Elements for an efficient practice

Making efficiency part of your practice’s culture and key to your brand is a strong selling point. Being known for delivering high quality treatment at an efficient rate is important in light of the fact that dentistry is a patient-orientated industry. After all, everything you do, every skill and technique you learn, and all the new materials, products and equipment you use, are all designed to make the patient’s experience as good as it can be.

Front-desk staff who are able to answer patient queries as satisfactorily as possible could avoid the need for an emergency appointment being booked, keeping the time slot free. Good scheduling is also key to efficiency and you may find that practice management software helps here; more practices are going paperless. Generally, digital solutions are all about presenting accurate details quicker in order that decisions can be made faster.

If your practice has not yet moved over to digital, you may find it hard to resist some of the stunning options available on the market for much longer. You are not looking to swap one way of working for another, this is about combining approaches in order to give patients the very best of both worlds.

The way that you communicate with patients, for example, can be aided, but not replaced by technology. Digital scans can help you show a patient clearly and quickly what the problem is, but trust and the confidence to say ‘yes’ to treatment is something that will be born from a good patient/practitioner relationship. Communication is the bedrock of efficiency; an efficient well-run practice is one that has an open, communicative atmosphere.

Combining treatments in one time slot can also help you to make the most of every appointment, because the patient will need to make fewer visits. Modern dentistry is becoming defined by more treatments that can be completed in a single visit. A streamlined approach, which has led to the development of hard-working materials, means that many procedures simply do not take as long as they did. Direct restorative materials can be placed in a single appointment. Resin-based composites and bulk fills – which offer great handling and a range of other attractive properties – have speeded up the process for many common procedures. For efficient restorative materials, that are high-quality that will save time and aid efficiency, COLTENE comes highly recommended by dentists. Fill-Up!TM is perfect for all Class I and II fillings for when a fast restoration is needed; BRILLIANT Crios composite bloc means reliable, aesthetic and efficient restorations without the need for a separate firing process

True efficiency will never compromise quality. Your patients never want to spend more time in the chair than they need to, but their expectations of receiving stable, functional and aesthetically sound treatment are also higher than ever. An efficient practice is one that is committed to achieving maximum productivity and working in an organised way, using all resources as mindfully as possible to deliver the highest quality service, every time.

To find out more visit www.coltene.com, email info.uk@coltene.com or call 01444 235486

About the author

Mark Allen is General Manager for Coltene