With 2021 winding down, you may be thinking about new goals for your dental/orthodontic practice–one of them being growth! As we get ready to ring in the new year, now is the perfect time to think about what you can do to generate more patients. In this article, we’ll offer our best tips for scaling your dental practice in the new year.

Invest in Dental Marketing 

Every business can benefit from marketing. After all, a customized marketing strategy will help generate new leads (patients) and help you achieve your growth goals. INFINI Marketing, our partner marketing agency based in Houston, has helped numerous dental and orthodontic offices expand, even resulting in multiple office locations. A digital marketing strategy designed and executed by INFINI may consist of:

• Dental website design
• Google Ads campaign for your dental office that fits your budget
• An SEO strategy that helps your practice get to page 1 on search engines like Google

Update Your Dental Photography With OrthoPhoto App 

Traditionally, dentists and orthodontists use a digital camera to capture their patients’ braces progress. After they get the pictures, they have to spend hours after their last patient leaves for the day in order to upload the images, crop them, place them in a slideshow template, and sort them into specific albums followed by sorting them into patient files. Rather than staying after-hours to handle this task, OrthoPhoto automates this process so dentists can handle their clinical images in a fraction of the time. Using your smartphone, you can take your patients’ braces images right on the application. It automatically places the images into a template that formats them correctly into their respective patient albums. OrthoPhoto App for orthodontists and dentists is compatible with iOS and Android.

Invest in Dental Office Management Software

Going paperless is a great way to modernize your dental practice and operate in a way that keeps patients coming back while also minimizing extra work. This also makes your dental office much more efficient. Going paperless can take a while, but investing in and learning how to utilize a user-friendly software saves time and keeps your team organized when it comes to storing and locating patient records, billing, and booking appointments. 

Encourage and Listen to Patient Feedback 

If you’re planning to grow your dental practice in 2022, one of the best things you can do is ask your current patients what they would like to see and experience in your office! Once you have their feedback, consider it and make a plan. 

Every dentist and orthodontist should make dental photography part of their everyday operations. Having the right tools to take top-quality dental photos serves multiple purposes, so keep reading to learn why dental photos are a necessity and how different cameras for dental photography compare.

Why is Dental Photography so Important For Dentists and Orthodontists?

Dental photography helps dentists and orthodontists accomplish a number of things that contribute to the success of their practice, including: 

• Adding better visuals to their dental website design
• Showcasing their work
• Saving high-quality dental records for their dental braces patients 

Recommended Cameras for Dentists and Orthodontists 

There are a few different cameras used by dentists and orthodontists when they want to elevate their brand with great photography. The two most common dental cameras are as follows:

DSLR Cameras for Dental Photography

DSLR’s, such as those by Canon or Nikon, take beautiful pictures, as well as HD video. Newer cameras even shoot video in 4K, which is excellent for testimonials that you can then upload to your website and social media. Combine a DSLR with a lens that shoots great close-ups and you will take great photos of your patients’ teeth! This makes DSLR cameras ideal because they work for marketing purposes and record-keeping purposes. Unfortunately, DSLR’s are on the pricier side and tend to offer features that may go beyond your needs as a dentist. Because of this, it may not be worth the extra money.

Point-And-Shoot Cameras for Dentists to Take Clinical Braces Photos

As their name suggests, all you need to do is point it and shoot your picture, which is just enough for dentists. The trade-off with these is that the photos may not be the best quality, so even though it works really well for dental and orthodontic record-keeping, it may not be ideal for marketing purposes.

OrthoPhoto App Smartphone Camera for Braces Progress Images

OrthoPhoto has successfully automated the time-consuming process of capturing and sorting dental braces progress images, all without having to drop thousands of dollars on high-tech equipment. With a typical camera–regardless if it’s a point-and-shoot or DSLR camera–dentists have to take the photos, upload them, manually crop and organize them into a file, and then place them into a patient’s record folder.

A single patient may take 15-30+ minutes, so dentists often spend a lot of time after-hours getting this necessary task done. With the OrthoPhoto mobile application, however, dentists can take photos right on their smartphone camera, and today’s smartphones have astounding camera capabilities that keep getting better. Because of this, your phone not only captures great clinical images but also great marketing material. Our mobile app automatically places the braces progress photos into a templated document with the correct crop, size, and order and then places them in a specific patient’s file you designate. This significantly cuts down the time it takes to organize braces photos so dentists can dedicate their energy to other aspects of their job. If you're ready to practice better, more efficient dentistry, then please download OrthoPhoto App for iOS or OrthoPhoto App for Android.

