Practice Production Prioritized: The era of the dental office manager

Dental office managers are about to become critically important. Practices have become more complex, overhead is rising due to staffing costs and inflation, insurance reimbursements are flat or declining, and technology is expanding rapidly and requiring longer learning curves and higher skilled individuals. As dentists are finding themselves increasingly pressured to run their practices as excellent businesses, many are now opening or buying practices after a few years of paying off student loan debt and looking for new ways to find freedom within their own practices to focus on excellence in clinical care and patient relations.

Enter the office manager

The term "office manager" became popular in dentistry in the 1980s. At that time, office managers largely consisted of front desk workers given a title without much substance behind it. Although I am completely in favor of making people feel important, an official title needs to reflect specific duties and responsibilities to make it meaningful.

According to Levin Group data, 96% of all dental office managers have no management background, education, or experience. However, they are often individuals who are diligent, dedicated, and committed, and therefore become the de facto office manager because of their longevity and loyalty to the practice. Those qualities are excellent to have in a team member, but they do not necessarily translate to expertise as an office manager.

What office managers should be

Office managers must become the chief operating officer (COO) of the practice. COOs are responsible for all day-to-day operations of businesses. This allows the chief executive officer (CEO), in this case the dentist, to focus on clinical care and patient relations. Here are some responsibilities office managers should have:

Increasing production: Every minute a dentist spends not treating patients is lost production, and although dental practice is not about greed, production is the single most important factor in the success of a practice; production is the only way to truly overcome the significant increases in overhead that we are seeing or the flat or declining insurance reimbursements. Dentists need time to be dentists, do what they love, and create more production. Patients, of course, benefit from doctors who are focused on that.

Handling nonclinical responsibilities: Dentists are prone to fatigue and burnout. They are tired because they are dealing with staffing issues, recruiting, hiring, conflict, questions about the schedule throughout the day, staff members with personal problems, overhead decisions, technology, education, and other factors on top of performing dentistry. An excellent office manager should be doing most of these operations day-to-day and handling all aspects of HR. Dentistsshould not receive nonclinical questions during working hours.

Levin Group models include 10 levels of office managers. The first three levels are what we call the functional category. They are doing work in the office that other staff should be doing, but they often did in the past, micromanaging or cleaning up messes. Office managers who move beyond the functional level have to develop knowledge of human resources and professional development. They also should understand how to research, evaluate, and identify new opportunities, which is also known as strategic thinking. The office manager of the future will need to be a good human resource manager and analytical thinker. This is the only way the dentist will begin to get freedom to focus on patient care and lead the strategic direction of the practice.

Conclusion

Practices are fooling themselves if they think they can become highly efficient without high-level office managers. The office manager needs to run the practice, of course, but also needs the expertise to carry out the strategic vision.Otherwise, the burden will remain on the dentist who will become more fatigued and dissatisfied. Good office managers allow their dentists to reach their full potential, focusing on the clinical care they were trained to do and not on day-to-day operations.

Editor's note: This article appeared in the February 2026 print edition of Dental Economics magazine. Dentists in North America are eligible for a complimentary print subscription. Sign up here.