Flexible Spending Account (FSA).  This is an employee contribution type plan.  It is also known as Cafeteria Plan or Section 125 Plan.  It needs to be administered and this is typically done through an outside service.  Your employee can designate an amount of money they want to come out of their paycheck and go towards their benefit.  The benefit could be health insurance, dependent care, etc.  If the employee does not use all of the money they have set aside, then they lose it.  It does not carry over to following years.

Health Reimbursement Account (HRA).  This is an employer contribution plan.  The employer agrees to put a certain amount of money away for the employee to be used for health care expenses.  If the employee incurs healthcare expenses, they can submit for reimbursement.  The plan can be designed to carry over unused benefits or the benefit can be “use it or lose it.” In order to keep the employer’s obligation limited, I recommend that you do not carry over unused benefits from one year to the next.

The employer and employee can share in the total costs by combining an FSA and an HRA plan.

Health Savings Account (HSA).  This is much like an IRA account but for healthcare expenses.  The employer and the employee can contribute to the account and get a deduction for the amount they contribute (annual contribution limits apply).  The account balance can grow and carry over to future years.  When the employee incurs healthcare expenses, they can pay for them with the HSA account.  In order to qualify for an HSA, one must have a qualified high-deductible health insurance plan.

Make sure to talk to your CPA, insurance broker or employee benefits expert to help find the best fit for you and your practice

The year was 1982, and Cavallo was working on his car in the driveway when the jack collapsed.  The teenager was pinned underneath.  Angela Cavallo, Tony’s 50+ year old mom, lifted the 3,500 pound Chevy Impala several inches and held it for almost five minutes while neighbors pulled her son to safety.

Many people have heard this story, and inevitably the question comes up about whether we could match the feat if facing the same situation.  What are we capable of when pushed to our limits?

In 2006, Lydia Angyiou was out with her two sons in northern Quebec.  Suddenly she saw a polar bear about to attack her seven-year-old.  As reported in this month’s Mental Floss magazine, she lunged at the 700 pound polar bear, kicking and punching it, and the two engaged in a wrestling match until someone finally shot the bear.  Lydia survived with just a few scratches and a black eye, which is unbelievable considering the circumstances.

Those two mothers acted out of instinct, out of their intense love for their children, and they tapped into a level of physical strength that is hard to comprehend.  Fortunately, most of us will never have to dead-lift cars or wrestle polar bears as part maximizing our potential.  But at times we will face challenges that seem almost as formidable.

Imagine how much easier it would be to face those challenges if you were not carrying around so much doubt.  Instead of selling yourself short and finding every excuse why you can’t do something, challenge yourself to move beyond what is comfortable, and by doing so you will step that much closer to your full potential.

In 1952, Virginia Apgar claimed that a newborn baby’s survival was related to its condition just after birth.  This was a revolutionary idea at the time, and like many innovative ideas it was met with considerable skepticism.

As reported in the recent issue of Mental Floss magazine, Apgar spent one year observing over two thousand deliveries, which helped her develop a grading system for newborns.  The newborns were examined and graded at one minute and again at five minutes after birth, and points were awarded based on five criteria for health: pulse, respiration, muscle tone, color, and reflexes.

Apgar made sure that babies with low scores received closer attention.  If the babies then needed medical help, they received it proactively, which greatly increased survival rates.

This grading system became known as the Apgar Score, and today it is still considered the gold standard.  Research has substantiated the relationship between the five-minute Apgar Score and neonatal survival rates.  Thanks to Virginia Apgar and her innovative way of thinking, hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved.

You never know when a new idea will save lives or make a process more efficient or build a stronger team; therefore we need to consider how we nurture new ideas.  Do we create an environment supportive of innovation, or have we been too close minded to ideas outside of the mainstream?

It’s not always easy to allow our minds to get stretched, but if we care about our teams and those who benefit from our services, a little bit of stretching may be exactly what we need.

