Many members of the American Association of Dental Office Managers (AADOM) have come into the dental field from outside dentistry. These men and women are skilled when it comes to making sure the practice is running at a profitable pace. Let's be honest ... I don't go to my accountant if I have a toothache and I don't go to my dentist if I need financial advice. Dentists are meticulously skilled at working in the mouth and have paid for years of college and countless CE courses to make sure they're good at what they do. So why shouldn't they be allowed to focus on those skills and using them for the utmost good of their patients? That's where the office manager comes in. He or she focuses on the numbers and the dollar signs. You can focus on dentistry. It's that simple.
"My first job as an office manager is to do everything in my power to make our team successful," said Melissa Erickson, the practice manager at Provinces Dental in Chandler, Ariz. "That's a huge umbrella, and there's a lot that falls under that for me. Everything from interpersonal conflicts to human resource issues to counseling and coaching is what I do on a daily basis. I am a bottom-line, business-is-business, black-and-white business manager."
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An office manager lets you establish relationships with your patients because they are taking part of the practice's burden from you. With more time to focus on dentistry, you also have time to focus on patients. Your patients are the lifeblood of your practice. Actually, they're not just "patients." They're people who can influence their friends in a good or bad way toward your practice. They're customers who are looking for a good experience in a business in the same way they would if they walked into a Target, Home Depot or Starbucks. By not worrying about the financial side of the practice, you have more freedom to make your customers feel important ... because they are.
One of the beautiful and often-overlooked assets of the office manager is that he or she becomes a trusted advocate for you in the practice. Being the boss of any company is a lonely business and the same holds true for the dentist. In offices where team members may have an "us versus them" mentality when it comes to their views of the dentist, the office manager can be the one person in the practice who stays out of the politics and focuses on the bottom line ... like you.
Having an office manager sounds great, right? Well, this is the part where I'm often asked two questions:
- How much is it going to cost me?
- Can I really trust someone with the financial details of my practice?
I'll address the second question first. Absolutely, you will have to trust this person with the most intimate details of your finances ... and it has to be a complete trust. You have to be willing to hand over the keys to the practice's financial car and let someone else drive it ... and you can't be a backseat driver. You have to remember that you are moving your business forward by concentrating on what you do best ... dentistry. You're also moving your business forward by letting someone else concentrate on what they do best ... focus on numbers.
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