Are you a dentist who is looking to grow and expand your group dental practice/DSO and wondering how to tackle it? Learn how Dr. David Janash approached the key components of KPIs, executive hiring, and centralization to help scale his DSO, Underbite Dental Management.
Planning Ahead
You cannot achieve your goals toward expansion if you are not planning ahead. To successfully scale, lay the foundation of future growth now, before the growth starts. Dr. David Janash, president and CEO of Underbite Dental Management, headquartered in New York City with eight locations, explains: “Set up systems, policies, and procedures… mapped and planned out proactively instead of retroactively.”
Dr. Janash recommends addressing these three key components to cement the foundation for the growth of your DSO.
Hiring Executives
The importance of hiring key executives at the beginning of your DSO/group dental practice’s growth path can’t be understated. Dr. Janash recommends focusing on hiring an executive team that can compensate for your “weakest muscle.” In which areas of leadership and business do you feel lacking?
For Dr. Janash, it was the HR department, and there were times when he first started to scale that he felt he had huge issues in HR. He noted that many organizations hire a marketing or sales executive first, but his first priority was hiring an HR executive, as he felt that was his area of biggest weakness.
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If you’re interested in learning more about growing your group dental group practice/DSO and achieving your vision, visit deodentalgroup.com/interest/
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Centralization
To grow your DSO, centralization is a must to ensure there is consistency across locations. But when, what, and how to centralize are questions many dentist-entrepreneurs ask. There is no one right way. As with your first executive hire, it depends on the needs of your group dental practice/DSO.
Dr. Janash shares how once he reached three locations, he made the move to centralize insurance verification/payment, payroll, bookkeeping, and HR under his DSO, Underbite Dental Management.
He also introduced an intranet where staff can log in and view their payroll checks, and make time-off and other requests. There is also an anonymous suggestion box where people can voice their issues with HR.
Highlighting his centralized system, Dr. Janash says, “We have a centralized platform where people can go to and utilize all sorts of functions, and that is really streamlined. So that is one of the keys to my success I think, in developing that.”
He noted that “you need to be able to get organized in a way where everyone can feel like they can go there and have their requests and concerns addressed, but at the same time stay anonymous.”
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If you’re interested in learning more about growing your group dental group practice/DSO and achieving your vision, visit deodentalgroup.com/interest/
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KPIs
There is a lot of information a DSO/group dental practice owner can glean from the right KPIs, Dr. Janash explains. He gets different KPI reports at different times — some at the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of the month, semi-annually and at the end of the year. KPIs are different for every practice, and you’ll need to determine which are best and most useful for you.
Dr. Janash suggests keeping everything simple. He suggests focusing on collection and production rates to start — other metrics matter, but keeping it simple lets you focus on the KPIs that will have the most impact.
He notes: “I would caution people not to be paralyzed by all the information out there because it can really drive you mad. Look at it once and when you see something is wrong, do something about it.”
KPIs can yield great information — but you have to find the metrics that let you take actionable steps, and don’t let yourself get overwhelmed.
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If you’re interested in learning more about growing your group dental group practice/DSO and achieving your vision, visit deodentalgroup.com/interest/
