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Over the past year, there has been a greater surge in the number of dental practices looking to create an easier, more streamlined patient engagement experience. 

Keeping chairs filled in a dental practice is a constant challenge, and a lack of patients in your dental practice likely means there is work to do in your patient engagement strategy.

At a micro-level, there are a number of options that can keep seats filled and keep them that way. For one, your practice management software should be able to send individualized e-mail and text reminders as their appointment draws closer. Adding onto this, it is an expectation that your dental software should also be able to create a routine text or e-mail schedule for your patients, one week, one day, and a few hours before their appointment to confirm their arrival. With everyone owning a smartphone nowadays, it doesn’t take much for your patient to confirm their appointment in advance or allow you to send an advanced notice to fill a cancelled appointment.

While these individualized, micro-level engagements are effective in building one-on-one engagement, this isn’t all you can do. In fact, to stand out from the crowd of other dental practices doing the same, there are several emerging features and technology you can leverage to further streamline and add to the touchpoints that your patients receive. If you’re aiming to be a true, modern dental practice, keep reading.

At a macro-level, there are several large-scale solutions that can make a very big impact on all your patients. 

Social media is nothing new to anyone – except for how it’s being used in dentistry. While platforms including Facebook and Twitter used to be for connecting with your friends and family, they are quickly becoming a source for local news including what’s going on in your community (including your dental practice). Having an active presence on these platforms can be as simple as an occasional post on what’s new at your practice, updated office policies, and monitoring your online reviews. And speaking of those, social media and other online platforms have completely replaced the Yellow Pages and other printed materials on the go-to resource for where those looking for a new dental practice (or those contemplating leaving their current dentist) will go. This is where your dental software should come in.

Reputation management is a big part of any business’ marketing and engagement strategy, and your dental practice is no different. Being able to retain or draw in new patients, and sometimes all it takes is a patient to glance at the number of 5-star ratings beside your name. That’s where another feature of an all-in-one dental software comes in. Driving satisfied patients to leave reviews online, for others to see, can highlight the quality of the patient experience for others to decide on for themselves. It can be as simple as setting up an automated patient feedback survey at the end of each treatment. For those that are positively reviewed, encourage them to post that same review online.

How has ClearDent been leveraging emerging technology over the past year for Canadian dental practices? 

Beyond the examples listed above, there are additional ways to leverage emerging technology in dentistry and ClearDent has been quick to release a number of these features due to the changing expectations in patient engagement, and all are included in ClearConnect.

Though individualized e-mails have already been discussed, what about those that can reach all your patients at once? For that, look for a dental software that includes a bulk newsletter/communication tool. If there is news to be announced including a new promotion, updated office hours, COVID-19 protocols, these are all necessary pieces of information that would be useful to your entire patient base. Even better, pre-loaded templates can allow you to customize these e-mails depending on the topic (single message, newsletter, etc.) while including your company logo.

Another patient engagement solution is the advancement and introduction of a cloud-based patient portal. Your patient experience doesn’t begin and end with your initial communication and post-appointment follow-up, but also how you can manage everything in-between. Patient portal allows you to control digitally, including the signing of medical documents, filling out questionnaires, and ensuring there are fewer touchpoints for patients (and staff) that can alleviate safety concerns All of this should be accessible in the cloud, with secure and compliant data measures in place – and if you aren’t sure if it is, ask your dental software provider.

If the number of different platforms, solutions, and processes included in this article can seem a bit daunting, don’t let it discourage you. The many advancements in patient engagement over the past year, all due to changing market needs in dentistry, have all began from feedback we have heard from dentists across Canada. Just as you listen to your patient’s feedback, it is important for us to listen to and create solutions for the dental community.

Dental practices across Canada have faced significant challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While protective guidelines have been implemented across all provinces to safeguard patients and staff, the process of adapting to these recommendations has been a learning curve for most practices. The introduction of the patient portal enhances efficiency, helping practices manage these challenges more effectively.

