A dental practice must be efficient, and the beauty of efficiency is that it can always be improved upon! By being intentional in your practice’s efficient workflow, you will see vast improvements in your team as well as in your patient experience. In this article, we will discuss some warning signs to look out for that indicate your practice could use some improvement in its day-to-day efficiency.
Scrambling Between Appointments
How your team times their different tasks at your office directly affects their individual efficiency and productivity, as well as everyone else’s. If you find that you’re scrambling between patients, we recommend combining treatments when possible. For example, you could consider combining crown prep with another treatment. If you have to do fillings and a crown, starting with the fillings will allow you to complete the crown prep in a more timely manner. If there is any downtime during another treatment, use that downtime to work on something else.
Paper Clutter
Clutter is one of the best ways to impede efficiency. Paperwork is obviously important, but if anyone on your team spends more time sifting through it than working with patients, then this is a clear warning sign that it’s time to reconsider your orthodontic or dental office’s workflow. Going completely paperless takes a long time, but making a little progress every day makes a big difference until, eventually, your office is completely paperless and spends only seconds pulling up important documents.
Mobile Technology, Like OrthoPhoto
Going paperless can begin by improving your paperless dental record-keeping process, so it is completed in an instant. There are many mobile apps for orthodontists, including OrthoPhoto App, which boasts over 1,000 subscribers because many orthodontists and general dentists who offer dental braces are realizing how much this app has streamlined their job.
OrthoPhoto App is our HIPAA compliant orthodontic application that dentists utilize in order to take clinical images of their patients’ dental braces progress. Using your smartphone, take pictures of your patients’ teeth throughout their braces progress. The application automatically places the images into a predetermined template that organizes them in the proper format, and you can assign each document to individual patient folders with ease.
Dentists and orthodontists no longer need to dedicate extra hours after the office is closed to handle a mountain of clinical images that document different phases in braces progress. Download it today on the App Store and on Google Play so you can also practice better dentistry!
