How to Increase Production in a Dental Office

Although dentists should always make delivering the best patient care their top priority, dental practices are businesses that need to be profitable. Dentists who want to achieve a lucrative bottom line can incorporate key principles of business and operations management. Although some steps require nothing more than smart planning, others require investing in resources in order to get better financial returns.

Instructions

• 1

  Hire a dental hygienist to perform routine cleanings. Although many dentists worry about the costs of adding a skilled professional to their practices, hygienists allow dentists to perform services for which only they are uniquely capable. This means dentists can see more patients in a day, which in turn results in greater revenues.

• 2

  Have dental assistants do as much preparatory work as possible. They can perform x-rays, set up tools, discuss the basics of procedures with patients and handle paperwork. The dentist, then, has minimal non-skilled tasks to perform.

• 3

  Select an office capable of having at least two dental chairs, if not three. If you have office space that can accommodate more chairs and exam areas, remodel and expand. A dentist should have the option of having two patients seated. At minimum, it allows the dentist and a hygienist to work simultaneously. With smart scheduling, a dentist can work on one patient while an assistant is preparing or finishing with another.

• 4

  Schedule overlapping appointments. In order to see the most possible patients in a day, a dentist should have one patient seated and prepped while she finishes another. Also, when scheduling appointments, office staff and managers need to consider that the first 10 to 15 minutes of a patient's visit will involve paperwork, billing and insurance issues. True, some dentists hate to risk making patients wait. But a dental practice does better to be busy and have patients occasionally wait five or 10 minutes than be idle because there are fewer patients.

• 5

  Avoid scheduling too many complicated procedures on the same day. Dentists can't always predict how much time complex treatments like root canals and crown inlays will take. When they do take a long time to perform, it can mean not being able to see as many patients and potentially having to cancel or reschedule them. This reduces an office's productivity.