Profitability and efficiency: finding the balance
This webinar will provide a deep dive into the financial and operational strategies that allow dental practices to thrive in an increasingly challenging market.
Using Extreme Business principles, this session will focus on achieving sustainable profitability without compromising patient care or team morale. The session will begin by identifying the key areas of inefficiency that commonly drain profitability in dental practices. This includes ineffective diary management, under-utilised surgery time, poor patient retention and pricing structures that fail to reflect true business costs. The speakers will provide practical strategies to optimise workflow, ensuring that every available clinical hour contributes to revenue growth.
A critical part of the discussion will cover best practices for boosting profitability while maintaining high-quality service. The focus here will be on improving treatment plan acceptance rates, increasing the mix of high-value treatments, and ensuring that pricing is aligned with cost structures and market demand. The role of operating cost per surgery per day (OCPSPD) will be a central theme, ensuring that practice owners understand the financial threshold they must meet to be profitable.
To achieve long-term profitability, team motivation and staff retention play a vital role. The webinar will explore how to motivate and reward staff for productivity gains, looking at remuneration models that align personal incentives with business growth. The speakers will discuss the pros and cons of commission-based structures, bonus schemes and team-driven reward systems that enhance performance while fostering collaboration.
The key pain points of productivity, profitability and remuneration strategies will be tackled with a no-nonsense approach. Attendees will gain practical insights into how to restructure practice finances, drive efficiency and create a workplace culture that supports growth. The discussion will also include real-world case studies of dental practices that have successfully navigated these challenges, providing actionable takeaways that can be implemented immediately.
With a panel including Chris Barrow, Robbie Hughes, Sandeep Kumar and Mark Simic, this webinar promises to deliver strategic guidance, financial clarity and operational excellence, ensuring that attendees leave with a clear roadmap to balance profitability and efficiency in their own practices.
Learning outcomes
- Learn to recognise the common profitability drains in dental practices, including ineffective diary management, under-utilised surgery time, poor patient retention and pricing structures that fail to reflect true business costs
- Gain practical strategies to ensure every available clinical hour contributes to revenue, improve treatment plan acceptance rates, and increase the mix of high-value treatments while maintaining high-quality service
- Explore how to motivate and reward staff for productivity gains through remuneration models such as commission-based structures, bonus schemes and team-driven reward systems that enhance performance and collaboration
- Understand the role of operating cost per surgery per day (OCPSPD), learn to restructure practice finances, and take away actionable insights from real-world case studies to balance profitability and efficiency.
Speaker: Chris Barrow
Chris Barrow has been active as a consultant, trainer and coach to the UK dental profession for 30 years and will 'celebrate' 55 years of full time work in September 2025. Although age 71, Chris has no plans to retire and promises that he will be working in dentistry for many years to come.
Chris spent the first 17 years of his working life in the corporate sector and followed this with 33 years of running small private businesses. The different dynamics of both worlds have given him the valuable gift of knowing how to operate – and communicate – in both.
In 1993, Chris decided to make the transition from financial services to business coaching and became one of the first UK students at Coach University, from where he graduated as a certified coach.
Recognising the opportunity in the dental profession, 1997 saw the creation of The Dental Business School (DBS) and the development of a 12-month business coaching program for dental practice owners and their teams, delivered to over 1,000 UK dental practices in the following 10 years.
As a sought-after public speaker, he is dynamic, energetic and charismatic. As a writer, his blog enjoys a strong following and he is a regular contributor to the dental press. He has also been a member of the UK’s Dentistry Top 50 list every year since its inception.
Chris has coauthored two books, Profitable Dental Practice with Dr Philip Newsome and The E-Myth Dentist with business guru Michael Gerber. He is also an advisor to the dental charities Bridge2aid and The Mouth Cancer Foundation.
In 2014 he appeared as a 'castaway' in the first season of the popular reality TV show The Island with Bear Grylls. His main professional focus now is through his Extreme Business brand, providing coaching and mentorship to independent dentistry around the world via virtual consultancy, practice visits, a workshop programme and an online learning platform.
