5 Ways Dentists Can Free Up Time
If you’re a dentist, you are probably always asking yourself how you can save time when practicing. It’s an important question; many dentists find themselves inundated with patient work, administrative upkeep, business strategy, and a slew of other job responsibilities. The consequences of these time constraints can be massive. If you can’t free up time to focus on what you most want to do, your career satisfaction will take a hit.
If you’re struggling with finding free time as a dentist, rest assured that you are not the only one struggling. Read on to learn more about how to free up more time!
Reduce Administrative Upkeep
You went to dental school because you loved dentistry and wanted to care for your patients’ dental health. That’s a very admirable goal. However, if you’re in private practice, you likely spend much of your time tending to the non-dentistry portion of your dental practice. Hiring, purchasing supplies, balancing the books, marketing, and other administrative tasks likely take up a significant chunk of your time. These tasks are crucial to the operation of your practice, but many dentists are unprepared to tackle these tasks. As a result, they find their time spent on administrative duties.
These administrative duties are critical to running the practice, but they’ll eat away at your nights and weekends if you aren’t careful. These additional duties are a major contributing factor to the high burnout rates among dentists today. By some estimates, 50% of dentists struggle with burnout.
Hire & Train The Right People
If you’ve ever been on a sports team, you likely already know just how crucial collaboration can be. One team excelling can make another team that much more efficient. A great support staff can make you more impactful, much like how you had your best JV football games when your offensive line played well.
However, the right dental assistants, front staff, and practice managers don’t just pop into existence. You’ll need to find and hire them, or if you can’t find and hire the A team, train up your current staff to grow into the support staff you need. That may require extra work, but it’s worth it. A good support staff can revolutionize your practice and improve your career satisfaction.
Focus On What Matters
This is an excellent rule for anyone struggling to keep their to-do list manageable. As a dentist in private practice, your responsibilities are myriad. You likely are a high performer, and it can be tempting to “do it all,” but if you aren’t careful, you can find yourself sinking valuable time into things you don’t particularly like or need to do.
Prioritizing patient care when you have other duties as a small business owner can be difficult. You might want to spend more time with patients but still need to pay bills, order supplies, and deal with staffing, marketing, and tech problems. Finding the right balance as a dentist/small business owner can be challenging, but it is possible. See our next bullet point for more!
Clean-Up Processes
A good business process adds structure to your day and helps keep the practice staff and business goals on track. A poorly designed business process adds unnecessary work and might increase the odds of burnout for you and your team.
Consequently, you must evaluate your current processes and see where to optimize. Minor tweaks to your patient reminder process or procurement orders can significantly impact the time needed to run your practice.
Consider the impact of increasing your patient retention rate. Let’s say you retain 60% of all first-time patients as repeat patients. Increasing that retention rate to 80% has a massive impact on your bottom line and overall profitability, and changes in how you do patient outreach via text and email could help drive that sort of increase. Likewise, increasing the percentage of time spent on a type of patient you like treating could help increase practice collections without increasing the amount of operational effort. Minor tweaks to processes can help get you there, but you need to find the right process consultant to help you make those changes.
Partner With A Dental Support Organization
If you’re a dentist looking to be more efficient, partnering with a dental support organization might be a great call. These organizations are specifically suited to aid in the management and operational improvement of a dental practice, so many dentists partner with these organizations to do just that. After all, you’re a dentist and an expert in clinical care.
However, you’re likely not an expert in business management, and even if you were, you still need to focus on your patient base. A well-vetted dental support organization will provide additional resources, proven methods of improving your practice, and access to a larger organization.
The right dental support organization can help you with…
- IT Infrastructure
- