Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
5 Scheduling Hacks that Allow you to Easily Cut Clinical Days
Feeling trapped in the operatory five days a week? Imagine reclaiming an entire workday without sacrificing income or patient care. That's exactly what today's episode delivers—a practical blueprint for dental practice owners who want to work smarter, not harder.
I break down five seemingly small schedule adjustments that combine to create massive efficiency gains. From the simple act of staggering assistant lunches (yes, you can eat quickly!) to training your team to handle crown deliveries up to the final cementation, these strategies address the hidden time thieves lurking in your daily operations. By implementing these changes, you'll reclaim a staggering 16 hours of production time weekly while simultaneously increasing your hourly production value.
The math is compelling: just two crown appointments daily at $1,500 each generates $3,000 daily—that's $430 per hour or nearly $331,000 annually. Combined with your newly reclaimed production time, this approach transforms practice economics while reducing your chairside hours. These aren't theoretical concepts—they're the exact strategies I've implemented in my own multi-doctor practice and helped countless coaching clients adopt with remarkable results.
This episode reveals the foundation of what makes a "three-day dentist" possible. You'll discover how seemingly minor inefficiencies compound into major production losses, and more importantly, how addressing them systematically can revolutionize both your practice and your quality of life. Ready to spend more time with family, pursue other interests, or simply reduce the physical toll of clinical dentistry? These practical strategies offer the concrete pathway many dentists have been searching for.
Want to implement these systems with expert guidance? Visit dentalpracticeheroes.com to explore our coaching options designed to help practice owners install efficiency-driving systems that ultimately allow your practice to run itself. Work less, earn more, and fall back in love with practice ownership.
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We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
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What if you could add a full day's worth of production time to your week, every single week, without seeing more patients, hiring more team or working later? These five small changes to your schedule that I'm about to share with you. These can add up to a major time savings and major money in the bank, and I've seen them work in my own practice as well, for all of my coaching clients' practices. You're not going to want to miss this one. I am giving it away today. You are listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast and I am Dr Paul Etcheson. I'm the author of two books on practice management, the owner of a large group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago and the host of this wonderful podcast where we help practice owners escape the chair, run smarter businesses and live better lives.
Paul Etchison:All right hypothetical situation here. Okay, it's Wednesday, you're driving home from work, you're sitting in your car, you're driving home. You know you got one more day in the week. You got to go to work on Thursday and then you get Friday off. Maybe Friday is an admin day for you, maybe you take it off, but you're driving home, it's Wednesday night, you're in your car and you're just wondering what would it be like if I didn't have to come in to work tomorrow, and what would you do with your time? Think about that for a second. What would you do with your time if you didn't have to come into work tomorrow, on Thursday? Well, if you can implement these five things I'm about to tell you about guess what you can easily cut a day out a week. There is no doubt in my mind if you do all five of these things, you will be able to cut your fourth day out and make exactly the same amount of money. Actually, you're going to make more money. All right, let's quit talking about it and get into it. Let's go.
Paul Etchison:Number one the first thing is to stagger your assistant lunches. I think every doctor should be running two columns so they don't lose any time to turning chairs. But I want you to stagger your assistant lunches. Often we see the whole office will shut down for an hour, between 12 and 1. And by the end of the week, at four days, that's four hours you just lost. What if you could stagger your assistant lunches so that they don't share the same lunch, so that you, as the doctor, never take a lunch? You keep producing through lunch.
Paul Etchison:Now I know what you're thinking. Dude, I gotta eat. I get so hangry. I know I feel you, but you can eat really fast. I mean, tell me that you don't have time during your day to go sit in your office. All right, you got time to throw some things down. Let me tell you some things that I can throw down pretty quick. You know, if you need some ideas, canned food I know it sounds gross, but it's already cooked. You just open the can and eat right out of the can. Man, those spaghettis that you used to eat and that chef boyardee crap when you were a kid. Dude, that's really fast. Hot dogs they're pre-cooked. Or you can get like those protein bars, like the cliff bars or the kind bars. There's so many things that you can eat really fast. Think about it If you're working four days a week, that's four hours that you just got back there. I know you might like your lunch, you might enjoy it, but is it worth four hours of production each week? I don't know. That's a pretty expensive lunch, all right.
