On the latest Arun and Chris Show, Chris made a bold call.

Within five years, he reckons practice management software as we know it will be gone, replaced by one system that runs the diary, patient journey, finance, marketing and HR all in one place.

Arun thinks that's too cautious. His guess is closer to two years.

What they both agreed on is the awkward bit. Switching systems is painful, teams get settled in, and plenty of practices are still running software that's been around for decades.

So which camp are you in? Wait until others have done the testing, or start trying things piece by piece now?

Arun Mehra and Chris Barrow are back after the summer. This episode is about how AI is changing the dental patient journey, from the first phone call to the treatment plan. Chris names the three changes he sees most in practices. Arun explains how Clever Practice uses practice data to fill empty diary slots, show which clinicians are profitable, and cut supply costs. Chris then makes a bold prediction: practice management software as we know it may not survive the next five years. They also cover patient confidentiality, why human hospitality still matters, and the one AI step every practice owner can take now.

Key takeaways

1. AI is already changing three parts of the patient journey: note-taking, treatment planning, and first contact with the practice.

2. The biggest wins for owners are in data: filling gaps in the diary, following up unfinished treatment, and knowing which clinicians make or lose money.

3. Check that every AI and cloud tool you use meets patient confidentiality rules. Don't be the test case.

4. Use AI for out-of-hours calls, but keep people at the front desk. Hospitality is a competitive advantage.

5. Start with your treatment plan conversion rate. With patient consent, record consultations and ask AI to act as a communication coach for your clinicians and treatment coordinators.

Most owners can name their highest biller without thinking about it.

Far fewer can name the one who actually makes them the most money. Not gross billings. Profit, once you have taken out their share, their materials, their lab bills, their nurse, the chair time they occupy and the admin that only exists because of how they work.

Occasionally those two people are not the same person. That is the awkward bit, and it tends to stay awkward because nobody wants to be the one who goes looking.

The same quiet gap sits under the recall list nobody is chasing, and under associate splits that were agreed years ago and have not been revisited since.

None of it ever announces itself. It just sits there being expensive.

So which one do you think catches most practices out? The clinician who looks like the star. The patients who quietly stopped coming back. Or an old agreement nobody has read in years.

Your accounts say you had a good year.

Your bank balance on the 28th disagrees.

Both are right, and nobody ever sits a dentist down and explains why.

So did anyone ever actually explain the difference to you, or did you work it out the hard way?

You can find your lab bill in seconds. Wages, materials, rent, all there in black and white.

Now find the cost of the nurse who left in March.

There's no heading for it. It left as a locum invoice, an empty surgery, a diary with gaps you didn't chase.

You didn't miss it. You just called it a slow month.

What's the last thing that cost your practice real money and never appeared anywhere in your figures?

Most owners have a valuation figure they're carrying around something a broker said, or what a mate down the road got a few years back. That number's gone.

Arun's recorded a short piece on what your practice is really worth today. Two practices can make the same profit and sell for wildly different amounts — and the thing that separates them isn't location or how hard you work.

📺 https://youtu.be/bl6GbD8fboY If you're 2-3 years out from selling, what would you change first?

A principal told us recently that the best money he had spent all year was about £400 on a second card machine for reception.

It cut the queue at checkout, which stopped people slipping out without booking their next appointment. Cheaper than the website refresh and did considerably more.

What is the best small money you have spent on your practice in the last year?

A few years back a client bought a practice against our advice.

The accounts were fine. The problem was the man generating most of the income, a far more experienced practitioner doing specialty work she did not do

.

The numbers were real. They just were not hers. She could not replicate his dentistry, the patients did not take to her, and it came down like a house of cards. She spent the next few years rebuilding from scratch, in the same premises she had just bought

.

The lesson is not "check the accounts". She did. It is that EBITDA has a name attached to it, and it is worth knowing whose.

So the question before you offer on anything: if the highest earner in that practice walked out the day you got the keys, how much of their work could you actually do yourself?

Arun and Uros walk through the whole buying process in the new video, including why banks lend against the valuation rather than the price you agreed:

If you are buying a dental practice, here is a question worth asking before you sign anything.

The person selling you the practice, and helping you arrange the finance... who are they actually working for?

Not you. They are paid by the seller. If they are also arranging your finance, they could be getting paid twice on the same deal.

Not illegal. But it's a conflict most buyers do not spot until they are already in it.

Curious if your adviser is set up this way? Drop a comment or send us a message, happy to talk it through.

Full piece from Arun Mehra (20+ years advising on practice acquisitions) here:

Five years of dental school and almost none of it was about cash flow.

Then you own a practice, and the thing that decides whether you sleep is a number in an account you do not fully understand.

Most people in this room have felt some version of that. Worth knowing which version is the common one.

Vote below. Say more if you want to, or just vote and get on with your day.

Ask any practice owner what keeps them up on a Sunday night, and it is almost never the teeth.

The clinical work is the part you trained for. Years of it. That is the bit you can do in your sleep, and some nights you probably do.

It is everything else that sits on your chest at 11pm. The nurse who has been off more than she has been in. The tax bill you have been not-quite-opening for a fortnight. The decon room kit that is one bad morning away from packing up completely. The associate who used to chat and now just nods on the way past, and you are almost sure you know what that means.

Nobody warned you about this part. You bought a practice thinking the hard bit was the dentistry, and it turned out the hard bit was everything wrapped around it.

