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In this episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors, host Dr. Barbara Hales speaks with Morgan Hamon, CPA and partner at EisnerAmper, about the financial health of dental practices and how professionals can gain control over their profitability. With over two decades of experience helping more than 900 dental practices, Morgan shares actionable financial strategies that dentists can use to build stronger and more sustainable businesses. 

Morgan shares his expertise by outlining practical and strategic approaches that dental professionals can adopt to take greater control over their finances. Rather than simply focusing on cutting costs, he emphasizes the need for a comprehensive understanding of a practice’s financial health. This means recognizing where profits are being lost and addressing the underlying issues that often go unnoticed. Whether it’s inefficient billing, aging receivables, or overspending on supplies, Morgan encourages practice owners to act like CEOs and approach their finances with discipline and strategy. 

He highlights several common areas that often undermine profitability: 

  • Uncollected Revenue: Aging patient and insurance receivables can silently drain profits if left unmanaged. Practices must regularly review and follow up on balances, especially those that are 60–90+ days past due.
  • Broken Billing and Collection Systems: Many practices fail to consistently charge, bill, and collect—missing even one step can jeopardize the entire cash flow.
  • Over-delegated Expense Management: Allowing staff to make unchecked purchases, particularly through platforms like Amazon, can dramatically inflate costs without the owner’s awareness.
  • Lack of Financial Oversight: Without a consistent system to monitor income and expenses, doctors may be unaware of critical trends or errors that impact profitability.
     

By addressing these areas and taking a proactive approach to their business operations, dental professionals can establish more efficient, profitable, and sustainable practices, providing them with both financial peace of mind and greater professional freedom. 

Key Takeaway:
“Running a practice means wearing two hats: clinician and CEO. If you don’t lead the business, the business will lead you.” – Morgan Hamon 

Connect with Morgan Hamon: 

Website: https://www.eisneramper.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgan-hamon-cpa-0a9156153/ 

 

Connect with Barbara Hales: 

Twitter:  @DrBarbaraHales 

Facebook:  facebook.com/theMedicalStrategist 

Business Website: www.TheMedicalStrategist.com 

Show website:  www.MarketingTipsForDoctors.com 

Email:   Barbara@TheMedicalStrategist.com 

Books: 

YouTube: TheMedicalStrategist 

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/barbarahales 

 

TRANSCRIPTION 

Welcome and Introduction 

Dr. Barbara Hales (00:02) Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. I’m your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, and today we have with us Morgan Hamon. Morgan Hamon is very interesting person. He is one where most dentists focus on patient care, but running a profitable practice is a different challenge entirely. I’m sure you all agree. Morgan is a CPA and partner at Eisner Amber, and he has spent over 20 years helping dental practice owners take control of their finances. You know, whether it’s dentistry or chiropractic or traditional medicine, you know, we all know how to take care of our patients from the perspective of our specialty, but very few of us trained in business, and that tends to be our failing, especially when we finally get the hang of it. You know, bureaucracy like moves the bar. So this is where Morgan helps us out. He takes control of their finances, increases profitability and navigate complex tax strategies. And I’d love to propose Morgan as a guest on not only my podcast, but if you guys have another podcast, and it would be a value to your listeners, you know you might want to drop him a line as the former president of HDA accounting group. He built a firm that grew to serve 900 plus dental practices across all 50 states, and now, following a merger with one of the top 20 accounting firms in the industry, he’s continuing to help practice owners make smarter financial decisions, ready to share practical, real world financial insights for dental practice owners, Morgan will break down profitability, taxes and leadership in a way that’s easy to understand, helping dentists build stronger, more financially sustainable businesses. Welcome to the show. 

Morgan Hamon (02:28) Thank you, Barbara, it’s very nice to be here. Thank you for having me on your podcast. 

Diagnosing Profitability Problems 

Dr. Barbara Hales (02:33) Morgan, you normally talk about how to increase profitability by improving cash flow and reducing financial waste. How do you recommend doing that? How to achieve that? 