As in-person school starts up again, parents need to start a new routine that varies greatly from the routine they have followed over the last year and a half. With this transitional period comes a lot of changes in your patients’ schedules, which explains why your dental or orthodontic practice may be receiving a lot of cancellations lately. But don’t worry; in this article, we will discuss what you can do to ensure you nurture your existing patients and encourage new patient visits while things are slow. 

Be Flexible And Allow For Simple Scheduling And Rescheduling

Patients find it a hassle to go through so many hoops when trying to schedule or reschedule an appointment. To remedy this, we recommend the following, which will work wonders for keeping your current patients and bringing in new patients:

• Redesigning your website so it allows for online scheduling (though you have to be sure to confirm scheduled appointments with every visitor)
• Allowing for reschedules via SMS text

Invest In Dental Marketing For Your Dental/Orthodontic Practice

Speaking of revamping your dental website design, marketing is a sure way to generate new patient leads but remember that the success of your overall dental marketing strategy greatly depends on the success of your web design. Why? Because Google Ads, Facebook Ads, social media content, and even reviews should all lead viewers and patients back to your website. It also needs to be a seamless and user-friendly experience for the visitor on all devices. INFINI Marketing, our affiliate marketing agency, offers a conversion-optimized Dental Website Package for $249/month. 

Modernize Your Dental/Orthodontic Practice

There are several ways to modernize your practice both in terms of its look/feel and the patient experience. You can read our previous blog about ways to modernize your orthodontic practice. Some notable methods include redecorating the space and also downloading OrthoPhoto App, our revolutionary dental record keeping app. 

OrthoPhoto App is a HIPAA-compliant orthodontic application created by Dr. Kathy Nguyen for iOS and Android. It enables dentists and orthodontists to take clinical images of their patients’ orthodontic progress and automatically saves the records in the correct template and in designated folders. These dental records are also easily exported and dentists and orthodontists no longer need to dedicate extra hours after closing to handle a mountain of patient records. You can download OrthoPhoto for iOS here and for OrthoPhoto for Android here.

Technology has a way of helping most professionals do their job better and more efficiently. This is no different for dentists and orthodontists who utilize OrthoPhoto App as part of their day-to-day operations. In this article, we’ll discuss 3 ways OrthoPhoto is changing the way dentists and orthodontists operate and how this tool helps them practice better dentistry.

OrthoPhoto App Helps Dentists And Orthodontists Save Time

Prior to the release of OrthoPhoto, busy orthodontists, as well as dentists who offer dental braces or Invisalign had to take the time after-hours to upload all of the photos they’ve taken of their patients’ dental braces progress. Once uploaded, they would crop individual photos, place them in the correct format, and send them via email so they could later be stored in the right patient files. On average, a single patient would take 15 minutes, and although this may not seem like much on the surface, 15 minutes per patient quickly adds up when sifting through countless photos. Rather than taking the time to rest and recharge, dentists were stuck at the office until late.

OrthoPhoto App enables dentists and orthodontists to streamline this process right on their smartphones. If you subscribe to OrthoPhoto, next time you take a patient’s braces progress photos, you simply need to select their folder and take the dental braces progress photos right on your phone. The application automatically takes care of the rest and puts your photos into an easily exportable format. Searching for specific photos is also far easier now with the in-app search function.

OrthoPhoto App Encourages A Better Patient Experience

As passionate as dentists and orthodontists are about their jobs, the fact remains that many patients dread their dental appointments, even more so if they are dental braces patients. Most of the time, patients are eager to get in and get out so they can go back to school or work. By letting dentists and orthodontists work more quickly and efficiently, patients also reap the benefits. 

OrthoPhoto App Makes Dental Recordkeeping A Faster, Seamless Process

Our application has various plans that allow for different amounts of patient files. Once dentists and orthodontists pick the plan that works best for them, all of the photos they have taken of their patients’ dental braces progress will remain safely stored and easily found on our HIPAA-compliant app. With its fast loading times, dentists and orthodontists can pull complete dental records in the palms of their hands and in a matter of seconds. 

OrthoPhoto Has Changed How Over 1,000 Dentists And Orthodontists Run Their Practices

With over 1,000 subscribers (and counting) and different plans to meet different needs, we are so excited to see how OrthoPhoto is revolutionizing dental braces care. If you’re ready to elevate your practice with OrthoPhoto, download it here for iOS and here for Android.