Very interesting stats from Sesame Communication research, When patients receive a finacial reminder for a past due amount and they are offered the option of paying online:

• Within 24 hours 38% pay the balance.
• Within 48 hours 50% pay the balance.

Cubex uses a digital cabinet to store inventory and track usage. An online management program called SIM (Smart Inventory Manager) gathers the data, and even places orders automatically as needed.

One of the first things most dentists and team members notice is that the Cubex cabinet seems much too small to hold all your supplies. The basic cabinet is the size of a large bookshelf, about 77 inches high, 51 inches wide and 24 inches deep. (Larger models are available if needed.) It seems too small but once you organize the supplies you actually use and reduce the amounts you have in stock to what is really needed it is in fact large enough for most offices. When you see all the “stuff” you had stored in cabinets, piled in the closet or stuffed under the sinks fit into a single cabinet that has about one forth the capacity you were previously using it shows you how much we were wasting in excess inventory and storage space.

Are you net savvy? Take this quiz to determine your online footprint.

1. Do you have a practice web page?
2. Has the practice web page been updated in the last year?
3. Do you send e-mails to patients?
4. Do you have an office blog?
5. Are you on Facebook, as a dentist?
6. Do you Tweet?
7. Are you listed in online dental directories?
8. Do you have videos on YouTube?
9. Can people contact you through the Internet?
10. Have you claimed your  Google+ place?

Give yourself one point for every yes answer. If you answered no to question 2, your web page is not up to date, subtract 4 points. It is actually worse to have an out of date poor web site than to have none at all.

If you scored a perfect 10 then you are an up to date, 21^st Century, net savvy, Web 2.0, power practice.

On the other hand if you scored 5 or 6 you are typical. If you scored less than 3…well you wouldn’t have because at less than 3 you wouldn’t be reading a blog to begin with.

The point of the quiz is to demonstrate that having an online footprint does not simply mean you have a web page or an office Facebook page. A practice web site is just the beginning. To use the Internet effectively means tapping into the power of dynamic, interactive web sites; social media, e-communications, search engines, social networking and more.

For help with setting up your online foot print I recommend Sesame and TNT Dental

In case you missed it here is a link to a classic article from last year in Dentalcompare. It is intended to be fun and funny however you may recognize some things that actually happen in your office.

Back with the patient Harriet is ready to try again. Mr. Grumple has been here almost an hour, he is still in pain and now he is clearly ticked off. Judy the front desk fool person is standing in the hall frantically gesturing toward all the people in the waiting room and pointing at her watch. Dr. Paperman steams in, sees what is going on and asks, “Where is the x-ray?”

Harriet bursts into tears.

via Harriet the Harried Dental Assistant | Dentalcompare.com.

When I’m thinking about modern technology but I’m not waxing philosophic about it here, I’m usually thinking about digital products – music, movies, photos, games, software – and the economic reality behind them. Occasional soapbox moments aside, I don’t delve into these topics much here because it has seemed to me that the subject wasn’t relevant to my audience. I also avoid the topic because arguing about intellectual property rights and effective business models in the digital age is pretty much Internet Arguments 101. There is a whole universe of discussion on the matter of piracy and the impending paradigm shift in notions of intellectual property, and talking about that stuff is pretty much the easiest way to make an adult look like an idealistic college kid. When I sit down to write these articles I make a good faith effort to say things that nobody else is saying.

But really, the reason I don’t talk about piracy much is because I know you aren’t worried about it. People don’t pirate dentistry. You perform an expert service, and that can’t be faked or copied. On the surface one expects your tech interests to lie mostly with how your day-to-day operations can be changed for the better, and secondarily, the subtleties of what those new technologies mean, (such as how less time needed to manage your appointment book means that your receptionist takes on new responsibilities … or fewer hours).

And all this build up isn’t to justify some rant about how I feel the 21st-century-should-work and what-you-should-think-about-digital-goods. Far from it. It’s rather that I realized recently that my opinions about all that stuff behind the curtain is more applicable to you than I thought it was. Without engaging in college-kid diatribes, here are two bits of advice from the piracy battlefield:

Don’t Make it Hard to be a Customer

My favorite thing about Steve Jobs, (and understand that while I lionized him here, I am not without criticism of the man), was that he didn’t treat his customers like a bunch of selfish thieves. We live in a world were it seems every large company invests in some large infrastructure that is meant to make sure you can’t possibly steal their digital product ever. In an idealistic crucible, Apple is hardly innocent of this, but I do remember Steve Jobs explaining the decision to make iTunes with, “People don’t want to break the law.” He made iTunes in the face of Napster because he knew that the convenience of downloading music was more important than whether or not it was free. Again, iTunes itself isn’t above reproach, but Apple’s popularity over the past decade can be explained by its commitment to making the customer’s life easy. Microsoft makes you feel like a thief. Apple doesn’t.

