Orthotown September 2016 - 8

embrace progress // column Dental Hygiene- in an Orthodontic Practice? by Daniel Grob, DDS, MS, editorial director, Orthotown magazine A that most orthodontists A few months ago, Orthotown included an article by Miranda Valenzuela, who reviewed the rationale and treatment of managing white spot lesions in an orthodontic practice. This was just one of the duties and tasks assigned to Valenzuela, who is the dental hygienist in an orthodontic practice. How many of you have a dental hygienist in your practice? I do-and she's been part of my staff for more than 15 years. My business partner once said that adding a hygienist to our payroll was the single largest productivity booster in our 28-year practice journey ... even though she never once billed for routine hygiene services. How is that possible? don't enjoy-namely, The story, from the beginning removing braces and Do you remember Dr. Ron Redmond's standing-room-only lecture at the AAO meeting in Denver several years ago? He declared that hiring an orthodontist to work as an associate with the senior orthodontist was a money-losing proposition. Redmond estimated the cost of having an associate at around $250,000 per year-and that's coming straight out of the senior doctor's salary. Our business partnership learned that the hard way, years earlier, within the first six months of its existence. Shortly after we created our two-man practice, we realized that the camaraderie was great but the bottom line wasn't improving-in fact, it was declining. Fortunately, some forward-thinking general dentists had built a space in their Hiring a hygienist helped us with those tasks checking retainers. Timeconsuming, labor-intensive, nonproductive visits. 8 SEPTEMBER 2016 // orthotown.com office just for specialists. We agreed to rent it by the day so we could build our own practice (and of course accept referrals from them). Business was great-within months we were a steady one-day-a-week practice, then two days, then three ... all as the stepping stone to a freestanding location. Not satisfied with just one satellite practice, we quickly directed our attention to starting a second satellite office, renting an unused space from a periodontist for one day per month. One thing led to another, and within a couple of years we had turned a two-doctor, four-employee, one-office practice into a two-doctor, three-office practice. The key to our success-and our eventual sale-was the addition of a dental hygienist. Hiring a hygienist wasn't a new concept ... or even our idea! General dentists and periodontists have used dental hygienists in independent roles for a long time. So how did a hygienist turn into one of our most productive employees ever? Free yourself to focus on productivity The justification for hiring a dental hygienist wasn't because we needed someone to "clean teeth" or to perform hygiene functions, although periodontal charting and the like can be performed by a hygienist, of course. The goal was to utilize (with state regulations permitting) a licensed legal entity capable of managing and performing certain duties on patients that otherwise would require the presence of a dentist or orthodontist. Continued on p. 10 http://www.orthotown.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Orthotown September 2016