Ease Dental Practice Stress: 5 Solutions Every Office Manager Needs

While certain aspects of life come effortlessly, dental practice management is not commonly recognized as one of those easy endeavors. New challenges are creating more stress for office managers including staffing shortages, increased overhead costs, and AR challenges.

For many practices, the team spends too much time:

• Tracking down patients for recare
• Scheduling and rescheduling to fit patients’ ever-changing requests
• Dealing with complicated insurance forms and reports
• Inputting customer information into your system from multiple software products or paper forms
• Doing excessive amounts of “busy” work, including printing, copying, scanning, and filing

Advancement in technology, especially dental practice management software, helps offices address and alleviate common practice management challenges. If you want to dial down the stress in your dental practice, here are five actionable tips that will help you reclaim the work-life balance you’re missing.

1. Take Control of Your Master Calendar

It seems like you could have a full-time staff member answering voicemails around the clock. It takes forever to call each patient to schedule and often reschedule their appointments. You and your team dedicate a significant amount of time engaging in phone tag with patients, aligning your calendar with theirs while handling insurance matters and more.

For your master calendar, try to:

• Create a color code and tags: Quickly identify appointments by provider, type of service, etc. Simplify the process for your team by using Tags to bundle procedures together for specific treatments to ensure nothing is missed
• Switch to smaller increments: Use 10-minute increments instead of 15-minute ones. According to Dental Economics, this switch can save thousands of dollars in lost production over the course of a year
• Schedule for efficiency: Keep high-production appointments in the mornings to make sure your goals are reached for the day. According to AADOM Member Lan Alexander, DAADOM, this will improve overall efficiency to ensure success even if the afternoon falls apart
• Consider patient self-schedule: You remain in control of your calendar but give patients the opportunity to schedule in a way that works for them

2. Benefit from Automated Software Updates

There’s no worse disruption to your day than when your server is down.

Could the issue be that you’ve been hitting “Update Later” on your security program for the last…365 days? Time to put the practice on pause while you call in your IT technician.

One way to avoid this dental practice management stressor is to commit to regular server maintenance. Get the newest products, download the latest updates and take every security measure you can to protect your system.

But, this is often an impossible task.

Investing in a cloud-based dental practice management software can save you from all of these headaches. A true cloud-based software continually updates your product and security for you, so you don’t have to lift a finger.

3. Simplify Your Dental Practice Analytics

As a dental office manager, keeping your business thriving is always on your mind. But most business reports are difficult to pull and the format doesn’t aid in formulating easy next steps.
Technology like Curve Business Intelligence provides an actionable dashboard of the information most important to dental practice management. The customizable reports can show everything you need to make your business profitable by analyzing:

• Financial information for production, collections, and aging
• Recare dashboards so you know how recare is impacting your dental practice
• Treatment plan overviews to empower you to more easily follow up with patients to schedule outstanding treatments

4. Modernize Your Data Management

Ready to make life simpler for the whole team? It’s time to leave paper in the past.

Paper is slowing your staff down. Retyping paperwork into your computer database is inefficient and can create costly mistakes. Worst of all, paper is vulnerable to floods, fires, and other disasters.

In a matter of minutes, your patient data could be gone.

If you haven’t switched from paper records yet, now’s the time. When patients can fill out forms electronically, it reduces in-office wait time and physical contact with front desk staff – both vital in today’s world.

And it’s better for the environment, too!

5. Garnering Great Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can be tricky for any business, but especially dental practices that rely on word-of-mouth and Google searches to bring in new patients.

And let’s face it, the dentist’s office doesn’t usually top many people’s favorite places list.

Many modern dental offices pay closer attention to the patient experience. Examine the customer’s journey from scheduling appointments and arriving at the office to patient education and billing.

Here are some things you can implement to improve your patient experience:

• Automate: Set up online self-scheduling and automatic text reminders
• Start the “paperwork” early: Have patients pre-fill paperwork online to reduce in-office wait times
• Customize the experience: If you have televisions at your chairs, allow the patient to pick their favorite (office-friendly) show. You could even go a step further and document this in their chart so you can have it ready for next time
• Relieve dental office stress: Offer noise-canceling headphones so patients can listen to soothing music
• Provide patient education: Give staff time to sit down with the patient and educate them on the services they need and why they’re important for overall health

The Solution to Your Dental Practice Management Stressors

Dental practice management can be riddled with difficulties and inefficient processes. Having a truly comprehensive practice management software like Curve SuperHero™ can help you conquer these challenges.

Automating patient communication enhances the patient experience and reduces stress in the office. New innovative technology puts the office in control of the patient experience with self-scheduling, quick fill lists, customizable forms, easy online payments and customizable text or email reminders to reach your patient with the right message at the right time.

Dental practice management isn’t always simple, but with the right technology it can deliver the results you need with consistency. With modern solutions to age-old challenges, Curve SuperHero makes scheduling, billing, patient engagement, imaging, charting, support, training, and more easy so you can focus on your patients and reduce stress.

About the Author:

Kara Heilig, MBA, RDH, PHDHP

A seasoned dental professional, Kara has spent two decades in the “business of dentistry,” seamlessly transitioning from dental hygienist and public health practitioner to dental practice management solutions.
Currently an industry leader in the world of dental SaaS, Kara combines her expertise at the intersection of dental care and software solutions. Enhancing the dental experience for practices and patients alike is at the heart of Kara’s long-standing commitment to advancing industry practices.