In-house labs II

Hey all,

I have so much going on in my life I feel like I am just spinning.
I feel like if I could get 80% of my work done in the day I am doing pretty good.

I have a front desk employee that is pregnant. Her original due date was April 19th.
I knew this about 2 months ago. I asked her if she was coming back, and she is confident that she is coming back. So I have a couple of months to find a replacement for her maternity leave.
Originally we thought we would have an assistant who would fill in.
She knows the systems and can work the front.
But as the back is picking up a little, we are getting to the point where we figured this is not going to work.
So this means I have about 7 weeks to find someone.
Well, last Tuesday this particular person was not feeling so good. We took her blood pressure and it was HIGH.
We sent her to her doctor.
Of course her doctor said she had pregnancy hypertension, and she couldn't go back to work until further notice.
WHAT?!!
Okay, we are thinking, maybe she will go back to the doctor and he will clear her to work for the next 6 weeks or so.
Well, guess what? She is not coming back to work. I mean she likes her job (I think) and wants to come back, but doctor's orders...no more work.
I have to jump into action about finding her replacement, and it has to be NOW.
Just so you know I did do my due diligence previously. I called our dental society who has a list of people seeking employment.
Problem was there wasn't any candidates that really fit the mold we were looking for. I mean I called a couple people, but nothing really excited me.
It is 3 weeks later, so I called them again.
This time I was a little less picky.
We are looking for a warm body, and that warm body needed some experience with EagleSoft.
We (when I say we, I really mean I did all the work emailing and calling and setting things up and my father showed up for the interview) interviewed four candidates.
Now you have to understand what a difficult position we are in.
We need a person for only 5 months, so who are you going to get.
Well two of the candidates had jobs at the present time.
Okay so you don't like your present job, but it is a paycheck.
So we are asking them to quit their full-time job with benefits and come to work with us for 5 months and the remote possibility that our front desk person does not come back, then it would parlay into a full-time position.
So both of the people with jobs think it would be an awesome place to work at, but they have decided to not give up the "sure thing".
So I called Dr. Crowder because I know he used CareerBuilders to find someone.
He said he got lots of candidates and about 25 good candidates.
I just thought to myself I don't have the capacity to interview 25 people. I interviewed 5, and it was all I had. I mean, playing email tag with them. Playing phone tag with them.
Don't forget I have three people to set up an interview with. And my father is not that flexible.
And it was $425 for an ad.
I know, I know this should be chump change but...

Well I did find someone, and I think she is very nice. She has experience with our software and she has a bunch of years experience.
I'll let you know.
If a title of the blog post is Temp Employees Stealing from Me, you know what happened.

We were going to talk about in-house labs.
I was so fired up about it on Friday, let's see if I can pick it back up.

I have to tell you that I am not that excited about running another entity.
We did get one comment on this thing and it said.....

"The problem with most good labs is that once the lab tech gets good enough they leave and open their own lab. For me consistency was always a problem due to tech turn over. In the future labs will be like the post office is with email. Their role will be greatly diminished due to CAD CAM. They, the labs are putting themselves out off business by embracing this monolith all porcelain crown crap that is being pushed right now. Because they are so lazy to layer the porcelain all they do is have white block tooth made by the CAD CAM and paint it. It won't take much for the CAD CAM to get the shade better than the crap they are doing now. Right now I can get a PFM done cheaper and better than a CAD CAM crown. But as time goes by with the help of the lab the CAD CAM will be cheaper and better like email is now versus the post office. Also the sad part is the art of crown and bridge will be lost just like the art of letter writing is being lost. So in my opinion unless you can crank 600 units like Strupp a lab is not worth it for you to by and the CAD CAM tech is not ready for main stream yet. But it will be in a few years.

See this is what I am talking about. People issues, technology issues, quality issues.
I don't even have time to interview 5 people for a job.
I guess I have the time, but it is a pain. I don't want to add more crap on top of the crap that I already have.
So could I invest in a lab with other guys, and let the other single, less busy dentist run it.
Yes, if I had money to invest that would be awesome.
But you know what?
I kind of like what I have pretty good. I like my ceramist (we don't call them lab techs anymore, this is the fancy way of saying it). I like not knowing any of the 80 types of porcelain. I like not having to calibrate my ovens or anything breaking down.
I like not having to put money into something when it is having a bad month. I like not caring if the price of gold goes up $25 in a day.
I like not having to try the "next big thing" because all my dentists want it, and then having to replace all of them at no charge because it turns out the product sucked.

I guess I will stick to being a dentist and not a lab owner for now.
But don't think that fire is extinguished, there is still a little spark. Maybe I will get my new associate to figure something like that out.
Maybe I will strike up a conversation with a couple other dudes.
I will let you know.

One thing that kind of has intrigued me is the digital impressions. Have you seen these?
Well you know the wand on the CAD CAM machine. So you don't have to take a PVS impression. You actually just take a series of photos of your prep and it makes a 3-D image of the prep and you e-mail it to your lab.
It is what you can do with this digital impression that is the question. Can it make a stone die of your tooth...probably soon.
But for now it is sent to the lab, and he just makes a CEREC type crown for you.

Alright I am pooped.
Sorry I am all over the place today. I am telling you, it was the interview process.
Imagine if I had to do 25. No thank you.

See you Friday,
john

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