How Dental Clinics Can Make Extra Money

Plenty of people believe that dental clinics make a lot of money, but the truth is that yearly facility operating costs take a large bite out of revenues. Dental clinics also lose money and money-making opportunities because of wasteful practices, office inefficiency and lack of out-of-the-box thinking.

It is not difficult for dental facilities to increase the size of their financial resources. These five tips can help your clinic make extra money and prosper.

Delegate Minor Professional Tasks

Many dentists waste their time handling minor tasks that office staff, hygienists and laboratory technicians can perform with ease. For example, dentists who sit down with patients to discuss financial options or create or fine-tune appliances should pass those tasks onto other employees. Although delegating these tasks to existing employees or hiring extra help can increase some costs in various areas like salary and benefits, your clinic’s dentists can then take on more expensive cosmetic and oral health procedures to make up the difference and bring in extra money.

Invest in the Best

Some clinics waste money by failing to upgrade to new office and treatment equipment, scheduling and patient electronic health and chart software and third-party services that help make dental procedures and administrative tasks faster and more efficient. For example, front office personnel in many clinics get paid overtime to manually check voicemails and follow up with patients for appointment scheduling and reminders. An up-front investment in a modern appointment scheduling and automated email notification program or low-cost yearly investment in a scheduling service can cut out the need to pay overtime for these tasks.

Promote and Sell Products

Your patients rely on your clinic for guidance about dental products they should use regularly. Make extra money by providing more than tips and guidance: Promote and sell dental products for cleaning and maintaining teeth, such as preferred brands and lines of toothpaste, floss, mouthwash and teeth whitening and polishing kits. Additionally, if your clinic does not currently have a laboratory, you should consider making an investment in an on-site one and staff so that you can sell custom products that you can complete on-site like bridges, night guards and minor teeth adjustment appliances. You should also consider offering on-site services for teeth whitening and placement of veneers.

Evaluate and Sell Scrap

Evaluate your dental scrap for its potential resale value. A dental scrap buyer purchases certain precious and semi-precious metal like gold and silver from fillings, bridges, crowns and other sources. You can even accumulate over time enough scrap left as waste after procedures to bring in a nice large chunk of extra money. Keep in mind that many dental scrap buyers also donate to charities focused on helping children and adults maintain healthy teeth and gums.

Seek Expert Guest Engagements

If a member of your clinic’s dental team has been publicly acknowledged as a local or national expert offline or online, actively seek out unpaid and paid expert guest opportunities. For example, paid expert guest speaking engagements obviously bring in extra money from merely being paid gigs. All engagements though, even unpaid ones, bring in extra money by presenting your team member and clinic as experts to a wider audience and building positive word-of-mouth referrals. Over time, guest speaking engagements increase interest, new patient appointments and new expert guest engagement opportunities. Common guest speaking events include professional conferences and seminars and public school events. An expert member of your team can also make extra money with online guest blog posts and articles.

You do not have to suffer financially with high operating costs and waste. Make these changes today to improve the state of your clinic’s resources.