Bridging the gap

Dental practice taps consultants
to help improve office operations
by Darryl Ewing, The Austin Business Journal

Dr. Michael Bell has spent 25 years establishing a solid dental practice in Austin, and now he’s working with consultants to help him better sink his teeth into running an optimal dental business.

It’s not that Bell was struggling in his business. In fact, based on the latest American Dental Association annual average revenue data, Bell says his office is in the top 10 percent of practices nationally, with 2,400 patients. Bell warns against only worrying about service delivery, stressing that dentists must not neglect the business side of the practice.

“Even the best athletes have coaches to help them see things they don’t; to help them make improvements and get to the next level,” says Bell, 51, who hired Fortune Management consultants in September, making him Fortune’s first Austin client.

Fortune Management, which has clients in more than 20 states and Canada, specializes in helping health care providers run their practices.

Local office founders and husband and wife Stanley Dill and Julie Demaree came to Austin in January and cover all of Texas outside of the Dallas and Houston markets. Their other dental practice client is in Hempstead, 50 miles west of Houston.

“They’ve helped us with everything that has to do with the business part of the practice, like time management and scheduling or how to interview patients and find out what outcomes they want to achieve (and also) the financial part of the practice,” Bell says.

Larger dental practices in metropolitan areas are more likely to take advantage of business consultants, freeing the dentist and staff to focus on care delivery, says Lyda Creus Molanphy, spokesperson for the Texas Dental Association.

“It is an increasingly complex health care market with increasing demands from insurance … and that’s a lot of what the business management consultants take on, while the dentist’s focus is clinical,” Molanphy says. Bell says Fortune has helped in three key areas:
Enhancing practice performance by monitoring key business data each day;
Improving communication among the staff and with patients;
Improving the “re-care” system, which focuses on getting patients back into the office to get procedures completed. Dill says Fortune Management will work with Bell for about two and a half years, with site visits and teleconferences, meeting facilitation, ongoing coaching and monitoring and interpretation of data. Dill says the first step is getting clear on the doctor’s vision for the practice and what the doctor wants to accomplish through the practice over a lifetime. Fortune worked with Bell for about a month in crafting a vision statement. “People get caught in patterns of thoughts and beliefs,” Dill says. “We can step in and ask the question that interrupts the pattern,” allowing the practice to do things differently or discover new plans of attack for old problems. In the Fortune model, ongoing monitoring of standard operating procedures is key to process improvement, Dill says. For example, the office monitors the number of emergency patients daily to determine their impact on regularly scheduled appointments through the day. The practice uses the data to determine whether some types of “emergency” procedures could be scheduled the following day or whether the practice can build “flex” into the schedule to allow emergency procedures to be handled during certain blocks of time.

“If the doctor’s schedule is being run by emergency patients, that’s not going to work long-term,” Dill says. The company also tracks the number of doctor visits versus hygienist visits, the number of cancellations and missed appointments, whether patients are coming back to get diagnosed problems treated, and even the amount of time it takes to handle certain procedures, such as x-rays. The data is then used to make decisions about standard procedures to make the office run more efficiently, Dill says. The data also helps the staff understand what it realistically can accomplish in a day, without making patients feel rushed or inconvenienced.

“It’s a scoreboard for the practice,” Dill says. “The information is accessible to the whole team so they can see how they’re doing.”

Another part of Fortune’s work has been providing the staff with strategies to help better communicate with patients who chronically miss or cancel appointments. The staff also has received communications training, based on the principles of motivational speaker Anthony Robbins, on how to better improve the office culture, Dill says. The staff will focus on eight elements of its office culture during a yearly planning meeting in January. Bell says he and his staff of seven women felt they could do more to support each other and to eliminate “subgroups,” where office assistants might gossip about the hygienists, or vice versa.

“We have entered into some agreements on how we will choose to talk to each other and we won’t subgroup,” he says.

The staff completed a three-day training session last month and will undergo another one in April, where staff are given specific tasks to complete, such as getting clear on the group’s vision for the office. The team also completed a Robbins “discovery exercise,” which allows staffers to gain a better understanding of their teammates.

“We had some people saying, ‘You know, I’ve worked with you for 20 years and I didn’t know that about you,’” Dill says. “They went back to the office and they saw each other differently. [The staff’s attitude] begins to impact the patients differently, too.”

Fortune also provided some verbal skills training in managing the re-care system —the process of making sure that patients come back to have diagnosed issues addressed and that patients never leave the office without having their next appointment scheduled.

“We try not to be a break-it-and-fix-it practice,” where patients simply come in to get things done on an emergency basis, Bell says.

Instead, the practice tries to diagnose issues early and focus more on preventative care. Before the practice began to focus on the re-care process, it was scheduling follow-up appointments only at about 40 percent.

The new goal: 90 percent.

“We’re tracking it. We’re paying attention to it,” he says. “I think there’s an old saying: What gets measured gets done.”

Bell’s goal is to continue to refine operating processes and formalize systems to bring an associate dentist on board in the next two to three years, giving him time to handle more complex dental cases, research and community involvement. Fortune also helps identify potential dentists that match Bell’s values.

