Just as it takes a team to win a football game, it takes a concerted approach to provide consistent quality care in the dental office.

Risk management and patient safety can be thought of as a football team: every team consists of offensive and defensive players; each player possessing a unique set of skills practiced and honed throughout the season. A recent seminar attendee described his office manager as his team’s quarterback, “Nothing happens around here without her—she keeps the schedules, calls the plays, and helps us have a winning day.”

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Who doesn’t want to have a million-dollar practice? Is that a goal at the top of your list or have you already reached million-dollar status? Regardless of whether you are already there or still working toward that goal, this chapter teaches you how to leverage risk management and patient safety to help you achieve and/or maintain your million- dollar practice.

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There’s been a famous dental debate in the last decade: whether the mercury in amalgam fillings is toxic. At one extreme are those of the opinion that amalgam causes everything from ME to Alzheimer’s; and in the other corner are the hardened “amalgophiles” who point to the biggest informal case study of a dental material in human history - the millions upon millions of people who live with amalgam in their mouths and have no noticable side effects. We dentists should continue to use amalgam, they say, because it cannot be proven that it has any adverse health effects. Unfortunately for these stalwarts, our Western societies are becoming ever obsessed with safety and most patients have a “but what if…” bug implanted in the back of their minds. The practical reality is that it it doesn’t matter if it actually does or not - it’s the uncertainty about it in the minds of the patients that affects the daily practice of dentistry most.

An amalgam restoration

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