Set Your Dental Practice Up for Success with These Strategies

The goal of any dental practice is to be more productive and to grow. Optimizing your schedule and your daily operations can help foster a more profitable practice. By maintaining a more productive schedule, you can allow for more organic growth of your practice. We’ll take a look at a few strategies you should consider implementing to help streamline your scheduling. 

1 | Create a Template

First, ask yourself what an ideal schedule looks like. Keep this ideal schedule in mind while you design your template. Then think about what kind of schedule will help you be the most productive. For example, the dentist won’t want to leave in the middle of a large procedure for a small follow-up with another patient. 

It’s recommended that high-production visits, such as crowns, bridges, implants, or complex cases, be scheduled in the morning, while shorter visits be scheduled after. The goal with this is that if the schedule falls apart, you’ve still met your goal for the day. Don’t forget to also build emergencies into the template schedule, trying to fit those into the earlier parts of the day. 

2 | Creating Reliable Patients

Consider asking patients to schedule their next appointment while checking out from the current one. This can help patients feel like they are getting even more value from their appointments, and they are more likely to keep those appointments! That means less last minute cancellations that leave holes in your schedule. If a patient is not wanting to schedule their next appointment, gently remind them that your practice is typically booked out for several months, and that it is in their best interest to schedule early. 

However, if you have patients who chronically cancel last minute or break appointments for non-emergency reasons, do not pre-schedule these patients. They are taking up your valuable time, nor do they value your time. Place these patients on an “on-call basis” and have them call the day they are free and you can fit them in if your schedule allows. 

3 | Priority List

It is inevitable that someone may have to cancel for unforeseen reasons. So who should you call to fill these holes? Preparing for these last-minute cancellations by keeping a priority list can help you fill holes and limit stress. When scheduling patients, ask if they would like to be placed on your priority list, so if a slot opens up earlier, you can contact them. This works well for hygiene appointments, appointments needed as soon as possible, and new patients who are eager to begin care. Pro Tip: Utilize your practice software to keep this list and be as specific as possible. For example, if a patient is only available on Mondays and Thursdays, you can save time by knowing this information and not contacting them on Wednesday for an available time slot. 

Key Takeaways

This is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas to keep your practice schedule efficient and profitable. When examining your schedule, look at the recurring holes, gaps, and problems that you see. This will help you develop the right strategies to fix those issues. By creating greater efficiency in your scheduling, you’ll streamline your practice and find that it becomes much more profitable and organized!