Unfortunately, by waiving the deductible or co-payment, dentists put themselves on shaky ground.

According to the American Dental Association’s (ADA) Code of Ethics, dentists who waive co-payments and accept what insurance pays as payment in full, without fully disclosing to the insurance company that the co-payment was waived, are engaged in overbilling.  It does not matter if the dentist is waiving the deductible or co-payment for a staff member, family member, or unrelated patient.

Even thought the ADA’s Code of Ethics provides flexibility if the practice fully discloses the waiver of co-payments to insurance companies, many states are not so flexible.  Oregon and Washington law require the collection of co-payments. Period.

In addition to running afoul of professional ethics and state laws, dentists may also violate PPO contracts by failing to collect co-payments.  And if that wasn’t enough, waiving co-payments for Medicare is against federal law.

It is not uncommon for this to come as a surprise to dentists and their teams.  Unfortunately, the law does not provide a free pass for getting out of trouble when you are unsure of the regulations.  Please look closely at the policies you have in your practice and contact your state dental board to learn more.

Imagine how much time we would save by giving up all hope for a better past; time we currently waste dwelling on mistakes and events we can’t change.  While the past is certainly a great teacher, we hold back our development and the progress of our teams by focusing too much energy on what has already happened.  Sometimes having a short memory works in our favor.

But it’s not always that easy, is it?  What about times when you make mistakes, when your performance is not as strong as it needs to be.  Do you relive your shortcomings in hopes of making a better past?  Many of us do.

Fortunately, we are all capable of learning from the past while maintaining our focus on what is coming next.  Consider one thing you can do to fine-tune how you process mistakes.

Now we need to consider our role as a leader and mentor.  How tightly do we hold on to the shortcomings of others?  While we certainly need to hold people accountable, we can’t expect our teams to grow if they cannot make mistakes.

As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The only person who never makes a mistake is the one who never does anything.”  Assuming team members are coachable and capable of doing the job, we can use missteps as effective teaching tools.  Consider how you can create an environment where your team is not hesitant to stretch themselves.

We owe it to ourselves and our teams to give up on a better past.  Instead, by utilizing a healthy dose of forgiveness, we can focus our attention where it needs to be, with what we see in front of us.

In many places in Africa and South Asia, people suffer from severe nutritional deficiencies.  Vitamin A deficiencies cause blindness in over 500,000 children under the age of five, iron deficiencies lead to fatigue and anemia in almost 65% of children, and the lack of zinc kills over 800,000 per year.

Howarth Bouis proposed a novel idea of enriching staple crops with important nutrients by utilizing time-tested plant breeding techniques.  His idea was initially met with a lukewarm response because many agencies were looking for higher tech ways of solving the problem.  But Bouis persisted.

In 2003, he secured enough funding to implement cross breeding studies across African and South Asia, calling his project HarvestPlus.  For example, as reported in the current issue of Discover magazine, Bouis and his colleagues took pollen from cassava, a plant naturally high in Vitamin A, and put it into flowers of the African variety.  After a dozen or so iterations, they produced an ideal cassava plant for Africa, rich in Vitamin A.

In 2007, Bouis and his HarvestPlus project introduced their first nutritionally enhanced crops to farmers in Mozambique and Uganda.  Since then the efforts of HarvestPlus have improved the nutritional intake of millions of people in Africa and South Asia.

Most of us will never tackle an issue quite as daunting as world hunger, but we still face challenging situations that require innovation and persistence.  Consider a personal or professional obstacle that you are trying to overcome.  Now follow the lead of Howarth Bouis and brainstorm some innovative angles you have not yet tried.

Consider situations where a dentist starts off with a small team where each person works well independently.  As the practice grows, the need arises for collaboration.  But how well does collaboration work if you continue to hire people with strong independent spirits?  Typically practice and team growth are stymied by the lack of communication and coordination.

What about situations where dentists and key team members are heavily goal driven.  If you continue to hire those who focus too much on production numbers, will patient relationships suffer?  Patients do not refer friends and family because you keep reaching your production goals.

