Elsevier

Dental Abstracts

Volume 62, Issue 2, March–April 2017, Pages 70-71
Dental Abstracts

The Front Office
Adapting business planning for the dental office

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.denabs.2016.12.013Get rights and content

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Background

Strategic planning is an essential activity for businesses. It is designed to find creative ways to respond to opportunities and challenges that a business may face. Although many methods have been developed, not all have been well conceived and some are poorly implemented. For strategic planning to be useful in a dental office setting, it needs to be simplified so that the employees can concentrate on taking care of their immediate responsibilities (which is meeting the needs of patients and

Method

The dentist should begin by developing a vision statement that defines what the practice should be like in 3 years. He or she should share this with all staff members so that they know the objective for the practice.

Next, a half-day staff meeting should be held purely for the purpose of strategic planning. Staff members should be told about the meeting, its purpose, how it will work, their roles, and what it should accomplish. They should be given assignments to complete in preparation for the

Innovative Approaches

The goal of strategic planning is to come up with creative solutions to manage problems and opportunities. The ideas can come from anywhere, which is why the entire staff should be included. It also pays for the dentist and staff to be aware of the solutions that have worked for other dental practices and the possibility that they could be adapted. Ideas can be suggested by journals, books, newspaper articles, Web sites, management experts, and even personal experiences with other businesses or

Staff Engagement

Including all the team members in strategic planning is wise not just to ensure a broad range of possible creative solutions but also to engage them in the process, which increases the chance that they will buy into the result. Employees often question strategies that are imposed on them, especially if these strategies involve changing how they perform their tasks. If team members are excluded, they may resist the implementation of changes, especially if they don’t see the plan as realistic.

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Levin RP: A realistic approach to strategic planning for dental practices. J Am Dent Assoc 147:758-759, 2016

Reprints available from RP Levin, Levin Group, 10 New Plant Ct, Owings Mills, MD 21117; e-mail: [email protected]

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