This study investigates the current adoption and anticipated future impact of digital technologies in dentistry among German dentists, assessing both clinical and economic relevance up to the year 2030. A comprehensive survey was conducted with 200 licensed German dentists using a structured questionnaire. The survey assessed familiarity, usage, and perceived implications of five key digital technologies: Rapid Prototyping (RP), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR), Teledentistry (TD), and Personalized Dentistry (PD). Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics to understand trends and demographic correlations. Findings indicate a significant expected increase in both the treatment and economic importance of all studied technologies by 2030. There were no significant gender-related differences in technology adoption, while age and clinic size emerged as major factors influencing technology uptake. Additionally, a gap in digital technology education within current dental training was identified, highlighting a critical area for academic enhancement. The study underscores a positive forecast for digital technology integration in German dental clinics, driven by anticipated improvements in clinical outcomes and business efficiency. The results advocate for strategic investments in technology and education to equip future dental professionals adequately. Further research is recommended to explore cross-national adoption patterns and develop targeted strategies for integrating digital advancements across varied geographical and economic contexts.
We all know that oral and vision health are important not just for our quality of life, but also for overall health. With an increasingly competitive marketplace for talent, many employers are seeking out dental and vision insurance programs that respond to employees' health concerns and ways to manage the overall cost of care. To get a sense of where the dental and vision insurance markets stand today, experts from three organizations weighed in on these topics, as well as the range of new program offerings, expansion of telehealth programs, and what's down the pike in the future.
The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) conducts an annual survey of dental school seniors to determine their readiness for entering professional practice. The 2021 survey found that 90% or more were confident they were clinically prepared to begin practice and they had the communication skills needed to be successful. However, only 58% believed they were prepared to lead a successful business and had the skills to manage finances, enact a business plan, schedule for efficiency, and handle billing. Developing an annual plan to guide the measures taken to meet overhead expenses and conduct a profitable practice can be a key component to meeting overall professional and financial goals. Eight key components were discussed in the areas of analyzing the previous year’s financials, planning and setting goals for the upcoming year, and developing an action plan with the team to achieve the goals that were set.
The principles of powered flight are thrust, drag, lift, and weight. Balancing and controlling these forces allow planes to fly many miles and usually arrive safely and on time. These elements can also provide insights about running a dental practice. Knowing how thrust, drag, lift, and weight relate to patient care, reliable operations, clinical expertise, and ideal patient profiles can guide dentists to create a practice that provides the best patient experience and achieves the outcomes that are expected.
The landscape of dental education has historically emphasized clinical expertise and patient care. However, the evolving healthcare environment necessitates a broader skill set for dental professionals, including business management capabilities. The integration of business management components into the dental curriculum has emerged as a pivotal area of focus, reflecting the need for dental practitioners to navigate the complexities of establishing and managing successful dental practices.
This study aimed to explore the opinions of postgraduates and dental graduates from Abbasi Shaheed Hospital regarding the inclusion of business management in the dental curriculum, assessing their perceptions of its necessity and impact on their professional readiness.
Understanding the steps to creating an annual business plan is a cornerstone of dental practice success. This article provides dentists and managers a blueprint for annual planning. This article was written to help guide dentists to take control of their overhead and have a deeper understanding of the business side of running a successful practice. Studies reviewed include information cited by the American Dental Association, American Dental Education Association, and experts in dental Practice Management.
This article explores the key aspects of business planning and management which are most appropriate for the successful orthodontic practice. It is written by consultants who are experienced in helping individual practices achieve personal and professional goals.
Business intelligence can give businesses the ability to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement and can help reduce uncertainty in the decision-making process. With the increasing use of electronic dental records creating more and more dental data each day, it is an opportune time to determine if the data can be coupled with business intelligence systems to improve the management decision-making process in dental organizations to result in service improvement.
A scoping review was performed to map the research on the use of business intelligence in dental organizations and to identify any gaps in the existing literature. This scoping review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-Scr) framework. The following databases were searched: Medline, Embase, Emcare, Cinahl, Informit, Web of Science, and Scopus. Data extracted from the articles included the organization type, purpose/aims, the software utilized, data sources utilized, outcomes measured, decision-makers involved, service benefit type, and service improvements.
