Trimming the Excess: A Guide to Managing a Lean Dental Inventory

620 West Chestnut Street,Perkasie PA 18944

06 May, 2022

Description

A peer guided workshop to allow dentists to design the flow and organization of their office to allow for efficiency and financial freedom. Agenda: Introduction As a young doctor of a startup, insurance based general dentistry practice, I would like to share the knowledge I have gained throughout the process in regards to organization and inventory management in order to guide peers in a journey they may want to take on as well. Prior to opening my own practice (from scratch), I worked as an associate in a few different offices over the years. These included a FFS office, a nonprofit, a Medicaid based, and your standard PPO office. If there was anything I learned from these was that organization was key to efficiency, but, even so, I felt that most offices had an unnecessary inventory of dental supply and inconsistent ways of managing a budget. My practice gave me the opportunity to be fully immersed in creating and organizing a lean dental inventory to provide efficiency and cash flow for our practice. However, I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, learned from those mistakes, and continue to make adjustments to the flow and systems of my practice. We are now just approaching our 2 years since opening and, even in times of increased supply cost, we are staying on budget month to month and maintaining our dental supply budget at 5% of collections. This has everything to do with maintaining a lean dental inventory and a management software for control. My goal is to provide you guidance with what I’ve learned so far in setting up the flow of your dental inventory in your own practice or in a practice you may have acquired. It is the foundation which leads to efficiency of your entire practice. Foundation of a lean dental supply inventory Review of Initial dental supply order Pros and cons of using a top 3 distributor Organization of the space “My “perfect” flow and what would’ve built differently”Day to Day Supply ManagementHow to Measure Success Team Training and management Things I would not delegate Utilization of inventory management software Responsibility and AccountabilityWhy you should attend this event: With increased supply cost and a trend in decreasing or plateaued reimbursement, my goal is for insurance-based practices to find additional cash flow benefits with a lean dental supply to perhaps help offset increasing HR costs.