Planning for Orthodontic CE Courses
Investing in your dental practice is necessary to ensure its continued growth, but it’s important to choose your investments carefully. Continuing education (CE) represents an excellent opportunity to maximize the return on your investment, and orthodontic continuing education, in particular, is well worth it for your practice.
Here are the steps you should take regarding budgeting and planning for orthodontic courses online.
Assess your practice’s financial position.
The first step to developing any kind of budget is understanding your current financial position. While it might seem like an overwhelming task, taking the time to account for all of your practice’s assets, liabilities, costs, and revenue is essential.
Ideally, you should have a spreadsheet or app that you use to track your budget on an ongoing basis. That would be much more straightforward and reliable than trying to piece together a budget every time you need to assess your practice’s financial position.
With an understanding of your current financial standing, you can determine just how much you can allocate to CE. While orthodontic continuing education courses are an excellent investment, you have other priorities to balance alongside them in order to maintain your day-to-day operations.
Prioritize CE opportunities.
You’ll likely find that you have multiple potential options competing for a share of your budget. Marketing, equipment, hiring, and other investments may each be the right choice at one time or another. However, among all of these, you should see CE as a top priority when it comes to investing in your practice.
Orthodontic continuing education stands to provide significant returns for your practice. You’ll open the door to new treatment options that build longer-lasting relationships with patients. On top of that, many of these treatments also have higher margins than others provided by general and pediatric dentists.
Ensure you achieve the highest value for your investment by choosing your CE course carefully. Choose one that provides practical skills and hands-on experience to truly allow you to offer orthodontic treatment options. You should also take a close look at the reputation of the course and its instructor before committing.
Plan annual CE costs.
CE is an ongoing commitment. At the very least, you’ll have to invest in some level of it every year to maintain your licensing requirements.
When you first start out, you’ll be building a foundation to provide orthodontic treatment. From there, additional courses will allow you to expand with new techniques and treatments, allowing you to develop the skills necessary to tackle a wider range of cases.
Plan for annual CE opportunities when building your budget. Don’t forget to include any fees, travel expenses, and time away from your office alongside the initial course cost. That will let you spread out your expenses more effectively as opposed to CE being a sudden expense.
Explore financing options.
While most businesses would love to have the necessary cash on hand for every investment they make, that simply isn’t realistic. Instead, business owners of all kinds rely on various forms of financing to grow, and that includes dentists who operate their own practices.
If you don’t have funds available to invest in CE, you can always explore various financing options. Many courses offer payment plans that let you spread out the costs in a more practical way that fits into your existing budget.
There are also conventional business financing options. If you’re currently running your own practice, then you will likely have access to a variety of options, from business loans to lines of credit. The significant returns associated with orthodontic treatment options can make these arrangements financially beneficial for your practice.
Track the return on investment (ROI).
As with any other investment, it’s important to quantify your ROI from continuing education. Doing so will help guide your future decisions when it comes to pursuing additional CE in orthodontics.
Carefully track the patients and cases you take on, as well as all of your costs and expenses before and after implementing orthodontic treatment options, to create a clear picture of the actual impact your investment has had.
You’ll quickly find that you’re taking on cases that would have otherwise required referral to another practitioner. Taking on new patients and providing additional treatment for existing patients improves your overall practice profitability.
Invest in your practice with orthodontic CE courses.
Taking the time to plan and budget for orthodontic continuing education helps you make the most of your investment in your practice. Ensure the highest impact from your efforts by choosing high-quality courses that deliver practical, hands-on training.
Williams GP Orthodontic Seminars are delivered by Dr. Brad Williams, a highly respected instructor in the field. Find out more about what you can expect from his top-notch orthodontic CE courses and browse upcoming courses today.