The Prosperident Pulse #135 Oct 2023 - Information you can use in your practice

I paid a visit to my barber this morning. As you can tell from my picture, my haircuts are probably among the easiest he does.

In between our discussing the world's problems and our arguing over his choice of music in his shop (I don't share his affinity for 1980's disco) he apologetically let me know that, for the first time in six years, he would be raising his prices, with the increase to be about 20%.

I know from previous visits that he is locked into an attractive lease, so I knew that a rent increase wasn't driving this. His rationale was that he already had the lowest price in the downtown area near our office, and that several of his competitors has recently raised their prices, making the gap wider.

I certainly have no problem with my barber's price hike - I knew that he was a bit below the market and the $2.50 increase will not change my life.

However, it did force me to focus on the effect that inflation can have on dental staff. Even though the post-covid staff shortage put some upward pressure on staff wages, for the most part wages have stabilized. And yet prices for groceries, gasoline, and of course your mortgage, continue to go up. For some this means that retirement savings build more slowly. For others it represents the tipping point between getting by each month and slowly falling behind.

Embezzlers steal for basically two reasons. Some covet the dentist's success and feel like they deserve a bigger share of it. And others struggle mightily to make ends meet each month. A study done in August found that 63% of Americans are unable to pay for a $500 unexpected expense.

To be clear, inflation pinches practice owners as well, and not every employee who is struggling financially will resort to stealing. But enough of them do to make current economic trends concerning.

What to do about this? First, make sure you know your employees well enough to know who is really struggling. Be proactive with those employees and be prepared to help them find other solutions.

Second, this is a great time to look at the controls in your practice and to identify and correct weaknesses in things like distribution of duties between your team and your own oversight over practice finances. I'd love to talk with you about how we can help you run a tight ship. Click HERE if you want to chat.