One reason practice owners decide to hire an associate is because they are looking for more freedom. They are looking for more clinical freedom, freedom for more vacations and free time with family, and the freedom to have to do fewer hygiene checks!
A common fear that can hold practice owners back is the fear that they do not yet have the production to support an associate dentist. But how does hiring an associate actually increase the cash flow and value of your dental practice? What if the one thing that will eventually increase the cash flow and value of your dental practice is the same thing you are worried you are not ready to do yet?
We get asked this question often from practice owners just like you and would like to share why it is a good idea to take this step.
When a high-level practice owner hires an associate and takes the time to mentor them and help them with procedures that they can refer inside the office, the associate becomes more confident with fundamental restorative procedures like class two composites, crowns, straightforward extractions, it allows the office to increase cashflow by having greater clinical capacity.
It allows you to expand your hours (with or without the practice owner), book appointments sooner, and accept more last minute emergencies. You have more dentists available to do procedures. From what we see, many dental practices are scheduled out far in advance, but often the procedures that are clogging their schedules are not the ones that are most productive.
Hiring an associate allows you to offer procedures you used to refer out and have more space to incorporate specialty care – dental implants, root canal treatments and clear aligners. As a practice owner, you wear so many different hats- from clinical hats to practice management hats, to business owner hats. Sometimes, you do not have the bandwidth or time to learn new procedures.
One thing we tell dentists to be aware of is that when adding or hiring an associate for the first time, it is common for your daily income to initially take a small dip because you are sharing the current patients that you have. But it is important to think of this as an investment in your patient-centered care- and your sanity!
As you market more, your income can surpass what it initially was. When talking with practice owners who have decided to add an associate to their practice but were initially worried about the dip, we find that they are a lot happier and would not go back to practicing alone.
One of the things we see is that lot of DSOs and private practice groups are looking to buy practices that have more than one dentist. According to experts we work with, if a solo practitioner is collecting 1.5 million a year adding an associate and collecting 2.4 million a year creates more flexibility and options.