During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Chris created a regeneration coaching programme, helping practices to survive lockdown and to bounce back higher following their return to work. He now offers The Extreme Business 100 – working with just 100 dental businesses each year to help them grow profits by 100% in 36 months.
Chris is a retired marathon runner (trying to make a come back), an active long-distance cyclist and enjoys extreme adventures, preferably in places where there is no internet available!
Speaker: Robbie Hughes
Dr Robbie Hughes qualified from the University of Liverpool in 2008 with honours and an array of prestigious awards for distinction grades and exceptional clinical performance. Very early in his career, Robbie set his sights on promoting excellence within the private dental sector, with a special interest in cosmetic dentistry.
In 2019 Robbie founded Avant Garde Dentistry – the driving force behind a revolution in the industry. Avant Garde Dentistry is a full solution service for the modern day practitioner providing everything from workflow education, to business coaching and lab services.
More than just a training company, Avant Garde is a concept. It combines cutting edge technology, innovative treatment workflows, and obsessive focus on the patient journey to guarantee world class results, every time.Speaker: Mark Simic
Mark joined Simpkins Edwards in 2008, having previously worked for a big four firm in Bristol. He qualified as a chartered tax adviser in 2010, became a partner in 2018 and managing partner in 2023. Mark provides technical and commercial advice to our corporate and individual clients, particularly those with complex tax requirements.
He has a broad range of clients including start-up businesses, expats and healthcare professionals – including the dental sector where he provides industry-leading management information and key performance indicator analysis.
He delivers pragmatic and practical advice to assist his clients to manage and grow their businesses. Mark embraces developing technology and offers an integrated record-keeping, accounting, and tax solution allowing business owners to maintain paperless records, access real-time management information and really ‘know their numbers’.
Speaker: Sandeep Kumar
Dr Sandeep Kumar can only be described as a trailblazer in the world of Invisalign. He is one of Europe’s leading Invisalign Diamond Apex providers and has created more than 6,000 beautiful new smiles with Invisalign in his private clinics.
Sandeep came to the UK in 1998 after graduating as a dentist in India. He qualified with the General Dental Council (GDC) in 2000 and on the lookout for his next opportunity, bought his first NHS practice in 2003.
With an ambitious drive, Sandeep soon added to his practice portfolio and when launching his first private dental clinic in 2007 he recognised the potential to harness Invisalign’s consumer appeal and value to differentiate his practice. He implemented a highly successful lead generation and nurturing process and his Invisalign journey began.
More than 20 years later, Sandeep now owns three successful private dental brands including MiSmile, the UK’s first Invisalign-only clinic. He grew his annual Invisalign case submissions from just seven in the first year to over 2,000 cases annually in 2024.
In 2015, Sandeep launched The Mismile Network after innumerable requests by other practitioners to learn the secrets of his success. The Mismile community now comprises more than 600 practices, and collectively have created more than 50,000 Invisalign smiles and is the largest provider of Invisalign in the UK, an achievement Sandeep is immensely proud of.
Never one to stand still, in 2021 Sandeep co-founded Smmmile, a rapidly growing group of dental stores dedicated to delivering happiness to patients with Invisalign. Smmmile’s luxury boutique stores are state-of-the-art utilising the latest technology to deliver the best possible patient experience.
In 2022, Sandeep founded ‘Mastering your Invisalign Business’, a one-day interactive learning experience allowing ambitious general dentists to understand how to build a million-pound Invisalign business. In the first three years, more than 1,500 general dentists have completed the experience with astounding feedback.
Sandeep loves to share his passion for Invisalign with the wider industry and can often be found on stage speaking and training others on the opportunities Invisalign can harness.
This Continuing Professional Development (CPD) activity fully complies with the CPD requirements of the General Dental Council. FMC certifies this activity for x hours of enhanced CPD in the subject of Profitability and efficiency: finding the balance.
This CPD meets the criteria for the GDC’s development outcome B.
