Front Office Essentials - Results From a Survey of 300 Dentists

Have you ever wondered what dentists truly value in their front office teams? This spontaneous episode reveals the surprising answer, and it hasn't changed in over a decade.

When a scheduled interview fails to materialize, I take the opportunity to share key insights from my journey developing a six-month dental administration school back in 2011. Frustrated by the lack of formal training programs for front office personnel and tired of dealing with qualified candidates who brought attitude problems or rigid ideas about practice management, I set out to create a solution that would shorten the learning curve and reduce turnover.

My research journey involved surveying more than 300 dental practices nationwide, asking dentists a deceptively simple question: "If your front office could be expert at one thing, what would it be?" The results were startlingly consistent—billing expertise and skillful handling of new patient calls dominated their responses. What's fascinating is that when I recently conducted a similar survey with 100 practices, the results remained virtually unchanged after all these years. Nine out of ten dental practice executives still prioritize billing knowledge, paired with strong communication skills for patient interaction.

Drawing from my unique experience as a dental industry professional since 1995—including roles as a consultant, practice partner, and acting owner for multiple locations—I've gained uncommon insights into what makes dental practices successful. Now I'm reaching out to you: what training would best serve your practice needs? Share your thoughts, and let me help you build the front office team your practice deserves.

Join The Biller Acceleration Mentorship Wait List Here: (Only 5 Spots Left in 2025!!)

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Would you like to set-up a billing consultation with Ericka? She would love the opportunity to discuss your billing questions and see how Fortune Billing Solutions may help you.

Email Ericka:
ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.com

Schedule a call with Ericka:

https://calendly.com/ericka-dentalbillingdoneright/30min

Perio performance formula:

(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910)/(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910+D1110)

Delta Dental Locum Tenens Form:

https://www1.deltadentalins.com/content/dam/ddins/en/pdf/dentists/locum-tenens-form.pdf

Chapters

• 0:00 Interview No-Show Introduction
• 1:50 Creating a Dental Administration School
• 2:48 What Dentists Want Most
• 4:59 My Unique Dental Experience
• 6:39 What Training Do You Need?

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Well, it looks like my interview scheduled eight minutes ago is a no-show, and it happens. But since I have some time, I thought I would share with you guys a couple of things. So, for those of you who know my journey, you know that back in 2011, I launched a six-month dental administration school. The why behind that was because there was just nothing out there that formally trained front office people that could kind of take the learning curve, shorten the learning curve for us as practice managers as we onboard new people. So that wasn't the case. I was just kind of tired of what was out there. There were qualified people with bad attitudes or qualified people with preconceived notions on how the practice should run, and that ran into high turnover, because when somebody who's managing your practice doesn't agree with how you want your practice run and they want to do it their way, they end up leaving Okay. So why am I talking about all this?

Speaker 1: 2:01

Two things that came up as I started my journey in developing the curriculum for the six-month program. I wanted to make sure that I was developing a curriculum that was centered around what dentists wanted from their teams, and so I had a team of myself and two others and we surveyed 300-ish offices. I would say it's a little more than that, but let's just say 300 offices all over the country and we spoke to 300 dentists and the one question that we would ask is, if your front office could be an expert at one thing, what would it be? And two subjects came up. One was billing and the other one was knowing how to handle new patient calls. Now, this was a dental administration program, so clearly we were going to have practice management, we were going to have phone etiquette, how to schedule all the things, in addition to really focusing on how to manage dental claims, how to manage AR, how to calculate patient co-pays, treatment plans, coordination of benefits, like we went through it all. So all the things that you don't get taught on the job, you learned in my classroom, and that was interesting to me because I decided just to compare notes.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Recently I surveyed myself 100 offices and spoke to 100. I wasn't able to speak to 100 dentists. I did get in contact with 100. It was dentists, office managers and spouses, so people who were in the executive level of a practice. And it still the same weight in terms of what people want from individuals who work in the front. Billing is unanimous and that just came up nine times out of 10. So for every 10 phone calls, you can say nine of those calls said billing, and right. So it was billing and phone skills. So it was billing and phone skills, billing and communication, billing and how to present treatment, billing and how to present financial options. So that got me thinking, because I talk a lot about billing.

Speaker 1: 4:50

But I have also been a partner in two dental practices. But I have also been a partner in two dental practices. I have been a dental consultant since 2011. And I worked in the capacity as acting owner for a multi-location group and my owner lived in Dubai, so I had power of attorney as acting owner. I have a very unique background in dentistry. I know there's a lot of people that can say that they've been in dentistry since 1995, like myself, but to sit in an owner's chair, to sit as acting owner of multiple practices and to be a consultant for 15 of those years, it's definitely given me an edge and a different perspective to share with all of you. So now my question to all of you is what would you like me to do a training on? Because, with the curriculum that I created and taught for many, many years. This is my classroom, right behind me. What would you like me to do a training on? I'd be happy to do that. In fact, I look forward to it. So let me know. I want to serve you.