Episode #325: What Most Dentists Are Missing in Their Practices, with Dr. Leonard Hess

Dental school taught you to pass an exam. You can do basic procedures and run a practice, but there's a lot more left to learn. And to teach you about the things your practice may be missing, Kirk Behrendt brings in Dr. Leonard Hess from The Dawson Academy. If you want to create a practice that's profitable and special in the marketplace, listen to Episode 325 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

• Knowledge is empowering. Start continuing education right away.  
• You don't need to conform to the insurance-dictated model of care.
• Look at insurance for the source of positivity that it is.
• Treat people in dentistry ethically and responsibly, and the money will come to you.
• To be financially successful, learn to solve problems that others aren't solving.
• Learn the principles and foundations to make dentistry predictable and profitable.

Quotes:

• “Most of our patients are actually, over their lifetime, being grossly undertreated. And a lot of times there's criticism in the press out there, or Reader’s Digest articles, or there’ll be one of those gotcha pieces in the media where they try to villainize dentists and act like we’re overtreating people or trying to do things unethically. But I'm going to be honest with you, what I find in my practice is that most people have been undertreated over their lifetime, which is why they get to be 50 or 60 years old, and they're really frustrated with the level of health that they’ve attained. And it’s simply because of the standard of care, which is being dictated by insurance and a $1,500-a-year minimum or maximum and all that good stuff.” (07:51—08:32)
• “The trap that I see a lot of dentists fall into is that they think that they have got to immediately conform into this insurance-dictated model. And I want to qualify what I'm going to say with a little pre-statement. Number one is, we like to badmouth insurance. And what I don’t want to do is say that insurance is a bad thing. Because insurance, in a lot of ways, is a great thing. It’s one of those things that a lot of patients have which helps them to pay for their care. And it’s not going to go away. But what we need to do is instead of complaining and making insurance a source of negativity, is look at it for the source of positivity that it is.” (12:23—13:07)
• “It doesn't mean that we just fall into line with insurance and let them control our practice, let them control our fees, let them treatment plan for us, and to allow the insurance company to create that wedge or barrier between the patient and us. And insurance companies love to do that. They love to create that wedge of deniability, ‘Well, this is now denied. This procedure wasn't necessary. Your fees are outside of customary and usual. You're not in network,’ all these different rules that they have in place where they try to keep us boxed into a corner. But we don't necessarily have to play that game.” (13:08—13:47)
• “I get the problem that a lot of young dentists have, is they come out of school, they're coming out of school with more debt than ever, and everybody’s anxious. Most young dentists are not ready to own their own practice, so a lot of times, what does that mean? They’ve got to look for an associateship. So, a lot of times, practices that are looking for associateships, they're insurance-based practices. And these dentists dive in, and they just become indoctrinated into that model of care. And the reality is, yes, a lot of our patients have insurance, and they want to maximize it. But where we really box ourselves into the corner is that we stop giving patients the ability to choose to do what's best for them, and we start to recommend treatment based on what insurance will pay for. And those are two different things.” (13:48—14:34)
• “If you enjoy what you're doing and if you treat people in dentistry ethically and responsibly, the money will come to you. If you're always chasing money and if you're always trying to make clinical decisions or try to move patients in a certain direction for the sake of money, you're always going to be chasing it.” (15:22—15:38)
• “Who makes the most money in the world? The people that make the most money in the world are the people that solve the biggest problems. So, if you want to be financially successful in your career, you need to learn to solve problems. And a lot of people’s problems are a lot bigger than, ‘I've got occlusal decay in tooth number 19,’ or, ‘This patient needs scale and root planing,’ or they need a crown on this one tooth. A lot of our patients that have bigger problems have very complicated, comprehensive, complete type of problems, and that's what you've got to be able to learn to solve.” (15:42—16:11)
• “The first thing [younger dentists] need to do is, they need to learn right away. What dental school taught you was to pass an examination of minimal competency. And it makes you ready to go out and do basic procedures in dentistry. But you need to immediately — every young dentist needs to start taking continuing education and they need to learn about these more complicated problems, about doing a better diagnosis, about treatment planning better, about learning to handle multi-unit prosthodontic cases in a very efficient, predictable, and profitable way.” (19:46—20:24)
• “We love to talk about digital. But eventually, we can't forget that everything still ends up becoming “digital”. And what I mean by that is, we still have to use these digits to put it into the mouth. So, whether you like it or not, you still need — even if you say, ‘Well, I'm a digital dentist,’ that's great. But you still need to manage a patient’s occlusion in their mouth, and that happens in an analog way. You still need to have clinical skills; the computer can't do everything. The software can't do everything. Ultimately, you have to be able to take that information that you worked out in the digital environment and figure out the predictable and profitable way to work that out into that patient’s mouth.” (26:05—26:45)
• “Everybody thinks that, ‘Well, if I had a crown or if I put veneers in somebody’s mouth and they lasted five years,’ that somehow, ‘I've achieved clinical success.’ Well, if you have patients that start having problems with their dentistry in three, four, or five years, you're going to have a long-term problem on your hands, and it’s called your reputation.” (29:54—30:11)
• “Dentistry can last decades. You can have veneers that can last decades, and full-mouth rehabilitations that can be stable, and the result can last 20 or 30 years. But you have to learn the principles and you have to get that foundation to be able to make dentistry that predictable.” (30:12—30:29)

Snippets:

• Dr. Hess’ background, Pete Dawson, and The Dawson Academy. (05:27—11:18)
• What younger dentists are missing in their practice. (12:03—14:34)
• Money is the byproduct of being ethical and responsible. (15:20—18:44)
• What younger dentists need to do. (19:40—20:48)
• Knowledge is empowering. (21:26—24:44)
• The gap between analog and digital. (25:10—26:45)
• The learning experience at The Dawson Academy. (27:14—30:29)
• Hands-on learning and courses at Dawson. (30:55—31:36)
• June 10th and 11th Seminar 1 in Orlando. (31:50—33:13)
• Q&A for Dr. Hess. (33:57—39:38)

Reach Out to Dr. Hess:

Dr. Hess’ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/leonard.hess.7

Dr. Hess’ Instagram: @drlennyhess https://www.instagram.com/drlennyhess/

Resources:

The Dawson Academy website: https://thedawsonacademy.com/

Dr. Leonard Hess Bio:

Leonard Hess, DDS, is a co-clinical director at The Dawson Academy, joining the Dawson faculty in 2009. He owns Union County Center for Comprehensive Dentistry in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he practices full-time in addition to teaching continuing education courses. He is a member of the editorial board for Inside Dentistry and has had over 17 articles published in peer-reviewed journals. He is also a member of The American Academy of Restorative Dentistry, AACD, ADA, AES, and NCDS.

Dr. Hess began teaching continuing education courses in 2005, and the topics include occlusion, smile design, treatment planning, preparation design, and practice integration of complete dentistry. He’s taught full-day continuing education courses at the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry’s national meeting, The Greater New York Dental Meeting, AACD National Meeting, Pacific Dental Conference, Ontario Dental Association Meeting, and The Yankee Dental Conference. Dr. Hess also has taught courses in Japan, Germany, Poland, China, and Canada.