Nothing else will really make an impact on your revenue apart from having a steady and quality patient base. A practice might have the most modern dental equipment, staff, office space and adequate supplies very easily, but none of the above factors will guarantee a practice a steady flow of quality patients into your dental practice.
Lack of enough quality patients is the main motivation to new and young dentists to operate from 9 to 5 and keeping their office doors open for 5 to 6 days every week. This will accumulate the overheads for 6 days whereas all the appointments can adequately fill 3 days every week. Growing dental practices mostly remain open because a new patient may call the clinic with an emergency and if the dentist is not in the ready for business and in the office the new patient may call the next dentist that is listed in his or her phone book.
Having your door open 6 days a week for your business is just a cost of doing business. This cost is called an Opportunity Cost. You could decide to pick up more new patients by signing up for the various capitation programs and managed care options available. One thing that dentists do not know is that these programs actually capitalize on unsuspecting dentists who have part-time patient schedules and full-time overheads.
The dentists that do not sign up for these plans will actually find themselves much busier in the long run. They will also feel better that the practice staff are working much harder. It does not take a long time for these dentists to discover that these managed types of patients will not enable them to escalate to the income levels that they desire. This means that they are busy but they do not make the kind of profits that they desire. Once you let yourself enter into the managed care trap, it is sometimes really hard to free yourself from the trap.
Now, let's get back to the time that you do not have enough patients but you are keeping your practice door open for new patients to come to your clinic. You are advertising your services heavily. You keep your doors open each and every day because you are investing in the future. The overhead costs that you incur are of a busy practice whereas you are not busy yet. This is referred to as an opportunity lost.