Bell has a potential ten-year plan for the new dentist. After five years, Bell plans to allow the dentist to buy in to about half of the business.

Then, about five years later, Bell says he hopes to be able to transition out of the practice, making it a seamless change for patients. He believes the new focus on monitoring and data will help him attract the right associate.

“Any associate coming in wants to look at the numbers,” Bell says. “People want the hard data. They want to know what they’re buying in to.”

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The Best Dentists in America

Dr. Michael C. Bell Recognized
Among The Best Dentists in America

AUSTIN—Dr. Michael C. Bell, D.D.S., has been selected as one of The Best Dentists in America, according to a new nationwide poll.

The book The Best Dentists in America lists the names of 7,000 dentists covering all 50 states who were selected entirely on the basis of votes by their peers. Listings in the book cannot be bought, and purchases of books or other items have no impact on the inclusion process.

The selected dentists represent just three percent of the country’s 250,000 dentists. A total of four general dentists practicing in Austin are listed in the guide. The guide is available online at www.thebestdentistsinamerica.com.

Dr. Michael C. Bell has been a practicing dentist for more than 25 years, focusing on general and cosmetic dentistry.

Dr. Bell and his Team of dental professionals are known for their use of the latest technology to provide complete and accurate diagnoses of dental conditions, as well as patient comfort and safety.

Dr. Bell has also been recognized locally and nationally for his extensive community involvement and service and was invited to the White House to be personally thanked by President Bush for contributions through the Smiles for Life program.

“My Team and I are honored to be listed among The Best Dentists in America,” Bell said. “It is especially gratifying to be recognized by my professional peers.”

The Best Dentists in America is published by Woodward/White Inc., publisher of professional referral guides for two decades. Because professionals cannot pay to be listed in any of its publications, Woodward/White’s lists are widely considered unbiased and authoritative. They have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and other publications.

The survey asked thousands of dentists, “If you had a close friend or relative who needed a dentist, to whom would you refer them?” Nominees were voted on by confidential ballot, and more than 125,000 votes were cast in compiling the 2004-2005 edition.

For more information about The Best Dentists in America, go to www.thebestdentistsinamerica.com or call 803-648-0300.

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West Austin News

Profile of Dr. Michael Bell
Westside Stories, a feature of the West Austin News
By Forrest Preece

Now, Michael Bell is my idea of an Austin dentist. To wit: he’s studied tai chi for years. When you come into the waiting room of his office, there is aromatherapy wafting through the air and you can use a foot massager. And to relax you even more, you get a paraffin hand treatment with soft gloves and coverings. Does this man understand ambience or what? (And yes, your humble reporter tried the hand treatment and my anxiety level, which was heightened by just being in a dentist’s office, went back to my normal state of stretched rubber band tautness immediately.)

Michael’s an Austin kind of guy, too. He’s got a nice sports shirt and jeans on, and he reminds me of a good-looking country singer in the Larry Gatlin mold. Today, he’s elated, because he just found out that he has been included in a new book listing the “The Best Dentists in America,” and he is one of the four from Austin so honored (representing the top three percent of all dentists in the nation). This is the first year the book is coming out. (And no, this isn’t one of those scams where you pay to be in the thing.)

What’s new?

And I’ve got to tell you, this office of his has some incredible toys, the kind you’d expect from a top dentist. Like this computer visualization device that shows, in two-week increments, how an Invisalign treatment will straighten your teeth. (And don’t worry, all you HIPPA advocates, he just showed me a nameless demo.) As I sat there, he rotated the graphic on the screen to show different views of the teeth in question and then stepped me through how they would straighten up, bit by bit, during the 34-week process. He also has a camera that lets him take photos inside a patient’s mouth and then blow up shots of each tooth to full screen size in living color, so he can see down to the nth detail what needs to be fixed.

And yet another gadget he has lets him take photos of patient’s teeth and then show how cosmetic work will make teeth more even, in proportion, whatever. And that new trend toward whitening gets a lot of play here. And you guessed it: he has a device that shows your teeth in before and after shots of that process, as well.

So how did he work his way up to this point? Well, Michael is a Houston native who went to Texas A&M, Baylor Dental School and then got stationed at Bergstrom where he was a base dentist from 1979-81. Then he struck out into private practice.

“Some friends of mine had started their practices in Dallas and they told me ‘just get to the edge of the city and wait for it to catch up with you.’ I took their cue and set up an office in the first strip center in Westlake. Later, I decided to move back towards town.” That’s where he is now, in the Timberline Office Park at MoPac and Bee Caves.

Smiles for Life and more.

Now as you’d expect from a guy who talks a lot about having balance in his life, Michael does a lot of giving back. For example, along with three other Austin dentists, he’s in his fourth year of participating in Smiles for Life, a remarkable program that transfers money from whitening procedures straight to children who have life-threatening medical conditions, like cancer and leukemia, but who can’t afford medical care, around the country. .