Initially, reevaluating best practices was essential for reopening, but it has now become crucial for eliminating inefficiencies as the pandemic continues. Many solutions and strategies have focused on how to integrate screening procedures with the existing office layout. To assist with this, ClearDent introduced a new feature, Patient Portal, a secure cloud-based access point that allows patients to access and update their records through ClearConnect.

Traditionally, dental offices have relied on longstanding practices, such as handing over a clipboard for quick paper reviews. However, the pandemic has forced a reevaluation of these methods. Even as technology began to reshape the waiting room experience, it took a global pandemic to question whether these approaches were ever truly effective.

In the post-pandemic world, handling paperwork for health history updates or adding a family member to dental care is seen as a logistical challenge. Routine checkups and first-time visits now pose obstacles for many businesses striving to maintain excellent health outcomes. Care providers, administrative staff, and office managers have found ways to keep their offices open, but often at increased costs to protect their teams and patients from COVID-19 risks.

By eliminating the need for records to be updated only in the waiting room or during appointments, Patient Portal simplifies record management for patients. This innovation reduces the reliance on paperwork, tablets, and concerns about the accuracy of file updates, streamlining the process and improving efficiency in the post-pandemic dental practice.

Word of mouth referrals are still as powerful as ever – think of the number of times in your life that you’ve looked for affirmation in your daily decision-making. But instead of seeking reassurance from your physical network of peers, word of mouth has taken online in a huge way, from daily purchase reviews to healthcare referrals. This shift emphasizes the importance of maintaining a positive online reputation, as potential patients often rely on these online reviews and testimonials when choosing a dental practice.

As of early 2019, 97% of consumers are reading local business reviews. Of that almost-everyone group, around 90% admit that positive reviews influenced their decision to try out a new business. In other words, your ultimate strategy will still need to incorporate a public online presence, even if this might be new territory for your practice.

Tools for managing your online reputation are fantastic at being able to consolidate information, automatically ask patients to leave a review after their appointment, and keep you on top of updates as they happen. Knowing when you’ve received a glowing review is a morale boost for your staff, but knowing when you receive a negative one gives you time to act.

Understanding how to respond to negative ads is a hallmark of better ratings. Being courteous, informative, and, when appropriate, apologetic is an opportunity to win them back to your side. With over 80% of consumers saying they read and factor a business’s response into their decision, accepting negative criticism and responding thoughtfully can be as important as getting a great review. Calling them a liar or troll will not get you very far, regardless of who’s right and who’s wrong.

Top Sites for Review

Reputation management software providing you with up-to-the-minute info about what’s being said allows you to quickly respond, making your overall rating easier to manage. Typically for small to medium offices, dipping below an average of 3.4 stars on reliable review sites will actively deter potential patients from even asking if you’ve got room for them. It’s also worth considering what a potential new hire may perceive or learn when Googling your practice’s history.

What if you’re having trouble getting patients to leave reviews online for you? Just like surveys, there are always plenty of ways to grease the wheels of your favourite patients. A review opening with the explanation of being given free dentures to voice their glowing opinion will raise an eyebrow, so it’s best to save the giveaways for just toothpaste and floss samples at the end of an appointment. Inciting your patients with a draw or giveaway, while also expressing that you want their truthful opinion, good or bad, is a fantastic way to get some momentum when increasing your online presence. You can always use your practice management software to set up a survey that automatically sends after every 4th or 5th visit. This makes it easier to grab feedback, without your patients feeling like providing their opinion is a part of each appointment.

As tempting as it may be to go the ‘bot’ route, these moves are becoming easier and easier to spot. Going from 35 followers to 10,000 in a week, without staring in a major movie or becoming a nationally elected politician, makes for obvious fraud. The same applies if every review you have is 5 stars, and the reviews themselves are the same 6 or 7 different sentences copied and pasted. Your patients and potential patients could come to their conclusion about why you’re spending the time and money to inflate perceptions online. Getting noticed for fraudulently inflating your presence inevitably comes with backlash that can even end with your online accounts being removed. 