The same can happen with the other extreme.  If the dentist and key team members are too laid back—good idea people but poor implementers—you can soon have an entire team full of like-minded people.  Then you waste too much time talking in circles and never accomplishing your goals.

Therefore, a more appropriate approach to hiring is to consider how a candidate’s personality and talent strengthen your weaknesses and help you balance patient care and effective business practices.  You can never reach that balance with an office of clones.  You need to hire strategically, with an objective sense of your strengths and weaknesses, to take your practice to the next level.

Some dentists try to soften the blow by making their recommendations so wishy-washy that the patient is not only confused, but he also lacks trust in the diagnosis.  Other dentists get right to the point without considering the patient’s perspective, and the patient leaves overwhelmed and upset.

The most successful approach is to communicate the main issues.  First, call out the “elephant” in the room, which is the clash between the diagnosis and the new patient’s expectations.

“John, my diagnosis, which we are about to discuss, will most likely catch you by surprise.  From what you told me, you are not expecting much on your treatment plan.  Unfortunately, I found a number of teeth that have cavities.”

Next, take the patient on a tour of his mouth and succinctly describe why the teeth need treatment. Then offer some encouragement.

“I know this is not easy to hear.  The good news is we can return your mouth to full health.  And we are going to work with you to help you minimize future dental issues.”

Finally, involve the patient in the timeline for treatment.  Consider how you can pace treatment to meet his dental needs and have your treatment coordinator discuss how to fit treatment within his budget.  When patients feel like they are part of the decision making process, they are much more likely to accept “bad news.”

Worst-case scenarios sometimes happen during new patient exams.  The key is to handle those situations effectively to ensure the best outcome for the patient.

The challenge of filling an opening in your dental practice is the best talent may not be looking when you need them. Talented people are in demand, and they rarely spend much time without a job; therefore when you encounter someone who is memorable, take note.

This approach is especially true if you are open to recruiting someone who does not have dental experience.  Consider times when you have a positive retail experience with a salesperson who goes out of her way to help you.  Would you like your patients to receive that level of customer service?

Or how about when you are at your physician’s office or other healthcare provider and you interact with team member who impresses you with her organizational skills or chair-side presence.  How would that person complement your team?

When you encounter people who impress you with their service, personality, and expertise, introduce yourself and exchange business cards.  If it’s appropriate to do so, ask that person if she has ever considered working in the dental field.

Even though it will require training to get an inexperienced person up to speed, you can sometimes find the best talent outside of dentistry.

Please keep in mind that finding the next great team member starts before you have an opening.  The key is to connect appropriately whenever someone impresses you.  Sometime down the road that person may be the great new addition to your team.

Trust typically breaks down because of broken promises, lack of follow-through, and/or too many mistakes.  When you lose trust in team members, you often double check their work, you hesitate to rely on what they tell you, and you go through your day with a certain degree of doubt.  Consider what this does to the effectiveness of the entire team.

The Russian playwright Anton Checkhov once said, “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.”  When trust is lacking, great teamwork becomes impossible.

How then do you build trust?  First, you and your team must follow-through with what you say.  You must hold yourself and others accountable for promises.  One of the biggest poisons to teamwork is a team member or leader who is allowed to break promises without accountability.

The next important element of building trust is to always communicate important details.  Those details may help the team address the concerns of a patient more effectively.  Those details may contain an admission of something that was missed, and by owning up to the error immediately you ensure the mistake is quickly addressed.

Finally, building trust involves consistency.  You have to show consistency with positive feedback, showing fairness during disputes, and aligning behavior with the mission statement of the practice.  Consistency is not easy, but like many things that require effort, the payoff is substantial.  You can’t establish trust without consistency.

If you want to build a stronger team, consider how you can fine-tune trust.  Because if trust is lacking, you will never have effective teamwork.

Learn more about how our dental consulting helps build stronger teams.