So, honestly, what is the one keeping you up this week?

Your lab bill went up. Your nurses' wages went up. Your energy, your materials, your rent, all up.

Your fees? Probably not as much as they should have.

And we all know the reason we hold off. It's not that we haven't done the sums. It's the quiet fear that this is the patient who finally says "that's too much" and books in down the road instead.

So here's the honest question for the room:

When you actually raised your prices, did patients leave? let us know what worked for you?

I’m struggling to fill our new associate’s book and wondered if anyone had any advice. He’s just started and does Mondays. I’ve closed my book on Mondays so he’s the only dentist available. When we offer our regulars their next check up with him (David), they want to stick with me. When patients call for an appointment we offer then Mondays with David but again they want to stick with me. I’ve even incentivised my staff with a bonus payment for each patient booked with David but still no luck. I’ve dropped flyers round all the local businesses and we have a large flyer introducing David on the front desk. I have my staff ringing round patients who haven’t been in for a year or two and we haven’t had any success yet, although we only started doing this 1 week ago. David is away next week and his next day working is Monday 24th and we have just 1 patient booked for that day, for a check up. I’m not sure where to go from here apart from keep ringing around patients who haven’t been in for a year or two. David is really good and patients who do see him love him but obviously he will just leave if this continues. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

I recently had this question from a potential buyer, who has been an Associate for his whole career, but has always wanted his own practice. My view is you are NEVER too late to take that step. His experience as an Associate is priceless, as he would have learnt alot from the clinics he has worked in. Banks will lend, and as long as he a decent track record, but most importantly he has built a range of clinical skills that he can provide to his target patient base.

My answer to him was - Just do it.

If you are thinking about something similar, you can talk to me, I am 53, and I certainly don't think I am at the tail end of my career, those almost 30 years are the springboard to my next 20 or more!

Have a great week.

Nobody tells you that owning a practice means being a dentist until 5pm and a business owner until 9pm.

The clinical bit you trained years for. The rest you're just figuring out as you go.

What's the part of "the rest" that catches you out most?

The dental market feels like it's in an odd spot right now, and I'm curious how it looks from where each of you sit.

A few things seem to be pulling at once: the ongoing squeeze between NHS and private, rising costs on everything from materials to staff, the associate recruitment picture, and patients who are more price-conscious than they were a couple of years ago. Some practices are thriving by leaning fully private; others are finding the NHS side harder to make work than ever.

What I'm genuinely interested in: what are you actually seeing on the ground? Is demand holding up in your area? Are you finding it harder or easier to recruit than a year ago? And if you've made a deliberate shift, NHS to private, adding a specialism, changing your pricing, has it paid off?

No right answer here, just keen to hear how the market feels from inside different practices right now.

Hi all, Thank for joining the Samera Dental Business Community.

Here are your next steps:

1. Introduce yourself in the Welcome Channel.

2. Read through the community guidelines.

If you have any questions, feel free to message me directly

In this episode

White space in the diary, the empty and unbooked surgery time that quietly drains a dental practice, is the single costliest problem a clinic can face. Every lost surgery hour eats straight into your profit, and no amount of external marketing fixes it if the underlying causes go unaddressed. In this episode Arun Mehra and Chris Barrow explain why empty dental appointments appear in the current climate and, more importantly, exactly how to fill them. The starting point is the most valuable and most overlooked asset you already own: your existing patient database.

What we cover

The two layers of cause. The macro picture, where economic and geopolitical fear pushes patients to defer big ticket treatment like Invisalign or crowns, and the micro picture you can actually control inside the practice.

Chris's five in practice causes of white space, which are almost always all in play at once:

Financial due diligence. Not knowing your operating cost per surgery per day, your daily production, or your KPIs, which leads to mispriced treatment plans.

Marketing systems. External, internal and inbound marketing not firing as they should.

The patient journey. Everything from front of house through to treatment plan presentation.

Digital workflow. Under using intraoral scanners, AI x ray diagnostics and AI note taking, all of which lift treatment conversion.

Team interpersonal skills. The human factor that decides whether a plan converts.

Why some clinicians never have white space while others always do, and how to tell a training gap from a wrong person in the wrong role.

The 90 day plan. Tackle one of the five areas per fortnight and eat the elephant one mouthful at a time.

Recruitment as an X Factor audition. Kiss a lot of frogs, fail fast, and accept you rarely know a hire until three months in.

The practical tips worth stealing

Treat your patient database as your number one asset. During lockdown, 96 percent of UK dental plan patients kept paying their premiums, proof of trust you have already earned.

The Dunbar number in action. Every patient is connected to roughly 150 other people, so a 1,000 patient list puts you one degree of separation from 150,000 potential referrals.

Just ask for the referral. Hand patients a few business cards to pass on, and hold clinicians accountable for doing it. As Harry Beckwith put it, there is no performance without accountability, and no accountability without measurement.

Handwrite the follow up. Chris's advice to a client with a dozen stalled treatment plans was simple: a fountain pen, good stationery and a personal handwritten letter to each patient.

Remember natural intelligence. In a world obsessed with artificial intelligence, the letter, the card and the human touch are what actually reactivate patients.

Books mentioned

Endless Customers by Marcus Sheridan, described as the bible on inbound marketing.

Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, on delivering a hospitality experience patients tell their friends about.

Coming up next

Episode 3 covers treatment plan conversion and how to use artificial intelligence responsibly to improve the patient journey.