Executing a well-developed, thoughtful communication strategy that uses templates to automatically engage patients over text or email isn’t quite as useful when you’re not allowed online. Your online reputation as a reliable and welcoming dental practice is everything. That reputation is equal parts word of mouth as it is online reviews. Managing your reputation means keeping a thoughtful eye on the feedback that you ask for, and the feedback that you don’t.

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While most people typically associate brands with their favourite snacks and drinks, in the world of marketing, a brand entails everything that customers – or patients – think about you and your dental practice. Without needing to be a catchy jingle or beautiful logo, the brand that represents your dental practice is how patients perceive you, and how you want to be perceived. Building a strong brand helps in creating a loyal patient base, ensuring that patients return for ongoing care and recommend your practice to others.

This topic is rarely covered on the path to your DMD or DDS, so it can feel a little daunting. If you haven’t considered the idea of branding your practice, try this as a quick exercise:

What are the three words you want your patients to associate with you, the care you provide, and your staff? 

Your answer will vary based on the type of person you are, the dental care you offer, and the suite of services that you offer to the mouths that walk through your front door. Aside from the benefits of aligning a team working towards a single goal, your brand works as a north star for every task you undertake. If you’re focused on providing reliable attentive care that always finishes on time, you might label yourself as Efficient. Focusing on creating better experiences for people that struggle to get enthusiastic about a checkup might have you land on Caring. However, you reach the three words that guide your practice and your work, these ideas also inform your decisions on how to communicate with your patients.

Whether we explicitly use the word or not, as a business, branding means almost everything to your patients and customers. Offering consistent experiences builds trust. Taking extra steps to properly outline the correct use of a prescription will make patients more confident in their treatment. Texting a patient to remind them that a pill should be taken on a full stomach tells them you’re invested in their health.

This volume of engaging communication can seem like an insurmountable task if your current communication plan is a pile of phone numbers to be called throughout the week. Keeping up with a couple hundred patients week to week is next to impossible for even two or three skilled communicators without the right toolset. Thankfully, many pieces of practice management software now provide options for templating your important missives. Just like an invoice, it’s paramount to have a reliable format that is straightforward and easy to replicate, especially because your business relies so heavily on them.

Pausing for a moment, you’re likely well aware of the topics that generate your most common messages. With the right tools, applying your brand to the emails, text messages, and updates you publish allows for opportunities to build on the relationships that keep your business afloat. If this happens to be the first time you’re thinking about engagement, take the time to sit down and focus on drafting a version of the message you know needs to be sent every day. Make sure it’s especially human and acts as a call to action.

As this system grows and becomes automated, you can establish routines that create expectations with your patients. After a few visits, expectations can turn into reliance as busy patients rushing to or from work know they’ll receive a reminder about the next appointment long before they double-book their precious spare time. That means fewer no-shows and cancellations.

This process doesn’t happen overnight. A brand is cultivated over time with plenty of hard work and vigilance, but the rewards for generating a loyal following that trust you cannot be overstated. Providing open lines of communication every time your patient interacts with your office is the easiest way to squash complaints before they happen, plus you’ll quickly discover patients that consider openness and availability in communication as an important indicator for their care providers. As it turns out, some people value your ability to fit into their busy lives as much as your distance from transit or their office. Those current and potential patients not only have better health outcomes but become evangelists for your business over time.

If you’re curious about what an evangelist is, remember your last social or professional gathering. There’s always someone who cannot stop raving about their recent purchase, newest restaurant, or latest show that’s streaming. When you’re offering a standout service that sets you apart from the competition, people will go out of their way to tell their friends and colleagues how amazing you are. That’s invaluable marketing for your practice, but most importantly – it’s free.

