How to Improve Productivity At Your Dental Practice By 30% and Get Home In Time For Dinner

Take a moment (like you have time to spare!) and imagine these scenarios:

1. Your current staff can actually get all of their work done
2. You could see 30% more patients with your current resources
3. You could get home in time for dinner

Imagine — if you will — a world where your wait times are decreased and your patients are happier. It’s possible, but it’s going to take an honest look at existing processes and workflows, as well as looking at how your dental practice currently allocates the resources you have available now. The general rule of thumb is that 30% of the activity in any type of office is wasted, but that tends to be even higher in medical and dental offices (as you probably already know). The more useless labor and redundancy you can eliminate, the more you’ll see productivity increase and the fewer mistakes that will be made. By doing a careful review of all or some of the processes in your dental practice, you can expect to see increases of productivity of 30% or more in the areas you address.

All work that occurs in your practice — productive and nonproductive is part of a process. Your staff, even those who are not directly involved with the processes you are analyzing, must be included in this project; the knowledge they have about the day-to-day functions at your dental practice is invaluable. Not only that, but staff buy-in promotes sustained change. Here’s how to begin the process in your own practice:

1. Choose The Exact Process You’d Like to Streamline

Even though you may feel ambitious and want to tackle part of your practice’s workflow that is causing major problems in your dental practice, it may be helpful to refine your process by practicing on something smaller and not as crucial to your practice’s day-to-day operations.

2. Ensure that you can answer this question before you begin: ‘What should the process accomplish and why is it that important?’

Use this as the yardstick for your future evaluations — take the time to clearly state the purpose and value of the process…even taking the time to write it down. This step is the only step that you must do on your own — it should not be delegated.

3. Write Down Every Step In the Order It Should Be Completed In

Once you have everything written down, do a second pass to ensure that you didn’t leave anything out. Add the missed tasks in and then do another pass.

4. For Every Step You List, Ask Staff:

• What Does This Have to Do With Your Organizational Goals?

If it doesn’t add to your goals, eliminate it. If it doesn’t do much, eliminate

or combine with another step.

• Is there another step that is performing the same function?

If so, which one is the most efficient and favorable?

• Is there a better way?

Is there a toll that wasn’t available when the process was first developed that can help your office achieve your organizational goals?

• Could a step be added and have a positive impact on the entire process?
  Would it help to sort a previously unsorted list? Would a paper report be easier than a digital version?

5. After You Amend Processes, Ask:

• Are Additional Steps Necessary?
• Are Steps in Logical Order?

Attempt alternative sequencing to see if you can further refine the process.

• Is Process Intuitive?

Will it be easy for your employee to remember the process?

• Are Any Steps Error-Prone

What can be done to minimize or eliminate errors in work? If it cannot be eliminated, what does the approval process look like so that it can be ensured that it’s done properly?

6. Once You Implement, Choose Another Process and Start Over

Continue until satisfactory progress can be seen in your dental practice.

The only difficulty in this process is finding the time and remaining disciplined to complete an analysis of processes and implement improvements. Each successful iteration frees up resources and makes it easier for you to move forward to address other problems. Morale improves because office operations are on an upswing. Stress is decreased because there is time to actually do what needs to be done. When you discover that automating patient management processes will save you time and labor resources that you can spend doing other tasks, please reach out to our on-boarding specialists at Curogram.