After building my dental practice from scratch, my work life began to get more and more intense. I knew I had to slow down, but I didn’t know how until I decided to take a leap of faith and visit the Pankey Institute.

Creating a Work Life Vision at Pankey

At Essentials One, I was blown away by the faculty to student ratio. It was almost 1:1! The quality of the education was outstanding, but what I found most impressive was the encouragement, mentorship, and passion from all the faculty and staff.

Pankey taught me how to help my patients value dentistry, develop communication skills, and learn co-diagnosis. Most importantly, Pankey helped me create a vision of what I always knew I wanted — a low volume fee for service practice that allowed me to have a good family-work life balance.  

Returning to My Dental Practice Recharged

When I came back home from Essentials 1, I immediately stopped working six days a week. I started some training exercises with my team to show them what my vision was.

One month later, I went out of network with my first insurance plan. This plan was one of my biggest — it made up 25% of my patient base, but I was determined. Six months later, I evaluated our progress. We did not lose a single patient and our revenues had actually doubled. When I saw this, I went out of network with six more plans immediately. We were on a mission.

Today, two years after Essentials 1, I am only in network with one remaining plan. Our practice has continued to grow. We have worked less hours, seen almost half as many patients per day, and our practice revenues have increased.

Additionally, I have also taken more time off every year and taken more continuing education than I have in the past. My team continues to be excited in our journey together to achieving our professional and personal goals.  

My story is nothing special. I truly believe anybody can develop the clinical, leadership, and communication skills to create a successful relationship-based practice. For me, the Pankey Institute provided all the resources I needed. Pankey has changed my life. I hope to give back one day. 

What’s your dental practice story? Join the conversation in the comments! 

Five years ago, I started a dental practice from scratch. Brand new building, brand new equipment, zero patients, and zero cash flow.

Building a Brand New Dental Practice

We were in a network with over 15 insurance plans, opened early mornings, and stayed open until late evenings — our patient base grew quickly. After two years, I found myself still working the same long hours, attempting to accommodate as many patients as I could.

I was working at my own practice three days a week and at another practice the other three days. I was totaling six days a week! I always valued continuing education, but my schedule only allowed for online education on the weekends or the “slow days” during the week.  

Burning Out or Slowing Down

As my own practice got busier, I found myself doing over 30 hygiene exams a day, along with seeing 12-15 restorative patients per day. I was jumping room to room nonstop. I started to realize I would not be able to keep up this pace forever. Something had to change.  

I had conversations with my team about going out of network with some insurance plans. The feedback I got from them was, “I think we will lose a lot of patients. Our patients are all insurance driven.” As a result, we kept “grinding it out.”

Shortly after, I attended a lecture by Dr. Jeff Baggett at a dental conference in town. When I saw his dentistry and his enthusiasm for dentistry, I thought to myself, “Man, I wish I was that enthusiastic.” I loved what I do, but I didn’t see myself going down a very good career path in dentistry.

I kept in touch with Jeff after the conference and he convinced me to go to the Pankey Institute. I was hesitant at first due to the time I would have to take away from work. Eventually, I took a leap of faith and signed up for Pankey Essentials 1 (E1).

To be continued…