When patients happily spread the word of your proficient care and concise communication, they’re providing social proof. Dental practices have almost always relied on strong social proof, whether it was an eloquent quote, passionate testimony, or personal recommendations, especially now that 84% of people trust an online review as much as a personal recommendation. People can be nervous when it comes to the in’s and out’s of their own mouth. but knowing a practice works hard to provide amazing oral care that doesn’t start and stop with each appointment makes their decision all the easier.

Now that we’ve covered the importance of building a brand that permeates into every email and text you’ll send, think about actionable steps you can take that lead to success and loyal, engaged patients.

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We are people that are being told a million things each day. When was the last time you kept this in mind when reaching out to your patients?

To provide meaningful communication and break through the noise, you need to be able to zero in on one specific message that acts as a call to action. This applies even when you’re connecting for a cavity follow-up for one patient, or need to send notice about your practice’s updated operating hours to every patient. When you’ve carefully calibrated this system, and recognize the channels you’re using, you’ll start to develop engagement with your patients.

The difference between patient communication and engagement is simple: Communication is when your front office attempts to book a patient for a cleaning or new x-rays. Engagement is when a patient reaches out to you, or books their own appointment, directly impacting the business of your dental practice.

While it would be a dream for dentists everywhere for patients to flock to them, scheduling their own treatments, practices of all shapes and sizes need to rely on a strategy that incorporates communications and engagement.

For generations, dentists have communicated with two tools – a phone and a Rolodex. It isn’t surprising that most dental practices and offices continue to rely heavily on dialling up their patients. The direct access, being able to grab their full attention, and 30 consecutive seconds of back and forth being more productive for your staff, feel like a persuasive focal point for the job of filling a schedule week-to-week. The reality of the situation is that this behaviour is rapidly changing, and the phone call is becoming a less efficient way to connect.

It’s no secret that younger patients are less likely to answer when someone gives them a ring. While there may be a generational gap at play, or that their caller is actually a robot, there’s also the fact that calls are simply disruptive compared to private and quiet texts. Thankfully, dialling in is no longer the only avenue to get a hold of your patients.

Patient Communication Options for Your Practice

Regardless of how you choose to send out your requests, alerts, and reminders, keep in mind that the stepping stones to engagement are not built on task completion. Moving a guilt trip from the telephone to the touchscreen will bring down costs with the right software, but it might not increase attendance right away. For that, you need to start a conversation.

Even in exchanges as small as a text, there are plenty of opportunities to build on the relationship you’ve established with your patients.

People are more engaged when they feel like they’ve got skin in the game. Moving away from “It’s been X months, you’re due for an appointment”, and towards the patient’s own health creates an emotional connection between you, them, and the care you provide. Approaching each communication as an opportunity to converse directly with them, you’ll find patients more likely to book their recalls, less likely to cancel their appointments, and more likely to rate you highly as a dentist and care provider (but more on that later).

As practice management software evolves to utilize these beneficial patient communication channels, setting up a system that is responsive to your patients’ needs only becomes easier. Adding cloud availability, you and your staff have the option to make a meaningful connection, even when you’re away from the office.

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If you were bold enough, you might ask 100 people what digital security meant to them, and you’d get about 100 different responses to the question. Luckily, cloud technology has long been at work adapting the highest security standards and even expanding on those already in place for standard servers or on-prem solutions. Whether it’s logging in or handling more complex tasks like payment acceptance, the security of dental practice data is safer than it’s ever been, offering peace of mind.

When hacking and digital security do come up in the headlines, it’s almost exclusively for volume. Reports typically show how many millions of people had their private, financial, or other data compromised. By comparison, it might be easy to assume that as a small business, you can fly under the radar of malicious actors on the Internet. In reality, small businesses are overwhelmingly the targets of illegal or inappropriate access. Since most small businesses rely on digital access to charge customers or even complete their banking but rarely have the budget to invest in digital security or proper training, they become reliable targets.

Having your offline, on-prem server behind a physical lock and key can make it easy to brush off risk, but without the aid of Internet access or a more complex network, you’re only slightly more productive and efficient than offices still working off of paper records with shelves of files.

