.

“I would say give it a month,” she says. “You don’t want to rush the hiring process.”

In Part 2 of our series on hiring, we discuss why it's important to take your time and get staff input before making a hire.

For an Effective Hiring Process, Don't Rush

Calling someone a blabbermouth isn’t exactly complimentary. But for 

, a 30-year clinician based in Holt, MI, the expression takes on a whole other meaning.

BlabberMouth! 77 Secrets Only Your Mouth Can Tell You to Live a Healthier, Happier, Sexier Life

. It’s a book whose contents benefit both patients and dental practitioners alike.

“We’ve started to recognize the scientific evidence in the links between oral health and systemic disease—all that we could tell by looking in the mouth,” Maples explains. “So while [the book is] written for to educate the public, it really works well for dentists and dental teams.”

When Maples was young and began developing thoughts of a career in dentistry, her parents tried to talk her out of the idea. They felt she was more creative than she was analytical, which Maples admits is true, and that dentistry would be a waste of her creativity.

“While most parents would be so proud that their kids are interested in medicine or dentistry, mine were like, it’s just going to be a waste of your talent,” Maples recalls.

They also said her hands were too cold, and her stomach made too many noises—all the characteristics that would not make her a good dentist. And for a while, about seven years into a successful dental practice, she began to think they might have been right.

“I was quite bored,” she admits. “I thought maybe this was not going to work out for me to do every day.”

She returned to school to obtain an MSBA, and was contemplating pursuing a PhD in organizational development when her brother developed a temporomandibular joint and muscle (TMJ) disorder. Wanting to fix the problem for him, Maples took a course at the 

 and that’s when the light bulb came on.

“When Pete spoke, I felt I went to the mountain and Moses delivered the tablet,” Maples says. “I had a big, huge epiphany that there was so much more, and I had a few more mountains to climb.”

Maples began applying her organization development leadership knowledge, as well as some innovative business techniques, to her practice. Her book 

“Oral disease impacts systemic disease, and systemic disease gives early warning signs manifesting itself in the mouth,” Maples says. “This is the future of dentistry. The problem is, only 1-2% of dentists we estimate are doing anything regarding dental health. And 90% of what’s in the book, dentists don’t know.”

Along the journey Maples also developed the Hands-On Learning Lab Kit for children. This educational tool grew not only from her love for children, but from illnesses she experienced as a child.

“I was born a pretty sick kid,” she recalls. “And one of my parents smoked two packs a day. I spent three months in an oxygen tent, and then was hospitalized seven times under the age of 12 with pneumonia.”

But at age 13, an internist turned her life around. She asked Maples what she would be willing to do to be able to stop taking medications and life a normal, healthy life.

“I would do anything,” Maples recalls answering.

The internist left the room, then returned with a small piece of bubble wrap. She had Maples hold the bubble wrap and told her it was her lungs. That the tiny sacks of air were where the oxygen was kept, and the walls were where the muscles were located that carried oxygen to all of her cells. Then she challenged Maples to exercise for 30 minutes a day.

“There was no way I could do that, but she coached me through it,” Maples says.

She joined her school swim team, which became a high school championship team four consecutive years, and then started running track. She recognized the power children have to heal themselves.

“We see these kids every six months for what we call a preventive relationship, yet we’re not preventing much,” Maples says. “So we’re trying to really affront obesity and diabetes and heart disease in children by using hands-on science experiments in every single visit to help kids learn, just like I did, indelible memories of what they can accomplish.”

A Michigan dentist worried her career choice might limit her creativity. Instead, she's found a way to embrace creativity and put it to use improving her profession and the health of her community.