Readiness, the Key to Success

colleagues for formal diagnosis. While this is currently only a recommendation, it may one day be the standard of care for dental practices, just as screening for oral cancer has become.

While the upper airway is clearly an area within our scope of practice, it remains merely a dark and mysterious hole for many of us, lurking just behind our primary area of focus – the dentition – just a slippery crown or rubber dam clamp away. I feel it is imperative that the population focuses not only on those “little hard white things” but also encompasses the airway, and the enigmatic TMJs so commonly affected by sleep-related problems.

Barriers exist to dentists more actively managing OSA; lack of adequate education, difficulty developing effective screening and referral protocols, sleep physician resistance to OAT and clinical challenges of managing OAT side effects and treating patients with a sometimes less effective therapy vs PAP. At the same time, the emerging DSM field is changing rapidly, due to CPAP dissatisfied patients becoming more aware of the benefits of OAT, and more sleep medical providers beginning to accept OAT as a viable treatment. New technology such as MATRx Plus that helps predict OAT response and target therapeutic mandibular position may also help pave the way for greater dentist participation in managing OSA, by allowing us to focus on cases with the highest likelihood of success.

I’ve heard frequently that the “golden days” of dentistry are behind us. But to appropriate a famous quote from Mark Twain, “The reports of our death are greatly exaggerated.” Emerging opportunities to meld our dental skills with management of associated medical problems will continue to have a profound effect on our profession and, ultimately, on our patients’ health and well-being.

Dr Keith Valachi

“The keys to personal and practice readiness lie in planning. Each facet of planning is equally critical to being in a commanding and confident position when the time comes to sell your practice.”

If seems like just yesterday that you graduated from dental school, excited to begin your journey of improving the lives of our patients. You’ve dedicated your life to your profession, and provided a wonderful “work home” for you staff, and now it is time to transition to retirement. Before you pull the trigger on your practice transition, consider your “readiness.” Evaluate your emotional, financial, and practice readiness. Your readiness in all aspects plays a considerable role in your ability to land the right buyer and feel confident in your decision.

Emotional Readiness – Most of us have personally served our clients or patients for our entire career have invested a significant amount of personal capital in our work. We’ve immersed ourselves in a single focus. Other than family, it likely has been your primary purpose in life. Eliminating that purpose is a major life event that needs to be carefully planned well in advance in terms of redirection of our focus and energies. Making a change like selling your practice without having a new focus can have significant negative consequences.

Personal financial readiness is critical to your ability to retire. Unfortunately, studies have shown that fewer than 10% of dentists reach the point of financial independence despite having an above-average income throughout their careers. Numerous reasons for this are beyond the scope of this article but result from a lack of proper planning. We strongly recommend that dentists engage an independent financial planner before they start making major life decisions that may misdirect their cash flow. If you have not worked with a financial planner, now is the time to engage one to build a formal financial planning model. Your planner will help you assess you anticipated cash requirements and income throughout your remaining life expectancy. The plan will also help identify the amount needed from the practice sale to round out your investment portfolio to meet your needs in retirement.

Practice readiness is key to your practice being attractive to potential buyers. Top practices have well-defined staff roles and responsibilities, effective and documented systems and process and up-to-date infrastructure. These practices generate consistency high financial results and thus are more attractive and valuable to potential buyers. We’ve found that an average practice on autopilot usually needs about five years of improvements to get “tuned-up” to the point of being a top practice.

The keys to personal and practice readiness lie in planning. Each facet of planning is equally critical to being in a commanding and confident position when the time comes to sell your practice.

Paula Meehl, CMA, CPA