The way it works is after a whitening procedure, the patient just writes a check straight to Smiles for Life. Out of the 500 dentists in the country who participate in this program, Michael’s office is in the top handful. During the five years he’s done it, he’s generated $20,000 to $25,000 worth of funds on average per year.

“Garth Brooks is behind this cause; I actually got to meet him last year,” Michael says. “He was drawn to Smiles for Life because the money goes straight to the kids. And again this year, they are giving us half of the money we generate here in Austin for a local charity. This year, we’ve designated the Theo Project, which does all kinds of good things for children’s dental care in Central Texas.”

Another organization that Michael sponsors through Smiles for Life is “The Challenger League.” This is Little League T-ball for kids who are mobility impaired or otherwise severely handicapped. Each child who participates has a “buddy” who actually swings the bat for the “player” and then they move to the bases with them. “Everybody gets to bat and run. I attended one of their games, along with President Bush, on the south lawn of the White House not long ago. That kind of thing inspires me.”

Speaking of his own life, Michael says that “you have to maintain balance: between the technical part of the business and the human side. I enjoy being part of people’s lives and keeping up with them while they are in my care. But I love finding out about innovations and new equipment and taking courses about new procedures, too.”

Keeping things in balance is important, all right; and Michael sounds like he’s doing a good job of it. And speaking of evening things out, I wonder if he’ll let me come back for another paraffin treatment?

FYI, Mike explained to me that Smiles for Life funds health care for seriously ill kids; not dental surgery. There’s another organization (Austin Smiles) that sends docs to other countries to perform dental and other operations. Not the same thing. Smiles for Life is a national project of the Crown Council, an organization of elite dentists. http://www.smilesforlife.org/home.asp

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Smiles For Life

Whiter Smiles Bring Brighter Smiles for Kids

Dr. Bell’s office has been one top dental practices in the country participating in the Smiles for Life program, which donates proceeds from teeth whitening procedures to charities that help critically ill children. In 2004, Dr. Bell’s practice donated nearly $15,000 directly to the program.

“Our team is proud to be ranked 25th in number of dollars donated to this campaign, in which dentists from the United States and Canada participate,” he said.

Dr. Bell is a member of the Crown Council, an alliance of dedicated, leading-edge dentists located throughout North America who subscribe to a continually rising standard of dental care. The Smiles for Life campaign has raised over $11,000,000 for over 100 children's charities over the past five years, including gifts to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the Children's Miracle Network, and the Starbright Foundation.

The Smiles for Life campaign is unique. Participating dentists donate a teeth-whitening procedure, and the patient receiving this treatment is invited to donate the cost of the whitening to the Smiles for Life Foundation. 100% of the contributed funds go to help kids.

A participating partner in the Smiles for Life campaign is the Garth Brooks Touch'em All Foundation. Because of Garth Brooks' connection to baseball, he has been able to enlist the aid of a group of major league ball players who have agreed to add $1,000 to the charity fund for every home run the player hits or $100 per base hit. Pitchers donate for every strikeout, etc.

"It's a great campaign, and it's all to help kids," said Dr. Bell. The campaign runs annually from February through May.

For further information call toll-free: (877) 476-4537 or visit www.smiles4life.com.

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Dr. Bell Goes to Washington

Dr. Michael Bell was part of a small group of elite dentists from across the U.S. invited to the White House in the summer of 2003 to meet with President Bush in recognition of their community service and their commitment to disadvantaged young people in the U.S. and around the world through their participation in the Crown Council’s Smiles for Life campaign.

Dr. Bell was invited to watch a Challenger Division Tee Ball game on the South Lawn of the White House with President Bush; Little League International President, Stephen Keener; Crown Council Director, Greg Anderson; and the families of Challenger Division players. The Challenger Division is a program within Little League International, which invites all children regardless of their ability—or disability—to enjoy and play the game of baseball.

“The President was warm and generous with his remarks. He thanked each of us for our participation and genuinely enjoyed the Little League game. His compassion for children with disabilities and his love for the game of baseball were evident as we celebrated together the importance that all children have an opportunity to enjoy and develop a passion for this great game,” said Dr. Bell.

Dr. Bell and the seven other Crown Council dentists who attended were treated to traditional baseball fare of hot dogs, popcorn and soft drinks in the very special setting of the White House lawn.

“Having the opportunity to meet the President of the United States and having him recognize you for doing something we enjoy doing—helping children in need—is at once both exhilarating and humbling,” said Dr. Bell. “I join with the President in asking all Americans to become involved in volunteerism.”

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Dr. Bell and Team Send Dental Care Packages
to American soldiers in Iraq

Dr. Michael Bell, DDS and his dental team spent time between patients in September packing up “care packages” of dental supplies, personal items, sugar-free gum and candy and magazines to send to American soldiers in Iraq. The items were shipped to the Army company of Cpt. Drew Maddry, a patient of Dr. Bell’s who is currently stationed in Iraq. From left to right, dental assistant Kirsten, Theresa, Dr. Bell, and Liz display some of the items.

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