Dentaltown March 2022 - 14

professional courtesy
column
Guidance from the Top
Mike Baird has served as CEO of Henry
Schein One, the largest portfolio of practice
management services in dentistry, for more
than 18 months. I recently had the opportunity
to meet with Baird and candidly discuss the
landscape of practice management products
and the future of technology in dentistry. We
covered four key areas that I'll touch on briefl y
in this month's column and will be covered
in-depth throughout the year. These areas
are priorities for Henry Schein One and by extension,
dentists should watch them no matter which software
engine is under the hood of their own practices.
Security has become a big issue for dental practices
regardless of location. Some dentists worry more about
offi ce property and equipment, but all of us must be
concerned about data security.
In 2022, you can't operate a dental practice without
access to the internet; electronic claims, EFT payments
and communication with patients and specialists are daily
tasks that require access to the digital superhighway. Once
you have access to the outside, you must protect your
castle from intruders: Offi ces get hacked by nefarious
individuals who have great phone skills, can create clever
email attachments or are bold enough to steal your entire
server. A multilayered approach is mandatory in a world
that casts a dim light on data breaches.
We communicate with our patients daily, but
phone calls and postcards are not enough-we need
email, text messages and website chat windows. These
methods need to be coordinated so we can use the right
approach on the right patients at the right time. We're
surrounded by businesses that are rewriting the script
on what their customers expect. (As dental practices,
we also have the benefi t of communicating
in ways that are more personal than big
companies with automated phone menus.)
If you've paid attention to the many
lessons from Dentaltown founder Dr. Howard
Farran, the one you should remember
the most is to watch your numbers. (Some
consultants call them key performance
indicators, or KPIs.) Watching your numbers
is more important now than ever because
by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, editorial director
14 MARCH 2022 // dentaltown.com
Henry Schein One CEO Mike Baird, left,
with Dentaltown Editorial Director
Dr. Thomas Giacobbi.
the nature of our profession is changing and we are amid
record infl ation that will challenge our businesses. The
DSOs that grow and prosper year after year watch every
KPI like hawks, because they're usually run by people
with business degrees, not dental degrees.
Solo practices could often get by just checking the
bank account balance at the end of each month, but
that single indicator is no longer adequate. A smaller
practice doesn't have the staff time to track a multitude
of indicators, however, so in the coming year we'll see
greater interest in practice data dashboards, such as
Jarvis Analytics, that automate this task.
" The cloud " no longer refers to technology used
only by Fortune 500 companies. Cloud technology is
all around us, and your practice management systems
will be better served when they migrate to this distant,
unseen computer locked away in an unmarked building.
We rely on cloud services daily when we access
email, photos and documents from any computer with
our login credentials. Dental practices will benefi t from
the practical advantages of secure storage and redundant
backups. In addition, the different services we rely on
to communicate with patients, track numbers and store
records will integrate better in the cloud. Thousands
of practices continue to run on a client-server platform
and they will soon have a path forward to the cloud.
New dentists and scratch-start offi ces often choose a
cloud solution from the start. They see the benefi ts and
don't want to get left behind.
I look forward to sharing more on these topics in
feature articles throughout the year. Please share your
thoughts on this article online at dentaltown.com.
If you want, you can also reach me by email at
tom@dentaltown.com. ■
http://www.dentaltown.com http://www.dentaltown.com
Dentaltown March 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown March 2022
