What Does the Economy Mean for Your Dental Practice?

Is Dentistry Going Down The Tubes? Our latest survey tells us that at least 40% of the profession is seeing a major downturn in new patients and case acceptance. We have talked about this before.

Currently dentistry is caught in a three part downward spiral. Each part is conspiring to make your business just a little slower…

The first spiral is the presidential election cycle. Every four years, people postpone making decisions about just about anything, including dentistry, until they see who is going to win next presidential election. This is not rational. People are just anxious about change.

The second spiral is the mortgage debacle and the resulting meltdown on Wall Street. There have been about 1,300,000 mortgage defaults so far, and another 1,000,000 are expected in the next year. Once again, people are unsure about the future. They do not want to make major decisions about dentistry or anything else until they feel more secure.

The final downward spiral is the recession. Dentistry is always the bell cow for economic downturns. We saw this coming last November when searches on the Internet for key dental terms (cosmetics, implants, etc.) started to drop dramatically. The recession is here.

The good news is that the election will be decided within the next two weeks. People will begin to adjust to the fact that the winner may not be the anti-Christ they had been lead to believe. The Washington political pendulum will continue to swing, and the bureaucrats will still control most of what goes on.

The bad news is that that we are still left with the mortgage collapse, which will run through until the third quarter of next year, and the recession, which could last through all of 2009.

Now that I’ve made your day, there are steps you can take to safeguard your practice and personal financial security. I will continue with those in next week’s newsletter.

Jim