As a leading dental practice in your community, a big responsibility is placed on your shoulders to deliver excellent dental care to your patients while always keeping your staff members’ best interests in mind.
Highly satisfied patients and staff is an indicator of well-run organization — and it doesn’t come easy or occur by chance. If your office plans to scale and expand in 2022, sustaining robust operations takes on even greater importance.
Today’s tech and advancements let dental professionals maintain excellence even as their practices evolve and take on greater challenges. With streamlined or automated processes, dental practices are equipped with the tools to reach new heights and expand capacity to intently focus on patient care. Here are some examples of how technology and people-first cultures are reshaping strategies for smart and sustainable growth.
Digitalization of everything
The latest workforce technologies rely on automation and daily digitalization.
Repetitive and redundant administrative tasks can drain away much-needed resources and time. Many tools are designed to tackle these necessary but time-consuming tasks that keep your office running.
Not only will these tools save time, but they are also programed to reduce human error, which can also create a more agile and efficient system for record keeping and tracking. Digital patient forms, for instance, directly load into the system and safely store important patient data that’s immediately accessible.
Automated appointment reminders and follow-up emails are other functions that will save time and let your patients know that you’re on top of things.
Patient experience enhancements
Enhancing the patient experience is achievable if two conditions are met. The efforts must not exhaust staff and they should align with what the customer wants.
A good first step is to survey patients and then research what other comparable dental offices are doing to make the most out of the patient experience.
Patients generally respond well when they can make and reschedule appointments with little effort. Maybe this means opening appointment bookings to text SMS technologies or by email.
Customers also appreciate flexibility when it comes to payment methods. Offering installment payments and options to pay with cash, card, check or digital wallets shows great awareness of customer needs.
Work culture through leadership
Upholding company values that keep patients and staff happy is no small accomplishment.
No single written policy instills a welcoming and healthy company culture overnight. But it’s a start. In addition to a clear mission statement, dental offices and their leadership must also demonstrate values through actions. Consistency and follow-through will also help build a strong work culture that everyone is proud to be part of.
Leading by example will encourage all staff members to stay on the same page regarding workplace etiquette on patient interaction. With everyone’s contributions, each team member will feel a greater sense of belonging, which can also have a positive impact on employee retention.
Of course, the pandemic skewed the way business is conducted. Through all these changes, it’s also become clear that the workforce embraces newly created norms, such as job flexibility. So that’s another important value to extend to dental staff members to keep them happy and productive.
Constant education opportunities
Employees and patients alike benefit from your communications, especially if it’s educational.
For staff, online seminars, training opportunities and internal memos will pay off. Employees will be better informed, gain new skills and feel more valued. This approach can reduce turnover and in the long term, lower the costs of onboarding and training new employees.
Patients are bombarded with information. So do your best to filter out the noise and present your community with understandable information about their health and well-being. Approachable and honest education will ease any hesitation they hold about dental visits and procedures. The content you put out will also build trust and create bridges between your dental services and your patients.
Want to empower your dental staff to be at their best every single day? Then we’d be happy to discuss how you can more effectively care for your patients. By piecing together the business-side puzzle, you will have the confidence that everything within your organization is running efficiently and with purpose.
We can develop a comprehensive strategy by gaining deep insights into your operations first. Then, we build a customized plan fit for your organization’s vision so you can achieve your goals of creating a seamless patient experience, maximizing profits, maintaining high staff morale and leading the way in patient care.