Morgan Hamon (02:48) Well, our approach is to really, for starters, look at the profit margin. You know what? What is that financial reward that the doctors is realizing from their from their practice? And once we know that number, then we have to set the goal post, if you will, and decide if that’s if that’s appropriate, if the doctors happy with it, we definitely have some opinions on what’s possible for for dental practice, and we’ll, we’ll visit with the doctor. Sometimes more money isn’t always their objective. Sometimes it’s more time. But then once we decide, look, you know, for for the given the size of this practice. You know, once we know that profit margin, we can then decide, look, is it? Is it above average? Is it right where we need to be? Or maybe it’s just lower than everyone would like to see it. If it’s in that final category, you know, that’s where we begin to diagnose. And there’s, from a financial point of view, there’s two factors that impact profit. There’s your expense structure, and then there’s revenue, right? So it’s, if we’re diagnosing, it’s one of those two, the go to first place to look always is expenses, if someone’s profits not where they want it. It’s like, where am I overspending? Or, I think more often than not, it’s more related to the revenue side of the profit equation. And if we’re talking marketing, that could certainly be a factor there too. You know, is there enough money in the first place coming in to realize an adequate profit margin? Or maybe it seems like there should be, but maybe that, maybe that production’s not being collected. Maybe we have some collection issues. We’re not charging billing or collecting appropriately. So it’s really important to diagnose which one it is. You know, if there’s a if there’s a revenue issue, a collection problem, well then we don’t need to go, you know, get give our supply representatives a hard time. You. If that’s not, if that’s not where our attention should be. So that’s, that’s the overall process. Barbara’s, you know, let’s just decide where are we, and if some things needed attention, then we have to diagnose and really decide where our limited time as the CEO of our business, you know, where should we spend that time to have the best effect? 

Common Financial Mistakes and How to Fix Them 

Dr. Barbara Hales (05:20) What are some costly mistakes that health professionals make? And like pointing out, I’m sure is helpful, but how do you help them overcome that? 

Morgan Hamon (05:30) So first is to really identify what, what the issue is. So let’s, let’s, we’ll continue on with our with my example here, let’s say we decide, look, it’s, you know, the expense structure looks okay. Profit Margin is low. So we diagnose that. I diagnose that by looking at receivables. You know, are there? You know, in generally, if we have a low margin, that’ll, that’ll often coincide with a large amount of receivables, particularly a large amount of receivables that are aging out. And so we, once we diagnose that, then we can come up with some action items. Some of those action items will be in my lane, the CPA lane, and sometimes they veer over into like a practice consultant lane. If receivables are the likely culprit, I often advise the doctors say, look, we’ve got a large amount of receivables, if we’re going to quantify that, in my opinion, in the dental world, if total patient insurance receivables, the complete total, if those exceed one month of average production, I think that’s high when we peel back the onion, if you will. And we see a large amount of those receivables over 60 days, over 90 days, I advise look, go to your practice software, print out every patient balance that is currently 61 to 90 as of today, right? The reason I picked 61 to 90 is that that’s recent. That means we saw that patient between two and three months ago. This is happening right now. If somebody’s had their practice 15 years and we go looking over 90 plus, there could be stuff in there from 15 years ago. But if we look at 60 to 90 now we isolate that this is activity that happened within the last two or three months. And the question you’re asking yourself, you go one by one, why is this here? Was the insurance claim not filed correctly? You know, should the patient have received a statement? I’ve heard stories of where, you know, maybe it’s a small town, and the staff knows everybody. They know the patients, and they feel they feel bad with them, or bad for them, so they let them leave with maybe without paying. Maybe they’re supposed to pay before they go. So you just have to look for anything systemic and hopefully identify a common cause. And once you know that, then we can go to work on it. And this is where it might veer off into the consultant lane. We can diagnose as the CPA and the accountant. I can diagnose if I can’t operate on the practice so if insurance claims just aren’t being filed correctly, well, I’ve never done that. We’re gonna have to get some help to solve that, but it’s really important just to find out where, where should we spend that limited time we have? 

How Morgan Got Started in Dental Finance 

Dr. Barbara Hales (08:31) How did you get into this to begin with? 

Morgan Hamon (08:34) Luck and opportunity. One of our very first clients was was a dentist that not only owned several dental practices, but also, you know, did had a seminar for dentists to help them, because he was fabulously successful. And so it just ended up being just a good relationship where we got into that, that dental, the dental field, just for me personally, it was just a really, really good fit with dentists. I’ve always enjoyed working with, with business owners, professionals and dentists in particular. So we just realized there’s a lot of value you can add as an as a very niche specialist, laser focused on one industry. And it just so happened that we found our way to the dental space and stayed there, never looked back. 

Dr. Barbara Hales (09:25) okay? But when you were a child, you know, maybe say, I want to be a policeman or a fireman, you know. I mean, like the average child doesn’t say, Well, you know, exciting, you know, I think I’d like to be a CPA. It has a good ring to it, yeah. So it’s like, what  happened? 

