Guide to Efficient Dental Scheduling

 
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When digitalization has become common in every aspect of people’s lives, and small businesses are committed to a growth-driven economy, any slight inefficiencies of your dental practice have become much more unforgivable.  

While your patients lead busy lives, any improvement to make your practice more efficient is much valued.

Before we delve into the reasons to improve patient scheduling, let’s give your dental clinic schedules a health checkup.

  • Do you frequently experience appointment gaps? 

  • Do your patients constantly wait longer than 30 minutes for an appointment? 

  • Are your recent schedules causing you and your staff stress? 

  • Do you rush to finish one appointment just so you can make it in time for the next? 

  • Are there frequent no-shows/cancellations? 

If you experience two or more of the above-mentioned problems on a regular basis, your dental practice has major schedule issues and requires urgent solutions.

 

What could be the causes of poor dental scheduling?

  • Poor team communication 

Communication is always the key to effective teamwork. Make sure your team members can always reach one another and every message is delivered clearly and efficiently. Every staff, full time or part-time, should be well informed of the schedules 

  • Poor understanding of procedure time and flow 

Before rushing into coordinating your clinic schedules, you should have a clear understanding of the time and flow of each procedure. It is crucial to reserve the right amount of time for your dentists, medical assistants, and patients. 

Without clear guidelines and protocols of your practice procedures, you can never achieve effective appointment scheduling.  

  • Lack of delegation 

The lack of delegation prevents your dental practice from achieving higher production goals. It also contributes to the burnout of many dentists.  

Delegate as much non-dentistry work as possible to your assistants, and leave the cleaning and polishing work to your hygienist if you have one to avoid burnouts. Always focus on primary dentistry procedures that brings more value to your dental practice.

Meanwhile, the team should discuss and agree on the benchmarks, quality standards, and the different priorities relative to other tasks for your dental practice. 

  • Late patients 

Patients who are chronically late and those who fail their appointments can be quite a disruption to your dental schedule.

Sometimes late coming and ‘no-shows’ can be easily reduced by sending your patients automatic appointment reminders and scheduling follow-up appointments promptly.  

If you as a dentist are constantly late for appointments, you are telling your patients they can be late too, because nobody likes waiting, so they will just show up late the next appointment. Don’t let this endless cycle happen to you, be professional and show up on time on every appointment. 

  • Lack of a good dental software 

It is obvious that a poor scheduling software or the lack of a digital scheduling system can be frustrating.  

Most importantly, even with a quality dental software in place, your staff should be trained properly to maximise its benefits and improve team productivity.

 

How to avoid a broken dental schedule?

  • Train your staff to schedule follow-up appointments with patients immediately after the first appointment 

  • Delegate as much non-dentistry work as possible to your staff 

  • Conduct daily team meetings to run through the entire day’s schedule 

  • Upgrade your dental software 

  • Train every staff to use the dental software properly 

 

Why does a good dental schedule matter?

The number one complaint that makes many patients leave a dental practice is always that they are never treated on time.  

An efficient dental schedule is meant to maximise productivity and most importantly, make your patients feel their time is respected.  

 

Benefits of an efficient dental schedule

  • Appointments are always on time

  • Satisfied patients

  • Better patient retention rate

  • Improved productivity

  • Improved overall dental practice efficiency

  • Stress-free dental practice

When your patients are satisfied with your dental service, they will keep coming back and even refer you to their family and friends.

 

How to create a balanced dental schedule

Conduct procedure analysis 

Instead of guessing on the right amount of time for your practice, hold a team meeting and conduct procedure analysis for each of your major procedures.  

The key points of each procedure you need to identify include: 

  • When the dentist is with the patient and for how long. 

  • When the assistant is with the patient and/or with the dentist and for how long. 

  • How long will the patient be in the clinical area. 

  • How long the treatment room (operatory) is occupied. 

Such procedure analysis will give your scheduling coordinator clear guidelines in reserving dentist time, assistant time, patient time, and operatory time.  

Create the ideal day schedule formula with ideal production goals 

Establish a formula for your daily schedule with achievable daily production goals. It also helps to reduce practice stress by allowing your team to maintain a consistent daily workload. 

  

Choose a better dental software with an integrated scheduling system 

While many scheduling systems claim to sync with your dental practice management software, they can only read the schedule instead of writing to it. You still have to manually enter the schedule into your management system once appointments are confirmed.  

Undeniably, having an integrated scheduling system that automatically enters appointment details into your practice management software can save you much valuable time.  

Not only can the scheduling system of UNO Dental Practice Software help you manage your schedules effortlessly, it also comes with automated follow-up appointment tools that easily help you increase patient engagement and retention. You can track your patient flows, monitor business performance, and identify potential marketing opportunities to expand your influence.  

Not to mention the function to send reminders and track upcoming appointments. It helps you greatly reduce cancellation and ‘no-shows’ while making sure you run your practice on time.  

UNO Dental software tools for scheduling: 

  • Multi-locational appointment management 

  • Appointment reminders 

  • Shared schedule to all staff 

  • Follow-up list for unscheduled patients 

 

Run an efficient dental practice with UNO Dental Software

 

Conclusion

Greater productivity, increased profitability, and reduced stress of your dental practice start with efficient dental scheduling. Contact UNO Technologies to know more about UNO Dental Management Software for a fuss-free, streamlined clinic workflow!