Read about five strategies successful practices follow daily.
Updated 6/30/20
Every day your practice competes with other dental practices that have these goals (or something similar):
‘Minimizing time and budget spent on tasks while maximizing productivity and providing high-quality patient care.’
To achieve these goals, your practice must do what highly productive dental practices do. Below are five strategies that successful practices follow daily. How many of these strategies do you use?
1. Hold Daily Huddles
Daily team huddles allow your team to review the schedule and talk about how to achieve your production goals. Huddles help everyone prepare for the day, take responsibility for their roles and anticipate issues and opportunities that may arise with the day’s patients.
2. Communicate Quickly and Effectively
Highly productive practices keep in touch with team members throughout the day, using technology such as instant messaging, two-way radios and the office intercom. This allows them to communicate quickly without interrupting their work and walking around the office trying to find the person or information they need.
3. Provide a Happy Work Environment
Happy workers are more productive. When your team is well-informed and working in harmony (thanks to your daily huddles and intra-office communication), it improves their ability to solve problems and handle stress each day. This in turn builds confidence, team morale and productivity. Highly productive dentists smile more often and take time to share a few words of appreciation with individual team members every day.
4. Automate Common Tasks
Productive practices save hours of time each day using practice management software that automates time-consuming tasks such as:
- Updating patient records
- Billing
- Sending appointment reminders
- Monitoring insurance claims
- Checking insurance eligibility
- Making clinical notes
5. Track Practice Performance
Highly productive dentists understand that “what is measured improves.” If you want to improve practice productivity, you must measure it. Your practice management software should allow you to track certain key performance indicators (KPIs). The most important KPIs for productive dental practices to measure and track are:
- Active patient base
- Hygiene and doctor production
- Schedule management
- Case acceptance
- Collections
- New patients
If your practice already uses three or more of these five strategies, you’re on your way to higher productivity. To stay ahead of your competitors, follow all five strategies daily.
Learn More
Download the free eBook called Tracking Your Practice Productivity for more ideas. Visit www.Dentrix.com/Solved.
Originally published in the Dentrix eNewsletter, February 2016