Morgan Hamon (09:44) Yeah. Well, so being a CPA was the last thing I ever wanted to be as a child. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I wanted and so my family’s all CPAs, my dad, brother, cousins. I mean, definitely in our DNA, I was no choice. I. Is the rebel. All right, so I, I went to college. The Navy paid for my college, university of Arizona, and then the day I graduated college, I was commissioned as an officer. I went right into the Navy. So I spent 11 years in the Navy, flying F eighteens. I was a West Coast guy. It was, it was a lot of fun and but, but most of them did most, most my navy buddies now are pretty senior captains with United and Southwest and because I it just didn’t feel like a good fit for me. I love flying, but I just felt private industry was, for me, a better fit for myself. So I left the Navy, and that’s what I did, and I ended up going back to school, got a master’s degree in accounting, sat for the CPA exam along that time in there, my dad, career, CPA, we were both honestly needing a job, needing something to do. So we, we basically did a startup, which turned into HD accounting group, and so it, you know, life, life takes you places, and you just, you never, never pass up a life changing opportunity. It was very clear when this all came to fruition, that, look, if we, if we apply ourselves, give it everything we have, this could be really special, and that’s ultimately what happened so But to answer your question, yeah, going from being a fighter pilot to CPA, pretty unusual career track there. But I, you know, I enjoy I took accounting classes in my undergrad. I enjoyed it. I have an aptitude for it. And so, you know, do really well at it. It’s a different challenge. But, you know, as a kid, to your point, Barbara, I said, if you looked ahead, I’m 54 here in a couple of weeks. Oh, thanks in advance there. But if you’d asked me as a teenager, hey, you know, when you’re 54 you’re going to be a CPA, and you know, you know, work for this big, big firm, I would have said, No, that’s not what I want to do. But you know, what do you know? What do you know when you’re 15. 

Bloom Where You’re Planted 

Dr. Barbara Hales (12:18) Are you down? It’s, you know, a lot of careers, or just things that people just fall into from exposure. 

Morgan Hamon (12:25) Well,There’s a saying I’ve heard, you know, over the over the years, including in the Navy, because even in the Navy, you don’t quite know where you’re going to end up. I mean, you go, you go to to on a navy scholarship. There was no guarantee. I was going to be a pilot. That’s what I wanted. There’s little risk involved. You know, you had to get good grades, work hard, hopefully get what you want. And then when and then when you become a pilot and go into flight training, there’s no guarantee you’re gonna fly F 18. It’s like you got to be do a good job and have aptitude. So there was a saying that the Navy told us, listen, you’re going to go. Needs of the Navy is kind of where, ultimately, where you’re going to end up. You got to bloom where you’re planted, alright? And so I’ve always thought of that like wherever, wherever you’re planted, you gotta bloom where you’re planted, right? And then, you know, if you work hard and maybe want to go different direction, then you have that, that that flexibility and opportunity. 

Financial Blind Spots and Their Costs 

Dr. Barbara Hales (13:12) What financial blind spots in health practices that could cause owners thousands, you know, what are some of them? And, you know, how do you address them? 

Morgan Hamon (13:25) I think, I think the most common is, you know, our in our world, so, private, private dental, you know, these doctors receive an incredible, incredible amount of education and training and clinical skills. What they’re not taught is how to run businesses, and so if they you know, they could be the most amazing clinician. And now they’re owning a practice because they want. They want what everybody wants when you own a business, right? You want to you want to make a nice living. You want to have some control over your life. I want to be working towards something that’s going to have value in the future, but nobody really teaches you how to do that, and unless you identify that as the separate skill set that you need to invest in and develop, you know, you could struggle. We work with a lot of startup practices, and over the years, we’ve had some really dig a hole early on because they don’t understand the fundamentals of billing and collecting, and if that process is broken, and here’s, here’s, like, a practical example, they’re starting the practice up. We need somebody to bill insurance and make sure that’s happening. So we’re going to hire a billing insurance coordinator. I’m going to read the resumes, and, like, we’re going to hire this person. This is it. Boy, they they know it, but the doctor doesn’t really understand it. They’re hoping that employee understands it, and that that employee really doesn’t know, like, maybe they’re really good at interviewing, they got a really nice resume, and they sure look busy at work, but it’s just not happening. I mean, I’ve had, I’ve had difficult conversations with doctors where this is exactly what happened, and then three months into their startup, there’s no money. In the bank, because that person is not is incompetent, but the doctor doesn’t really fully understand that process to supervise them correctly. So I, you know, I think it is and it’s complex. I mean, the insurance world, you know that many of our clients could tell you it’s like, not their favorite aspect of the business, but you really have to understand it. So if there is, I went to a business seminar a long, long time ago, Barbara, and there was a saying I remembered very, very carefully, very well a seminar. And it said, Look, when you own a business, you have to charge bill and collect. Two out of three. Doesn’t cut it. Think about that. You gotta charge bill and collect. There’s no partial credit for two out of three. You got to do you got to it’s got to do all of them. And so the doctors, where they just, they don’t have that established as well as they should in their practice, are going to suffer financially. So that’s one aspect where I think it’s a real kind of a hazardous area, particularly for new practice owners. The other area, and we’ve talked a lot about the revenue side of the profit equation. The other side is the expense side. If you over delegate that I’ve seen that get some doctors into trouble, too specific to a dental practice, if we just consider office supplies, which not a huge line item on the P and L, generally, those office supplies should be less than 1% of Total practice collections. We’ve seen practices where it’s running like 4% Wow. And you consider, you know, if it’s a million, you know, a million dollar product, $1.5 million practice, that that turns up being a large amount of money, and the doctor has no idea, because they just say, hey, my my people are going to order what they need. And then, if that’s the case. I’ve seen this so many times. I can tell you right now, we dive in Amazon every day ever. It’s like an addiction, hey? But it’s only 60–70 bucks, yeah. But when you’re doing it three, four times a day, that adds, I mean, we’ve seen we’ve got dug into it, and it is like the Amazon list is just unbelievable. So we have to tell the doctor, they gotta get a hold of this. It should not be a free for all, for the staff to just get on an order. You know, should not be ordering box of gloves if you got a crate in the back room that under a bunch of stuff that nobody’s seen. 