In all, 945 articles were found during the search strategy, with 25 articles selected for full-text review. Of these 25 articles, only 3 met the final inclusion in this review. All three included articles were centered around dental school organizations and all situated in the United States. All three articles demonstrated a benefit from management decision-makers utilizing business intelligence systems for improving service efficiency.
There is limited evidence to show that managers utilizing business intelligence systems in dental school organizations can lead to improvements in the organization's services. There was no evidence to support the use of a business intelligence system in other types of dental organizations. More research is required in this area.
The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new challenges into the practice of dentistry. Previously dental practices were dealing with issues involving job security, infection control protocols, adverse financial situations, and others. Currently it’s difficult to recruit, train, and retain quality staff, with many workers choosing not to return or being displaced from work because of fear, school closures, or family care issues, among others. Finding good administrative support for the dental office has proved especially problematic. Faced with all these challenges, dental professionals have turned to technology and incorporated it into the dental practice in new ways.
Instagram, a photo and video social networking site, is gaining popularity in the dental world and it is easy to see why this is so. Instagram's potential to share information in an engaging way allows dental professionals to share clinical work and provides a unique way of learning. Advertising on Instagram has blossomed. Some of this is for self-promotional reasons, for practice building, or for marketing of new techniques and products by manufacturers. One ought to be cautious about the implications of some patients' quest for 'dental perfection'. That is especially the case when destructive dentistry is being undertaken by dentists trying to replicate what they have seen on Instagram in potentially much more challenging patients. Some of those demanding patients request very ambitious treatments with sometimes hugely unrealistic expectations. Arguably, Instagram could be the new major trend in dentistry.
The dimensions of patient-centred care include not only clinical effectiveness and patient safety, but, importantly, the preferences of patients as consumers of healthcare services. A total of 249 participants were included in the study, with a balanced population proportional representation by age, gender, ethnicity and geographic region of New Zealand. An online questionnaire was used to identify participants’ decision-making process, and what factors and barriers for participants to seek dental treatment.
Making smart capital investments is integral to running any thriving business--even more for a dental practice that requires the regular purchase of high-ticket equipment and technology. According to the Corporate Finance Institute, one of the leading providers of certification programs for financial analysts, “Major capital projects involving huge amounts of money, as well as capital expenditures, can get out of control quite easily if mishandled and end up costing an organization a lot of money. However, with effective planning, the right tools, and good project management, that doesn’t have to be the case.” Even though dental practices often think of themselves as small businesses that don’t need sophisticated corporate financial planning, dentist/CEOs who fail to utilize a process risk making the serious mistake of over- or under-investing in capital equipment. Successful businesses follow a logical protocol for investing in capital equipment. This paper examines how a dentist/CEO can apply those conventions to a dental practice in order to achieve optimal outcomes.
Through the practice of corporate diplomacy—a subset of track-two diplomacy—multinational enterprises (MNEs) can help address issues of polycentric governance, including those in the realms of business and human rights (BHR) and business for peace (B4P). Despite growing interest in both fields of academia and practice, there remains scope for further empirical work at their intersection. This article, therefore, contributes to the extant literature on BHR and B4P by empirically exploring the case of Microsoft, an American MNE, and its corporate diplomacy activities on digital peace in cyberspace. Specifically, the case focuses on three purposefully selected initiatives: (1) the company’s corporate diplomacy efforts on the Digital Geneva Convention, (2) the Digital Peace Now campaign, and (3) its proactive engagement in response to the war in Ukraine. These initiatives highlight how responsibility, leadership, employee empowerment, and partnerships have contributed to Microsoft’s corporate culture and decision-making processes to create an environment that prioritizes digital peace and integrates both BHR and B4P perspectives. In doing so, this article argues for the importance of addressing B4P activities in tandem with BHR in a complementary manner within practitioner initiatives.
Starting a business can be hard work, but if you break down the process of launching your new company into individual steps you can make it easier. Rather than spinning your wheels and guessing where to start, you can follow the tried and true methods of entrepreneurs who’ve done it successfully. If you want to learn how to start your own business, follow this 10-step checklist to transform your business from a lightbulb above your head into a real entity.