Paul Etchison:Number two train your assistants to deliver crowns. Now, what do I mean by this? Now, you got to check your state practice act. You got to see what you can let your assistants do. But what I'm saying is that if you train your assistants to adjust the crown, to get it ready, to get the temporary off, everything all the way up to the point of cementing it, you can save yourself about 20 minutes of that crown delivery appointment. I want it to be like you walk into the room, the assistant has it ready and you pick up that crown and you squirt some cement in it and you smoosh it on the tooth and you leave and the assistant cleans up the cement. You can do this. What if you did that? What if you had two crowns each day? That's going to save you maybe 20, 30 minutes per crown. That's going to save you another hour each day. That's another four hours. We just saved you. Now we're up to eight hours, okay, so just train your assistants to do everything they can. This doesn't end at just delivering the crowns. I mean, it's making temporaries. It's like every little thing they can do that you don't need to do. That will save you time and get you time back in your schedule that you can use to produce All right.
Paul Etchison:Number three let your hygienist numb all of your patients. Now, I know you can't do this in some States, which really, really sucks because it is so helpful. I remember we started doing this at my office. It was like wonderful, who wants to give shots? I don't want to give shots, so have your hygienist do it. You can walk in the room. The patient's already numb and ready to go.
Paul Etchison:But you know, when we did this in my office, it eventually started becoming a nuisance to the hygienist. Like they were like gosh, I don't, I have to turn my own room. I have to do this, I have to get my patient out of time to numb your patient. It was like the hygienist had to start working two columns and it wasn't fair to the hygienist. So what we came up with is that it's the assistant's responsibility to to find a hygienist and trade services with them. Like, hey, can you numb my patient? I will turn your room and get your next patient back and take the x-rays, things like that. You've got to offer something so that they're just trading work. So that makes it equitable for everybody. And if you do that I don't know six patients a day you just save yourself maybe 10 minutes per patient per day. Four days a week, dude, it's another four hours. That means we're up to 12 hours. We're saving you each week. Now you can start to see how this stuff really adds up, especially we're talking about per day, per career. How much does this add up If you do this for the rest of your career? All right.
Paul Etchison:Number four check your hygiene recalls in the middle of the appointment, when the patient is laying down. I want you to interrupt the cleaning, and the reason I think this is important is that you can get in and out. You can still chat a little bit, see how people are doing, but you don't have to spend a lot of time in the recall exam. You pop in. Hey, I'm so sorry. I'll get in and out of here. Sorry to interrupt. I'm about to start something in the other room. I'll get in and out of here. Sorry, sorry to interrupt. I'm about to start something in the other room. I didn't want to make you wait One. Your patient's going to appreciate not waiting at the end of the appointment. Because how do you think that patient feels when they wait 10 minutes at the end of the appointment for you to come into the room and then you come in for like a one or two minute look-see and then you get out of there, they're like dude in the middle of the cleanings. You can do those recall exams and probably like two minutes, two, three minutes, instead of like a five, eight minutes. So that'll save you about five minutes per patient. How many recall patients you see a day, I don't know, maybe 12, 14, because then get you another hour back four days a week, that's four more hours. Now we're at 16 hours. We have saved you. That is two full days of work, right? This stuff really adds up All right.
Paul Etchison:The last one, number five use Dental Practice Hero's block scheduling method, which is essentially we're gonna weight the schedule with high production appointments. We're gonna save spaces for crowns because we know when we do a crown we get high dollar per hour production, but when we do fillings we don't. So we make sure that if we're going to do a fillings appointment we balance out the weight of that appointment with a dollar per hour with a high production appointment, like a crown. So if you hold space in your schedule for two crowns per day, roughly about $1,500 per crown buildup, and that's going to get you $3,000 per day. Let's divide that by a seven hour day, okay, that's $430 per hour, that's $6,800 a week and if you're a 48 week per year dentist, that is $330,000. So not only did I just give you 16 hours additional production time, I just increased your production by 330,000. And that's just with the crowns. If we add in the additional 16 hours, we got with the additional production.
Paul Etchison:I mean, dude, this is a game changer. This is completely changing your practice and this is part of the stuff that contributes to being a three-day dentist. There is so much inefficiency in our practice. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much inefficiency in our practice. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other areas. We can get more dollar per hour. We can kill these inefficiency holes, like we just did in this episode.
Paul Etchison:So if you're looking to take your practice to the next level and take your life to the next level because you're ready to practice less days, I hope you can see how this is possible. We gained 16 hours today and we also increased our production by $430 per hour. It's a big deal. So if you're ready to do that at your practice and you want more time to spend with your kids or whatever you love, please check out our coaching options at dentalpracticeheroescom. I assure you we will help you and we will get you there. We always do. So let us help you, as a practice owner, install these systems into your practice so that the practice will run better and eventually run itself. That'll allow you to work less, earn more and hopefully enjoy practice ownership even more than you already do. So thank you so much for listening today. I really appreciate it and we will talk to you next time.
