Patients Just Don’t Get it!

I hear this all the time from doctors and team members alike. We tend to gripe and complain about all the things that patients consistently just don’t understand or do properly or follow through on....

White Coat Syndrome

Online, in lecture halls and in print, there are fanatical devotees of evidence based orthodontics whose shrill voices lament the absence of science in our profession. For proof and for comedic relief...

Shame On Us

I received a text a few days ago from a young orthodontist who is a few years out of school. They were distraught over a case that “didn’t turn out the way it should have” and they “didn’t f...

Thought Experiment – The Next Big Thing

Marc Ackerman & Ben Burris What event will totally disrupt the landscape of orthodontics more than any other we can imagine? That’s easy and we have mentioned it before: When someone is able to ...

Don’t Limit Yourself by Setting Goals for 2019

Traditionally this time of year we set goals for the next 12 months. It’s a fine tradition I guess as long as you realize the nature of goal setting is both empowering and extremely limiting. What I...

AAO/Gaidge Report – We Kinda Suck…

It’s amazing to me that we, as a profession, still don’t consider keeping braces on people beyond estimated treatment time a bad idea. It IS a terrible idea for many, many reasons – ...

Death of a Salesman

The Hazards of Buying the Practice of an Orthodontist Who Dies Unexpectedly Several months ago a good friend of mine was confronted by a situation I see all too often. A local orthodontist died, had n...

100% No Show Rate!!

A general dentist friend told me the other day that she had a 100 percent no show rate for all the patients we sent them (we send out dozens of patients to GPs every patient day we have). I found this...

OrthoPundit Update

Turns out I had a congenital heart defect and had to have my aortic valve replaced. My open heart surgery was 5 weeks ago and it went very well – I now have normal heart function and blood flow ...

The Conversion Breakdown

Ben Burris & Angela Weber Today’s orthodontic practice seeking growth requires a different mindset not only in how new patients are attracted but also in how we view key performance indicators. ...

Carriere Motion & MEAW – Birds of a Feather

The last couple weeks have been more interesting than usual. I attended the SAO in New Orleans – the first time I’d been to an AAO constituency meeting in a while – and was shocked b...