This paper explores the phenomenon of intra-industry Business Model (BM) imitation through the concept of BM configurations and sheds light on how it relates to BM innovation. The analysis focuses on similarities and deviations of BM configurations among 80 companies operating in the industry sector related to Phantom Limb Pain (PLP). Leveraging a questionnaire-based mapping tool, the results show that companies operating within the area of PLP treatment apply relatively similar BM configurations. This indicates that companies mostly imitate the successful BMs of their main competitors in the industry as a whole and in their specific sub-groups, thus potentially ignoring the opportunity to also compete on a BM level. The contribution brought by the paper is twofold. First, it adds to the research stream on BM configurations by showing that this concept can be used not only to analyze and foster cross-industry BM imitation, but also to explore and examine intra-industry BM imitation (or differentiation). Second, the article contributes to the research stream on intra-industry BM imitation by going beyond prior anecdotal evidence and empirically testing the existence of the phenomenon of intra-industry BM imitation and hence, the potential innovation space on a BM level.
Expanding into a new region, industry or customer segment. Repositioning in an evolving market. Navigating a merger or acquisition. Revamping your product/service mix. These initiatives have one thing in common: It takes a marketing strategy to optimize the outcome.
Maybe you’re tired of being your industry’s best-kept secret, striving to hit aggressive growth targets or facing increased competitive pressure. No matter the type of business transformation, one thing is clear: The changes you’re about to make will affect your go-to-market strategy and likely catalyze organizational shifts.
When the stakes are this high, you need to consider every aspect of your transformation. That means having the right people at the table: Did you save a seat for a strategic marketer?
The primary aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which finfluencers can be considered experts who fulfill the critical role of information intermediaries contributing to the efficiency of financial markets. To assess this, we assembled a manually collected dataset consisting of recommendations made by finfluencers. We conducted an event study to analyze both short-term and long-term effects on stocks. The findings reveal that, on average, all stocks examined during the event window [-10, +10] days exhibit a noteworthy Cumulative Abnormal Announcement Return (CAAR). The outcome suggests that, in the short term, finfluencers may not be deemed as experts. In contrast, the longterm Buy-and-Hold Abnormal Returns (BHAR) were positive and also statistically significant. Considering these results and the frequent absence of financial licenses among finfluencers, along with their tendency to endorse risky investments, we endorse SEBI's action in issuing a consultation paper (dated 25th August 2023) to regulate unregistered finfluencers. These measures are aimed at safeguarding inexperienced investors from taking undue risks and ensuring the integrity of financial markets.
Jim Reed has had more than 25 years of working at Excellus BlueCross BlueShield to prepare for his current role as president and CEO; and he wouldn't have had it any other way. Reed was able to establish long-term, solid relationships during that time with a range of people he still interacts with today, from customers and health care providers to elected officials.
Jim Euchner talks with Uri Levine about the practical challenges of building an innovative new business from scratch.
Has your CEO or president articulated a clear company vision of what your company should become in three to five years? A well-defined vision becomes the basis for all business strategies and decisions, large and small. Without a company vision, your business can’t develop a coherent strategy that leads toward the desired result. Executives can’t weigh short-term plans against long-term goals. Ultimately, decisions should be made by asking, “Does this move us toward our business vision?”
Yet, many businesses "wing it" with vague company visions, and cost/benefit analyses for isolated decisions, and they often fail as a result. Or maybe the business had a vision for its first year, but that vision no longer fits. Signals of a lack of company vision are present long before eventual failure. You can see it in the indecision at the executive level, lack of direction among middle managers, and confusion, delays, and mistakes on the front lines.
The consequences of not guiding your business with a clearly articulated business vision can be harsh.
As modern marketing environments become increasingly data-intensive, the role of marketing analytics in illuminating the dynamics of customer psychology to inform marketing decision-making becomes critical. This study conducts a systematic literature review using a bibliometric analysis of 122 studies identified and retrieved from Scopus, focusing on the expansive domain of marketing analytics. Our review serves as a conduit binding the fragmented past, present, and future of marketing analytics, presenting an organized framework that highlights the characteristic theoretical underpinnings associated with it. Beyond offering a panoramic perspective of key resources—encompassing journals, authors, countries/territories, and institutions—we delve deeply into predominant themes in marketing analytics. These themes underscore its vital applications, from decision-making, forecasting, and capability building, to understanding customer journeys and gaining a competitive edge. Central to our discourse is the study's implication, emphasizing marketing analytics as a bridge to a more informed grasp of customer psychology in today's customer-centric, data-driven environment. Through this lens, marketing analytics becomes a potent tool to capture psychological nuances, uncovering facets that might be bypassed by traditional marketing, thereby empowering enriched decision-making in modern marketing strategies.