Being every bit aware of risk does not mean having to live in fear. With advanced cloud security protocols and standards offered by all cloud providers, security measures are simple and easy, as long as you and your team stay vigilant.

Let’s talk about some of the best ways to stay safe in the cloud:

Two-Factor Authentication

Revered as one of the current holy grails for login credentials, this process of identity verification adds an extra layer of security, rather than using password1234 as a golden key for access. Since almost everyone today is equipped with a smartphone in their personal or business life, technology companies can use your SIM card to verify your identity. When creating an account on a cloud platform, many companies now ask for your phone number immediately. By associating your account with a physical device, whenever a login attempt is successfully made, a verification code can be texted directly to the device as a final password before logging in.

In short, even if someone acquires a password for any member of your organization, they won’t be allowed access to any sensitive information without that person’s phone, even if they’re sitting at a desk in your office.

Say ‘No Thanks’ To Third-Party Access

By consolidating the technology into an always-available service that connects to any device with an Internet connection, you automatically remove the need for 3rd party access apps that provide remote access. While these sometimes convenient, and sometimes expensive additional costs provide some amount of ease in your work, they’ve always represented an additional security risk. Providing your login credentials to additional individuals or organizations is an incremental risk to your entire livelihood.

Bringing all your services to the cloud means that your security is increased, and by extension, the safety of your patients and their private health records.

User Privileges

Otherwise known as access control, this pivotal feature of software utilizes the principle of need-to-know. Some of the best software providers out there can independently weigh the data collected, creating firewalls of information based on the person, or user, accessing it. Some also allow you to define these roles yourself while creating your profile and account. In terms of your practice, imagine your front desk employee, while the address or phone number of a patient can be valuable information, a copy of their periapical or panoramic x-ray is not.

By controlling who has access to what data, based on their login credentials, you exponentially reduce the risk of any private information being made available to bad actors.

The Wrong Kind of Email

Phishing is the tactic of a hacker attempting to gain information or easy money by posing as someone the victim knows. This type of attack most often happens over email or text messages, coming from similar addresses. Let’s say you’re a Lydia@DentalClinic.com, an assistant or front office manager might get an email from Lydia@Denta1Clinic.com asking for records or passwords to be forwarded. To be clear, this is the most common way that accounts are compromised with cloud technology, as the technology itself is substantially more sophisticated than most people attempting to compromise it.

Defending against phishing is simple, especially with resources and training for your staff, like outlining the official channels you’ll use to communicate with employees and making it clear that communication outside of that should be seen as suspicious.

Above and Beyond the Privacy Policy

Even if you’re ready to have your practice join the cloud immediately, you’ll always have certain responsibilities as a practice owner and oral healthcare provider. Protecting the confidentiality of your patient’s private medical information is a key part of offering exceptional medical care. The responsibility of ensuring your patient’s personal information is protected at all times doesn’t need to be exclusively up to you. Reliable practice management software should come out of the box certified by Health Canada as a Class I or Class II device, and in the cloud, it’s essential that your dental practice data remains secure.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions about the security and the certification of any software that handles your patient’s sensitive information.

Data security is just one aspect of how cloud technology can move your dental practice into the future. Learn more about why it belongs in your dental practice – download our free eBook!

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When it comes to the import of wide-reaching technology, the size of a practice has historically felt like the deciding factor. For smaller dental offices, there is often a window of ‘wait and see,’ as practices look to other, similarly-sized offices for success. The incredible aspect of cloud technology is that it offers value not just to the firms that may have five or more offices in a city, but also to the dental offices that have five or fewer employees. Cloud computing for a single-location practice provides the ability to work from anywhere, check in on patient files when you’re away from the office, and manage business functions and financials at your convenience, immediately displaying the value of making the switch to new technology.

