One-on-One An Interview with Dr. Paul Homoly Simply Beautiful A ...

PH: Right. After a while it just feels like nagging. Overeducating the patient,
relying too highly on patient education on a patient who isn’t ready, feels like
sales pressure. And that’s how you lose them. Last point here about the Crossover
Zone, Mike; let’s start with the dentist. The dentist needs to get his own
financial house in order. That means meeting with a financial planner who
can get the demons out of the dentist’s life relative to money. If there are back
taxes due, if there is no savings, if there are labs sending cases COD because
you’re three months late on your lab bill—all of that has a huge depressive
effect on the Crossover Zone. Often times, dentists end up treatment planning
patients based on their own ability to pay, not on the patient’s ability to pay.
My recommendation—and it might be that maybe this is the first recommendation
that a dentist should do—is to get a financial services specialist, and
take your own medicine as far as how we treat patients comprehensively. Get
a comprehensive examination and diagnosis and treatment plan of your own
financial health, and build it into the culture of your family and your team. If
you have team members who are struggling financially, team members who
are involved in financial issues that are toxic to their mental health, it’s not
unthinkable for them to get help also; that can be a huge benefit of working
for you. It could be a huge tool for you to build long-term loyalty with staff.
And maybe you hire a financial planner to come in and to work with different
team members as far as getting their credit cards figured out or restructuring
their debt, or one of a hundred things that financial planners can do to ease
some of the demons flowing related to money.
“The myth is, let’s do complete
exams on everyone
and that way we can showcase
our comprehensiveness
and thoroughness and
how much we care.”
I believe that the concept of prosperity needs to be a companion cultural icon
right next to clinical quality, because prosperity and clinical quality are joined
at the hip, Mike. When a dentist is prosperous and profitable, then that dentist
can afford a good facility, pay great wages, hire great people, afford the finest
materials, get good equipment, use the best laboratories, can afford to take
time off for rejuvenation—and all of that has a dramatic and immediate impact
on the clinical quality. The topic of prosperity should not be on the fringe, but
it should be at the center of what we do in our continuing education efforts
in dentistry.
MD: Wow, that’s a nice wrap-up right there. And that certainly is again against
the grain, because, it’s as we’ve mentioned before—the dental community is so ingrained
with nothing but clinical excellence as the end-all, be-all to a happy career.
And I think you’ve laid out a pretty good case today for why that’s not necessarily
true. And this leads us into a good fee discussion for next time. You’ve suggested
before that while a crown fee of $900, for example, works really well for one, two
or three crowns, it does not work beyond three crowns. I know that’s going to be a
great interview and a great topic for discussion. Thanks again, Paul!
PH: It was my pleasure, Mike.
To contact Dr. Paul Homoly or to purchase his book “Making It Easy for Patients to Say ‘Yes,’” call 800-294-
9370, visit www.paulhomoly.com, or e-mail paul@paulhomoly.com.
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Interview with Dr. Paul Homoly31