Do people who have more money feel happier during their daily activities? Some prior research has found no relationship between income and daily happiness when treating income as a continuous variable in OLS regressions, although results differ between studies. We re-analyzed existing data from the United States and Germany, treating household income as a categorical variable and using lowess and spline regressions to explore nonlinearities. Our analyses reveal that these methodological decisions change the results and conclusions about the relationship between income and happiness. In American and German diary data from 2010 to 2015, results for the continuous treatment of income showed a null relationship with happiness, whereas the categorization of income showed that some of those with higher incomes reported feeling less happy than some of those with lower incomes. Lowess and spline regressions suggested null results overall, and there was no evidence of a relationship between income and happiness in Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) data. Not all analytic approaches generate the same results, which may contribute to explaining discrepant results in existing studies about the correlates of happiness. Future research should be explicit about their approaches to measuring and analyzing income when studying its relationship with subjective well-being, ideally testing different approaches, and making conclusions based on the pattern of results across approaches.
When an entrepreneur brings on a business advisor, they often do so with the intention of gaining sound insight and advice—finding that “second opinion” that can help steer their business in the right direction. But, many times, an advisor turns into something more: a true mentor who can offer guidance, support, motivation and understanding when times get tough, as well as the advice needed to help get you back on your feet.
When thinking about the advice from their own business advisors, the members of Young Entrepreneur Council have a few key tips that come to mind. Below, each member shares one piece of sage wisdom their business advisor gave them, and why they consider it to be one of the best pieces of advice they’ve ever received.
This study explores the evolution of Marketing 4.0 and empirically examines its impact on customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Marketing 4.0, an upgrade to the previous Marketing 3.0 model, aims to include the influence of brand interaction in the digital age. This study provides an empirical test of this newer model by analyzing all four of its components with customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Using structural equation modeling to analyze 508 prospective real estate first-time homebuyers, this study evaluates the role of the components of Marketing 4.0 in maximizing customer satisfaction and influencing purchase intentions. Findings indicate that brand identity and brand image are significant factors in determining customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Furthermore, the impact of customer satisfaction on purchase intention is highly significant. Unexpectedly, and counter-intuitively, there was not a significant relationship between brand integrity or brand interaction on customer satisfaction and purchase intention. Considering the study’s participants (Gen-Z/Millennial first-time homebuyers) and the international context of the study (the northern Indian real estate market), this study provides important insights into burgeoning international industries and their prime future target market. Furthermore, this study indicates that, a Marketing 4.0 approach that focuses on brand identity and brand image may influence customer satisfaction and, subsequently, increase customers’ purchase intentions.
Over the course of the past twenty years, private equity (PE) has played a role in acquiring medical practices, hospitals, and nursing homes. More recently, PE has taken a greater interest in acquiring dental practices, but few data exist about the scope of PE activity within dentistry. We analyzed dentist provider data for the period 2015-21 to examine trends in PE acquisition of dental practices. The percentage of dentists affiliated with PE increased from 6.6 percent in 2015 to 12.8 percent in 2021. During this period, PE affiliation increased particularly among larger dental practices and among dental specialists such as endodontists, oral surgeons, and pediatric dentists. PE-affiliated dental practices were more likely to participate in Medicaid than practices not affiliated with PE. Future research should investigate whether PE's role in dentistry affects the affordability and quality of dental services.
Over the past three decades, thousands of doctors have sold their practices to a dental support organization (DSO) or quietly partnered with invisible DSOs (IDSOs). American Dental Association reports issued in 2023 indicate the trend is accelerating.Values of high-quality practices increased to new records in 2023 partly because of a large influx of new capital driving dental practice consolidation. Doctors as young as age 30 are also now partnering with IDSOs. Doctors now have increasingly broad options to monetize all or part of their life’s work. A sale to a DSO is significantly dierent from a partial sale and silent partnership with an IDSO. Even doctors not interested in a sale or partnership should know the risks and rewards of both options, as such organizations can become a valuable friend or formidable foe when they enter one’s market.