The four advantages using cloud computing for a single-office practice are:

1. Taking the Work with You

Whether you’re a practice owner who’s been open for a few months or have had a long career, you understand the dedication it takes to provide stellar dental care to each person who enters your office. Reviewing complex records while deciding extensive treatment plans and double-checking prescriptions occupies a lot of time and effort. You might rush to complete it between appointments, stay late after staff go home, or find yourself starting an extra early day before anyone arrives to open up shop. While the need for work may be there, you don’t need to be chained to a desk, office, or single computer with the cloud. Reviewing patient files or completing the day’s paperwork can happen from the comfort of home, on the train home, or just about any time you’ve got a moment to spare and a device with the internet.

2. Managing the Finances

Few people understand the financial complexities of operating a small business like dentists. Overdue insurance bills are frequently the biggest complication to your business’ finances, already facing costly medical equipment and general overhead. Understanding exactly what is going out the door, and being able to compare it to how quickly payment from an invoice is completed is paramount. Cloud services allocate and automate your reporting by giving you line items for expenses the moment they show up. Being able to grasp revenue as it compares to restocking an inventory, in real-time, at all times, is the first step to understanding your success. Add in ledgers, and the ability to backdate a payment or office charge means there’s a single source of truth on the lifeblood of your business.

3. No Need for Downtime

Cloud technology takes everything you input and handles saving, and data recovery on its own. Almost all cloud services use a technique called load balancing, wherein updates, patches, and bug fixes are applied, usually without any disruption to service. Rather than micromanaging servers based on timestamps or needing to schedule costly downtime, save the data or info, and know that it’s safe, without wondering if you might need to close up shop for a day while an IT specialist upgrades the firmware of your server.

4. Managing Your Recalls

Patients do not receive dental care worth a whole lifetime in one appointment. It’s not a shock to hear that, but how you bring them back to your practice for ongoing care directly affects your bottom line. Managing the recalls of hundreds of patients at a time, while fitting them into a crowded schedule, is a laborious task. Responding to a quick cancellation or having to update contact info after a failed text or email requires a responsive system. With cloud computing for a single-location practice, your entire pool of patient contacts and schedules becomes one single system accessible by front office staff, assistants, and dentists, capable of juggling priorities based on needs, to-do lists, and integrated waiting list options. Through the cloud, it is also possible to engage patients through methods they are comfortable with, including web-to-text messaging. Cloud technology is the perfect way to ensure that your patients continue receiving the care they need, whenever they do or don’t need it.

Regardless of your practice size, cloud technology can supply benefits large and small that increase staff productivity, regardless of their role. Learn from four dentists on their journey to move from paper-based and/or legacy, on-premise practice software to CleaDent’s cloud-based platform.

To learn more about cloud computing and why it is right for your dental practice, download our free eBook today!

Many dentists, technicians, and office managers might recall the excitement as practices started to do away with walls of patient records kept in manilla folders. As on-prem servers and software replaced files loaded with mixed degrees of penmanship, patient information became more reliable and easier to update. The risk of records not being correctly updated practically evaporated as people used a clipboard to confirm the accuracy of existing information, not create copy after copy, running in parallel. This transition, while perhaps costly for smaller practices, clearly displayed value immediately. Today, the next evolution is cloud computing for multi-office practices, further enhancing the reliability, accessibility, and efficiency of patient information management across multiple locations.

Through the use of cloud technology, multi-office dental practices have the opportunity to take advantage of new ways to boost productivity than ever before.

The four advantages using cloud computing for a multi-office practice:

1. Access Anywhere

When all records are kept locally, it means all questions and curiosities about a patient can only be answered while on site. Consider the average steps to check in on a patient while on the other side of town: Calling the office in the hopes that staff aren’t busy with a patient, requesting the info, and waiting however long it takes to pull up. You’ll then likely need to scribble something down so you don’t forget it or ask that person to carefully edit a file. That’s all assuming you don’t have to make the trek yourself in search of one specific computer screen or log in. Using an accessible interface, whether that’s a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone, you can log in and review or edit any records you need, at any time. 