Controlling Inventory and Preventing Overspending 

Dr. Barbara Hales (17:13) That people get boxes of gloves from Amazon. 

Morgan Hamon (17:17) Yeah, well, they get supply. You gotta control your inventory. You don’t want to buy things you don’t need. I’m just using that as an example. You don’t want to you don’t want to order, order supplies. And actually, I was kind of an incorrect example, because that’s dental supplies, probably. But the point being is you got to control your inventory. You don’t want to be buying things you don’t need, just because people are used to buying them, or, you know what, maybe they like getting on Amazon. But you got to control that on the expense side, same thing with clinical supplies, although I will tell you, that is a benchmark we closely track, incidentally, that’s been going down over the years, not up. I don’t know about medical, medicals, that’s not our world, but dental certainly is our world. But those have come down quite a bit and continue to go down, just as a side note. But I think, I think dentists are pretty attuned to monitor that one. But there’s some other, there’s some other line items that can quickly get out of control. 

Scam Invoices and Financial Oversight 

Dr. Barbara Hales (18:12) You really have to, you really have to keep a very strict eye on it. I have a story that I’d like to relate here, and that is well for me, you know, I had nurses that were placing orders when our supplies were down. They knew what we needed, but I was the only one that had control over the checkbook and and consequently, the bills, because if you have the manager in your office, you know, write the checks bills. Bills come in, they write, they write the check for it. What do they care? It’s not their money. They’re not really looking or they’re not aware of whether this is the correct invoice or not, because somebody else placed the order, and they’re just writing the check for it, and it’s not their money. So you know, that really is a recipe for disaster. And I would, I would get these pills, and I would look at the surgical supply place that, you know, said we got this amount of boxes for surgical gloves and gauze and whatever else. And I’d look at the name, and then the name didn’t mean anything to me. It wasn’t the vendor that we normally used. And so I would ask, you know, one of the people that placed the order, and she go, No, I never dealt with them. The thing is, this that we would get, you know, like scammers, even then, like, at least once a month, and you’d get a bill, and everything looked like it was a bona fide bill, but it was a scam. And, you know, I would call them up and I’d go like, hey, you know, like, I got this bill from you. So, you know, for the surgical supplies. And they’d go, yeah, and I’d go, so do you mind telling me who you are? Because you are my vendor. And they’d say, Oh, you don’t have to pay that. This is just an advertisement. I said, you know, like, I don’t really see anywhere on here, right? Says advertisement, so you know, if they could collect, you know, two out of 10, they’re still making quite a handsome [profit]. 

Accounts Payable Systems 

Morgan Hamon (20:52) You know, what you just described is a professionalized accounts payable process in a business where you know you should be paying off the invoice rather than the statement. You get an invoice, you pair that with a purchase order. Is this what we ordered? Did we actually get it? Is it an acceptable condition? Yes, yes, yes. Clear to pay. Most and our clientele are private dental practice owners. They don’t they don’t have accounts to payable, accounts payable department. So you’re hoping you have a sharp office manager or administrative employees to have to be heads up. Many of our clients have their vendors on just auto pay on the credit card too. So, but that you raise a very good point. I think it’s prevalent in just in the accounting world, you know, we get all kinds of fictitious bills from saying, Hey, this is Intuit, and you’re about to expire, and we’re going to take everything away. And, yeah, you just, you have to, it’s all nonsense. Of course, you have to be very 

Dr. Barbara Hales (21:56) Yeah, parts in your mouth, and you want to take action, riight?  

