The stand-alone specialty practice: thriving or merely surviving?

Is a stand-alone specialty practice viable today? Super dentists do everything themselves. Other private offices engage itinerant specialists. Multi-specialty practices have no need for stand-alone specialists. Corporate dentistry sucks up solo practices as dentists retire or transition to employees. Insurance companies continually squeeze the stand-alone specialist by enrolling their referring doctors into closed panel plans. Is the concept of a stand-alone specialty practice an anachronism? A means of survival for a dying breed for a few more years? NO! Stand-alone specialty practices represent a viable model for continued growth and profitability.  However, sustained success requires a major paradigm shift for most practitioners. Paradoxically, the COVID pandemic, which was initially viewed as a threat to the very existence of private practices, offers a path for such evolution. Redefining the conceptual underpinnings of your practice, restructuring the patient and referring doctor dialectics, and excising the destructive concept of "practice management" are but a few of the key steps to practice transformation and unparalleled success.

Learning objectives:

• More fully understand the challenges faced by the stand-alone specialty practice
• Be able to enumerate the aspects of a specialty practice which must be assessed and recreated
• Obtain a preliminary blueprint for such practice transformation