2. Ensuring Bills Get Paid

Considering any average dental office starts to thrive at around 1,800 patients, having multiple locations means tending to thousands of insurance claims each month, just to get paid. Thorough reporting typically comes at the end of a week, when you gain visibility into the outstanding payments owed to you by insurance organizations, as well as patients. Bringing reporting into the cloud means that updates are delivered personally and instantaneously. Depending on your role, you can check in on all invoices across all locations at any time during the day. Even if you’re out for a quick lunch, track whether claims in the morning were paid immediately or which outstanding invoices are creeping toward the 90-day mark. More robust services will support entering paper or EDI claims into your records, as well as clearly defining held payments, overpayments, and discounts. The flexibility of cloud services also means the introduction of self-serve capabilities whereby customers can book their appointments, file patient information, and even make payments!

3. A Shared History

For some dental organizations, the availability of locations is one of the biggest attractions for new patients. While a patient’s primary location may be close to their work or home, being able to access another office in case of an emergency will remind them why they chose you as their care provider. The ability for a dentist on call, handling a chipped tooth, to access dental records that might otherwise be unavailable translates to better care. A holistic approach to care that takes into account a patient’s history not just with their health, but with your business, is truly great care.

4. A Prescriptive Template

If you have multiple offices, then you’ve got multiple dentists or specialists providing care. An appointment for cleaning will have patients heading out the door with a bag of toothpaste and floss. On the other hand, dental surgeons covering repair or extraction are much more likely to be sending patients home with a prescription. If you or your staff are regularly focused on a specific course of treatment, being able to template, and even digitize prescriptions can mean less time scribbling, and also less risk of manual error. With cloud computing for multi-office practices, prescription templates can be made available, automatically assigning themselves to a patient’s file without the risk of anyone failing to enter the info by hand or attach it to patient records.

Operating an efficient multi-office dental practice is easier when cloud technology is on your side. Learn from four dentists on their journey to move from paper-based and/or legacy, on-premise practice software to CleaDent’s cloud-based platform.

To learn more about what cloud computing is and why it is right for your dental practice, download our free eBook.

You want to be a successful dental clinic, but how will you know if you’ve made it? And more importantly, once you’ve reached success, how do you stay there? Quantifying success can be done in a variety of ways: client satisfaction surveys, new patients, five-star reviews, and revenue. In business, the most common method of measuring success is through tracking Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. Sure, there are the standard corporate KPIs of Profit = Revenue – Costs. But how does that help you analyze the wealth of dental KPI and analytics data at your fingertips?

Choose KPIs that help you analyze the data collected from your practice management system. This will empower you to make the best decisions for your business. The following KPIs are tried-and-true measures of success in the dental industry.

1. Production

2. Profit

3. Patients

Production

Total Production. Many in the dental industry consider this to be the most important measure of success. You want to track your production values daily, monthly, quarterly, and annually. While growth may not happen day by day, it’s important to see that it’s trending positively on an annual basis. Increasing production equates to a practice that’s growing, which means your bottom line is too. If you need some help with increasing your practice’s production, check out these 9 tips on how to drive productivity.

Treatment Acceptance. You should be tracking how often patients accept treatment plans that the dentist proposes. Pinpoint trends in acceptance, or non-acceptance, to better understand your patient’s decisions. In turn, this can help you prepare your dentists for these presentations. A higher acceptance rate of treatments corresponds to higher production for your office. According to Dental Economics, a successful practice should have at least 70-80% acceptance. If your practice isn’t meeting acceptance goals, it’s important to analyze how your staff is presenting these cases. Dentalcare.com has excellent, curated research on case acceptance and boasts that it can drive your acceptance rate up to 90%.

Doctor Production vs Hygiene Production. Understanding the driving source of your revenue is key to helping you make informed decisions. This can also speak to the type of office that you’re running. Do you have a lot of low-cost hygiene appointments? Or, do you see fewer visits with a specialized dentist? Having a healthy balance between hygiene and specialist appointments keeps your office’s cash flow diverse.

