What's your hourly rate?

I visited a practice where the dentist did his own bookwork.

Between patients and at every available spot in the day he'd go to his office and pay accounts and enter things in his accounting software. From two different viewpoints I found it very unsatisfactory.

The first and most obvious to me was he seemed to be distracted from his patients. It was almost as if he was constantly trying to do the minimum so he could get back to important stuff, like doing the books. Instead of focussing 100% on the person in front of him he was slightly pre-occupied all the time.

Secondly, he sucked at it and it stressed him. You could see he wasn't efficient at it by the way the piles of paper were everywhere and his hunt and peck typing style.

When I ran my practice I paid a professional bookkeeper to come in once a month and do my books. He was great at it and obviously enjoyed it. He was properly trained so the books were always done perfectly. It saved me a heap of accounting fees over they years because it made their life so simple. In terms of cost, I could earn his monthly fee in less than ½ an hour working on patients. It took stress off me and let me focus completely on patients.

Dentists, what do you do at your office that you could pay someone else to do?

Bottom line is the only thing you have to do is treat patients. Everything (and I mean everything!) else is able to be delegated. Why do something that you can pay someone $30 and hour to do if you can work on patients and earn 10x that much?

Probably the most serious impediment I see to efficient dental practice is the dentist being loaded up with tasks that can easily be delegated. In office after office I see dentists pouring up models, filling in lab sheets and doing their own books.

You can do so much better if you let all that go.