Most of the decisions you make to grow your dental company fall into 4 categories, with “people” – aka staff and associate – decisions always being first:
- “People” (team – staff & associates) decisions
- Strategy decisions
- Financial decisions
- Execution decisions
“People” decisions are first because you can’t expand without the right team of staff/associates in place. But, “people” decisions are multi-layered and include recruiting, hiring, retention, etc. plus incorporate the other three decision categories too – like what salaries you can afford to pay, etc.
Arguably ASSOCIATE “people” decisions in particular are the most complex.
When deciding to hire associates, no matter the stage of growth of your dental company – whether focused on transitioning from dentist/owner to dental CEO, or hiring your 10th associate for your 3rd dental group location, and beyond – you need to effectively assess the anticipated ROI for bringing in an associate and the far-reaching implications for your bottom line, profitability, and the future of your practice.
Understanding Dental Associate ROI
ROI, or Return on Investment represents the financial gains or losses relative to the initial investment. In the case of hiring dental associates, it involves assessing the return on the resources invested in bringing these professionals on board.
When you hire associates, you’re investing in additional clinical talent, which can lead to increased patient capacity and revenue. But, this investment also entails costs, including associate salaries, benefits, and operational expenses.
Understanding the potential ROI enables you to determine whether hiring associates is a financially sound decision for your dental group expansion strategy.
Visualizing Your Associate ROI
Calculating associate ROI can be a complex and time-consuming task because of the various financial factors that come into play like variable and fixed costs, doctor pay, capital expenditures, and projected revenue. To help, DEO created the Dental Associate ROI Calculator to simplify the intricate financial calculations needed to evaluate hiring associates.
This Calculator makes it easy to visualize your practice’s financial health with and without associates. It allows you to input specific numbers related to your practice and generates side-by-side comparisons of various scenarios, so you can make informed hiring decisions.
Consider Multiple “In The Chair” Vs. “Out Of The Chair” Scenarios
Use this Tool to solve for considerations like:
- How will hiring an associate impact your profits, expenses, and take-home pay?
- Can you anticipate increased cash flow when you’re out of the chair?
- Could you maintain your current income level while working fewer hours?
- Can an associate offer you the flexibility to take a vacation/be out of the office?
With this Calculator, you can answer these questions, model real-world numbers, and gain a clear understanding of how hiring associates will affect your practice’s profitability. You’ll be able to make side-by-side comparisons of “in the chair” and “out of the chair” scenarios and see the potential financial outcomes of transitioning from being the primary dentist to a dental CEO. You can use these valuable financial insights for strategic decision-making.
Making Informed Associate Hiring Decisions
The [Dental CEO Tool] Associate ROI Calculator can help you determine if you can step back from clinical duties while maintaining your income by providing you with data to review before making any big hiring decisions.
Understanding how associate pay influences your take-home pay and cash flow is imperative for planning when to expand your team – how many associates you want to hire both right away and on a longer time horizon.
By using the calculator to identify additional revenue generated from hiring associates, you can put together a concrete plan for the next stage in your dental company’s growth whether it’s completely transitioning out of the dentist chair to the dental CEO, adding locations, and/or expanding your leadership team, etc.
This Calculator offers insights tailored to your dental company and allows you to:
- Visualize your finances/profit for hiring associates & exiting the chair
- Plug in #s for variable/fixed costs, cash, Dr. pay, & capital expenditures
- Identify how associate pay impacts owner take-home pay & cash flow
- Model & view “in the chair month” vs. “out of the chair month” side by side
- Determine if you can step back by hiring associates & still maintain earnings
- Map out scenarios to make the leap from dentist’s chair to the role of CEO
- Be confident in your decisions to hire associate(s)
Hiring Is Key To Growth – Get Started by Calculating Associate ROI
There’s no way around making difficult “people” hiring decisions but the only way to truly scale is to expand your team and bring on associates. Doing so will make room for your Dental CEO role to evolve, with more time to focus on the “big picture” strategies.
The [Dental CEO Tool] Associate ROI Calculator helps you envision a profitable future for your dental company by quantifying the impact of hiring associates. Use it to start planning the next steps for your associate hiring strategy, take your leadership journey to the next level, and further your growth goals.
FREE RESOURCE
Get started and take a concrete step toward hiring associates armed with financial clarity – get your complimentary Dental Associate ROI Calculator resource here.
Your complimentary resource will be emailed to you.