Profit

Profit. Of course, the profit of the practice is one of the most valuable metrics for any provider. You can calculate profit through a basic calculation of Collections – Overhead. Your overhead costs should be less than 60% of your total revenue. Tracking these costs will keep you in tune with your practice’s spending habits. Once you have an understanding of your practice’s profit metrics, you can make informed decisions about how to invest money in the practice. Is one area of your practice driving most of your profit? For example, you can reinvest money from a thriving hygiene program into some of your dental specialties.

Collections. While projected numbers sound great, the success of your practice hinges on your ability to collect money owed. Some experts suggest that 98% of the money owed to your practice should be collected to keep on track with production goals. Many offices find it pays off to hire an Accounts Receivable individual or department to stay on top of bill collection. Your software can help if it has an easy-to-use ledger system that automatically inputs the EOBs that you receive from insurance carriers. 

Patients

New Patient Intake. Bringing in new patients while maintaining your current patient bookings is what grows your practice. Aim to grow your client base by 1% each month. Another key aspect to track is where you’re sourcing new patients from. Are you covering all your bases with marketing opportunities? There are a variety of cutting-edge methods to grow your practice, which you can read about in our article about dental marketing.

Active Patients. The number of people that you have currently on your schedule are considered your active patients. Staff should be contacting patients who are in your system, but not on the schedule, to take advantage of all your business opportunities. For many offices, patients who are in the system but not scheduled are an untapped pool. Don’t be afraid to reach out and check on their dental health.

Cancellation & No-Show Rate. Track your cancellations and no-shows, because this affects many of the other metrics in the dental industry. A higher no-show rate means there’s a lower visit rate, which results in less production and revenue even though your costs and labour are the same. Strive for a no-show rate of less than 10% to maximize your production. If your practice is suffering from a high proportion of cancellations, no-shows, and last-minute changes, read up on some tips and tricks to reduce their occurrence.

Conclusion

If you’re new to the dental practice world, or even if you’ve been in business for years, use these metrics to step up your practice’s success. Understanding how to analyze the data you collect can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Download our eBook that goes into more depth on understanding your data and putting it to use.

Have you ever wondered what ‘Cloud computing’ is, where all the information is stored, what some concrete examples are, and most importantly, is it safe?

Simply put, much of what cloud technology consists of is largely based on the initial idea of the internet itself. The cloud allows you to establish a direct connection to a server, providing a single source of information, accessible wherever there is a reliable connection. Being able to quickly access entertainment, social networks, and even personal information on the go or your computer can be attributed to this.

As competitive cloud technology, like Microsoft’s Azure, came online in the 2010s, consumer companies began to exercise the potential of cloud technology with stable high-speed internet, and smartphones. Netflix was the most notable company to radically transform its movie mailing service, using single-access servers to deliver hundreds of television shows and movies instantaneously. Practically overnight, their business exploded as they took the information and services that people demanded, and made them available for instant access. 

If there is one thing that cloud computing technology can do, the keywords have always been tied back to ‘instant access.’

With an exponential increase in demand for cloud services, the technology quickly evolved. Security systems and protocols have been implemented with encrypted information just as secure as on-prem servers, without sacrificing agility or accessibility. Resources are more reliably available as our cellular and data networks upgraded from 3G to LTE, 4G, and soon enough, 5G.Maintenance and update costs have plummeted as fewer devices and much less hardware are required to install and maintain records, data, or content.

How Cloud services are best used by businesses, small and large, are typically one of two models:

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

The ability for a consumer to access servers and deploy applications or software on cloud-based infrastructure.

Customers: GE Healthcare, Airbnb, American and Canadian governments

Software as a Service (SaaS)

When a business develops a piece of software or application that is accessible to various clients through an interface like a web browser.

Customers: Netflix, Square, ClearDent

Truth be told, there has never been a better time to adopt cloud technology and reap the benefits for your business.

Want to learn more about Cloud Technology and why it belongs in your dental practice?

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