The Company
Founded in 1991 Professionally Managed Practice (PMP) is a dental practice management-consulting firm based in Tampa, Florida with offices throughout the United States. Daily living its motto, Quality in Leadership, PMP has worked with hundreds of dental offices throughout North America. In addition, workbooks and reference books published by Wisdom Management Group, a wholly owned subsidiary, are used daily in thousands of dental offices on six continents. PMP is also sponsor of the Internet practice management essays, Weekly Tidbits, which for 20+ years have been distributed to more than 30,000 dentists in 18 countries. L. Hurston Anderson, Ph.D. normally authors these essays. He and wife Susan are the owners of PMP and all subsidiaries.
The Executive Team.
Susan Anderson (known by many in dentistry for thirty years as Susan Uglem) has been in dentistry for almost forty years having begun her career in Minneapolis where she helped a small single-dentist quality-oriented general practice grow to a rather large multiple-dentist quality-oriented practice that became a model for multiple-dentists quality-oriented practices throughout the Midwest. She was recruited as a consultant to work with Dr. Peter Dawson’s computing and consulting firm, PerfectByte, Inc., based in St. Petersburg, Florida almost 30 years ago. Within two years she had advanced to become the General Manager and Chief Operating Officer of the entire company. With extensive education in business including an advanced degree in Business Management, she is the original founder of PMP initially consulting with friends and acquaintances across the US. She is in charge of all practice management consulting, manages all Consulting Partners, personally monitors the progress of each client regularly, and provides general direction for the entire company.
Hurston Anderson contributes an extensive background in general industry management having begun with Ross Perot’s EDS in Dallas after undergraduate studies and military service more than forty years ago. His career turned toward acquisitions and turnarounds at EDS, and he eventually became a sought-after turnaround CEO for small technology companies. In that capacity a little over twenty-five years ago he was hired to work with PerfectByte, Inc. He and Susan as CEO and COO accomplished their objective with PerfectByte, Inc. after two years and then formed a merger of a more personal nature. While Hurston was undertaking another turnaround, this time in Little Rock, Arkansas, Susan began to consult with friends and acquaintances independently and thereby founded PMP. Hurston joined Susan upon completing his turnaround assignment a few years later. The office was moved to Tampa from Little Rock in 1999 when all children had left for college.
Uniqueness of Approach
No other practice management-consulting firm has the combined depth of knowledge, experience, and expertise in the two vital areas necessary to assist dentists properly. With more than seventy-five combined years in dentistry and more than fifty combined years in general business, PMP is careful never to forget the clinician when working with the businessperson and careful never to forget the businessperson when working with the clinician. Since dentists-owners wear both these hats, it is essential to have a harmonious fit between the two.
Dentist is Clinician/Businessperson. A dental practice is a business and faces the same business pressures as any other business. To forget this can put the business in danger. A dentist, however, is a caregiver whose foremost objective is to provide the best patient care to his/her patients. To forget this can put the dentist’s personal need to serve others in danger. While almost all other independent businesspersons start their businesses solely for the purpose of making money that is seldom the sole objective of the dentist who choose to own a dental practice.
Must Go To The Practice. In order to really understand a business it is necessary to feel its heartbeat. That cannot be done in a conference room regardless of the physical attractiveness of the location. Many consulting firms have decided to save their time and their money by having the doctor and staff come to them. This is sometimes outwardly exciting to dental offices because it breaks the monotony, but it is incredibly expensive and requires that the doctor and team cancel production, or travel on off-days. With almost thirty years experience in hundreds of dental practices, PMP knows unequivocally that the best results come by our joining the team and working right along side doctor and staff during regular business hours. Only in the rarest of situations such as a team meeting is it necessary to discontinue production and go to a neutral location.
Pro-Doctor and Pro-Staff. Although it is the doctor who engages us to assist in the practice, PMP is careful to be neutral, neither solely pro-doctor nor solely pro-staff. Working effectively with a dental office requires the ability to be trusted and respected by doctors as well as staff members.
$10,000 Per Month Increase In Practice Production. PMP has an unbroken ten-year record of assisting each and every one of its practice management-consulting clients to increase monthly production by at least $10,000 per month. For our entire history this has been the primary basis of our growth, that is, referrals of new clients by their friends and peers who have first-hand experience with PMP. While the Internet activity has introduced us to many dentists who had not known of us previously, it is still our continuous success that encourages them to seek to work with us. No salesmen work for PMP.