A common mistake in the fight against piracy is that companies make it more difficult to be a legitimate customer. Don’t do this. Ask yourself, how easy is it to be one of your patients? How easy is it to find you online? How easy is it to make an appointment? Can appointments only be made over the phone? If so you are losing new patients to every dental office that let’s you make them online. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how excited your are to be on the phone with a stranger right now. Ask yourself how a practice that only takes new appointments in person competes with a practice that takes new appointments over the phone.

Ask yourself how long customers spend in your office outside of actual treatment. How long do they spend filling out paperwork? How long does it take to schedule their next appointment? How long do they wait? /Don’t/ make it hard to be a customer. A lesson from the piracy battlefield is that people will choose what is more convenient over what costs less money. Trust me. Be convenient.

Another way I like to put this is: Don’t put yourself between your product and your customer. If you are politically minded, you can equate this to [not putting a bureaucrat between you and your doctor] or [not putting a bureaucrat between scientists and their science], whichever line you are willing to listen to.

Don’t be a Jerk

Which is the politest I can put it. Another audience gets crasser words. An extension of the previous bit of advice is that being likeable is more important than being secure, (I think there was even a movie about this). People give money to things they like. If 20th century advertising taught us one thing, that’s it. Counterpoint to large companies making sure you can’t not spend money, is small companies, (observation: you are a small company), ensuring that you want to spend money, which is arguably more important. Again, I’ll spare you the college-kid anecdotes, just take the advice to heart; and again consider Apple, who wins by convincing people to like them.

But what are you doing to be unlikeable? That’s hard to say. There is a fine line between being lenient and easy with customers, and indulging them beyond feasibility. A good many entrepreneurs makes of point of pleasing the customer, but eventually you draw a line that protects your own interests, and where that line is is not obvious.

So consider this instead. Why should you care about being likeable?

I said you weren’t worried about piracy. I was right only in a literal sense. Where digitals goods providers are “freaked out” by piracy, you are “freaked out” by something else.

You know what it is.

Social media.

Where the music industry is concerned that somebody, somewhere, might download an mp3 without paying for it, you are worried that somebody, somewhere, might bad mouth your business for no good reason. You can’t stop all of the pirates any more than you can stop all of the cranks complaining about your business. But you can minimize. You can discourage negative behavior by being positive. I don’t have concise advice for how to be likeable, but at the very least, don’t be a jerk.

The metaphor is Judo; using your enemy’s momentum to your advantage. You can put effort in leveraging social media directly, but more importantly, you just don’t want to get crushed by its weight. The highly connected opinion-of-everybody is a tremendous force you can’t stop. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t give it anything to complain about.

At last, technology that pays for itself.

One of the most powerful trends in technology is the development and expansion of the Internet and eServices yet many dentists do not understand or utilize eServices. This course will explain what an eService is and how you can use eServices to improve patient care and increase profitability with specific examples of services dentist can start using immediately

Registration

Interesting, related to “Who owns the data?”

The publisher had argued, essentially, that you might own a book you bought, but the company retained the right to sell it.

Ownership ought to mean something. When you buy a smartphone or an automobile, it should be yours, and companies shouldn’t be able to leverage their intellectual property rights in software to keep you from unlocking, repairing, modifying, or reselling it as you see fit.

via Our Intellectual Property Laws Are Out of Control – Popular Mechanics.

Taking an “All on Four” clinical course taught by Chris Winterholler.

Two quick observations:

It works. Like many dentists I scoffed at teeth in a day and only four implants as being not only bad dentistry but fraudulent. Now that I have seen the science and the technique I am impressed. BTW that angled distal implant is an important component of the system it is not sloppy placement.

This technique would not be possible (or would be a lot more difficult and dangerous) without advanced technology. Cone Beam CT, implant planning software, laboratory CAD CAM and milling technology all are important components of the system.