Dentist affiliation with DSOs is forecasted to increase. This study investigates the factors that influence a dentist’s decision to affiliate with a DSO and their corresponding job satisfaction. The business problem addressed was decreased job satisfaction among dentists within the research site DSO environment with the purpose being to investigate and analyze the effect of dentist’s decision factors on job satisfaction and provide recommendations for improvement.The research questions were:
1. What factors most influence a dentist’s decision to affiliate with a DSO?
2. What is the relative importance of each factor in the dentist’s decision?
3. How do those factors affect a dentist’s perception of job satisfaction?
4. What improvements can be implemented in the DSO environment to optimize the dentist’s job satisfaction?
This study utilizes a qualitative research method and descriptive case study design. Data collection instruments include a questionnaire, focus group sessions, and personal interviews within a sample consisting of 24 dentist participants encompassing male and female, early and late career phase, DSO affiliated, and unaffiliated. Questionnaire data analysis utilized distinct measuring hierarchies for each of five Likert-type scales, transforming quantitative data into qualitative. Focus group and personal interview data analysis was conducted utilizing Abductive Thematic Analysis. Results of the study revealed variances in decision factors among the sample’s demographic segments suggesting that answers to the research questions are subjective and affected by a range of influences that validate the importance of understanding appropriate person-environment fit. Core self-evaluation constructs do not appear to provide linkage to corresponding job satisfaction for participants in this study. P-E Fit constructs do indicate linkage, the most important being value congruence. Recommendations for future research include: a quantitative study to investigate validity and reliability of updated DSS-14 to determine if results are generalizable, a quantitative study to further investigate validity and reliability of CSE Likert-type scales as indicator of job satisfaction according to updated DSS-14, and a mixed-methods study investigating effectiveness of PPEFS instrument to identify appropriate fit within the DSO environment. Implications for practitioners include evaluating the optimizing factors for job satisfaction for organizational alignment and cost/benefit to assess impact of implementation, articulate organization’s values to prospective affiliates, incorporate a validated and reliable P-E Fit assessment instrument to assess a prospective affiliate dentist’s organizational fit.
Medicaid state dental programs have experienced changes related to provider practice settings with the increased growth of dental support organizations (DSOs). The authors conducted this study to assess the impact of state Medicaid reform on the dental practice environment by examining provider activity and practice setting.
With large group practices on the rise, dentists seeking employment must keep one key question in mind: Who owns the company — a dentist or a corporation?
Dentists — especially new graduates — who are examining career possibilities have a dizzying array of options and practice models to choose from in today’s marketplace. Terms like “DSO” and “corporate dentistry” are common, and knowing the characteristics of each is vital in choosing a career path. The biggest difference between practice models is whether a dentist is an owner or an employee. If a dentist does not own the company, the next question is, who does — who is calling the shots?
Last year, my colleagues at Tusk Partners and I attended approximately one conference a month related to dental support organizations (DSOs). At most of the meetings, we were invited to the main stage to share our thoughts on the dental market. At others, we went as attendees. As we taught and listened in windowless conference rooms across the nation, we noticed a trend: more and more dentist-founded DSOs were emerging in the dental economy. It became clear to us over the course of the year that equating DSOs with the term “corporate dentistry” is no longer appropriate. Yes, there are a handful of DSOs with private equity backing that could qualify as “corporate,” but the reality is that many DSOs appear to be
founded, owned, and operated by doctors.
SELLING YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE might be the biggest decision of your professional career. Making sure it’s done with someone you trust is essential. A decision this important requires due diligence and time to properly vet all options. You should also talk with dentists who have sold and transitioned their practices. This gives you a great opportunity to learn from their experiences and understand what really happens during the whole process. Ultimately, the more you know up front, the better your chances for the best possible outcome for the sale and transition of your practice.
Medicaid state dental programs have experienced changes related to provider practice settings with the increased growth of dental support organizations (DSOs). The authors conducted this study to assess the impact of state Medicaid reform on the dental practice environment by examining provider activity and practice setting.
