States are continuing to open back up and reduce restrictions as more COVID-19 vaccines roll out, which means families will gradually feel safer going to the dentist if they haven’t already. As dentists and orthodontists get busy again, now is the perfect time to reassess your office’s workflow and make any changes that could improve efficiency. In this article, we’ll offer some ideas to consider when evaluating your team’s workflow.
Are You Implementing Time Blocks?
When team members need to be highly active and productive, they tend to try to multitask, but a better solution is to create time blocks.
When creating time blocks, determine what needs to be done in a given day/week and set time blocks each day to address those tasks. For example, maybe from 7 AM to 10 AM you focus only on dental veneers, and then from noon to 3 PM you see dental braces patients. Similarly, your front desk team can focus solely on billing for a couple of hours a day before switching to other tasks. The good thing about time blocks is that each individual can set their own time blocks and they can adjust accordingly. Soon enough you will see a positive difference in your team and realize each member is much more focused and more productive.
Do Dental Braces Progress Photos Take A Lot Of Time After Hours?
There are plenty of different mobile apps for orthodontists, each of which is designed to make them more efficient and improve the patient’s experience. OrthoPhoto is the newest app designed for orthodontists as well as dentists that offer dental braces treatment and/or Invisalign, which enables dentists to take dental photographs of their orthodontic patients’ mouths over the course of their braces treatment. With OrthoPhoto, instead of taking photos on a braces camera, uploading them, cropping them, and placing them into a slideshow, OrthoPhoto App automatically does it with the snap of your smartphone camera. The revolutionary mobile application automatically places the images in the correct order and into a template that organizes them in the proper crop, which is then saved in the corresponding patient’s file. Dentists who treat braces patients no longer need to work after-hours to sort through clinical braces progress images. Download it today on the App Store or on Google Play.
Is Augmenting Paperwork Slowing Your Practice Down?
A lot of patient paperwork means patients are slowed down, which means your staff is slowed down. Let’s face it, dentist appointments can be a dread for many, and patients need to go back to school or work after their appointment, so the less time they spend waiting, the better for them and for your team. There are a few ways to make wait times next to nothing, each of which involves reducing paper clutter, including:
- Providing new patient paperwork through an online portal
- Asking patients ahead of time if any of their info has changed
- Invest in a cloud-based practice management software that makes organizing and delegating a much smoother process.
The Takeaway
Dentists are getting busier as more vaccines become available, and they need to anticipate this increase in work. There are a number of ways to assess and improve your orthodontic practice’s workflow, and small changes quickly add up.