Morgan Hamon (21:59) But you you raise a very good point is that those types of scams are private, prevalent in every every industry, and continue to be very creative. And the point is that you really have to to scrutinize every bill, like you said, and not just be in a hurry and just pay because they’re counting on, you know that 10–20% of people to fall for that scam. That’s a really, really good point. 

Leadership and Practice Success 

Dr. Barbara Hales (22:24) Yeah, so you know, you you have a lot of experience and exposure to a lot of different practices. What would you say makes the difference between the successful practices and the rest? 

Morgan Hamon (22:37) I think it all comes down to the doctor and how well they run their practice, how effective they are as a business leader. It is a separate skill, and I think this applies to any small business, whether you’re an accountant, an attorney, a doctor, your success is your your technical skill, which like for for my world, that’s a practitioner, and in your world, our dentist world, that’s as a clinician, those skills are important, but it’s your skill set as a business leader, where we see the most successful clients, we know who they are, we can see it again. And it’s not always the dollars Barbara. Sometimes it’s, it’s the whole package, you know, like, if I, if I, I’ll just, I think of a close friend of mine, longtime client. Does very well, very successful, very good dentist. He works 28 precisely. It’s very 28 hours per week. That’s very important to him. And so more money, although, you know, he does very well, more money isn’t the sole objective. Protecting that lifestyle is also objective. And he’s in a position where he’s got the full package, and he get he can have it all, and it’s because he’s an effective business leader. He inspires his employees. He creates an environment people want to be. The patients feel comfortable. It’s a great patient experience. He runs a good ship. Has everything’s very well designed. He invests in the practice everything state of the art. The employees look up to him. He leads from the front. He treats people well. Those are the those are the doctors that have the most successful practices, in my opinion, is they’re really good at leading their practice. The dot the clients that struggle. I think they, they, they are very likely, I shouldn’t say very likely. I think it’s they may be a great clinician, but the business side is just maybe not their passion. You know, sometimes people buy a practice and they think, Gosh, this just isn’t what I thought it would be. I’d rather. Or go back to being an associate, that that’s that can happen. Those are the practices that struggle, not because the person isn’t smart and capable. It’s just, you know, that skill set, either they don’t have an interest in it, they didn’t acquire those skills, because you do have to acquire those skills. You’re not born with them. You’re not being a good clinician or being a good practitioner. Doesn’t mean you’re a good manager, good leader. 

Motivating the Team 

Dr. Barbara Hales (25:21) Well, though, you know, I really melted it down to the most simplest, you know, ways to look at it. I called my staff in. We’re all together, and I go, so, so we’re just going to say it like it is, the more money I make, the more money you make, right? Make no money. You make no money. See how that works. 

Morgan Hamon (25:49) Yes, you have to have profit to in order to share the profit. 

One Actionable Tip 

Dr. Barbara Hales (25:55) So for our listeners, what is one tip that you could tell them that they could implement right away? 

Morgan Hamon (26:03) Right away, I would say, unique to our world, private dental practice owners make sure you have an effective end of day close out to ensure that what was posted as collected in your practice management software is actually what happened. There should be a segregation of duties so one person isn’t responsible for the whole thing, and they should present that to you every day. This is what was posted in the practice software. And this ties directly to, let’s say, the batch deposit slip from your credit card terminal. You know you need to be checking those numbers every day. Have the staff prepare it for you. You look at it. It will only take five or 10 minutes of your day. But when you do that, you set the proper control environment in your practice. It sets that tone at the top that we take this serious. This is professional business, and this is important. It needs to tie out. So if, if the practice owner is is just busy and just assuming there aren’t managers, it’s all going to work out somehow. I would say, let’s not do that. Develop an effective end of day. Close out. Check it every day. Have it be very conspicuous that you’re checking it every day. You’ll sleep better at night, your practice will run tighter, and you’ll have the right tone at the top for your office. 

Closing Remarks 

Dr. Barbara Hales (27:21) Well, I think that that’s a good tip. This is another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors. You have been listening to your host, Dr. Barbara Hales, with Mark Hamon, and the way in which you can reach him will be in our show notes. It’s been a pleasure to have you here today. Till next time.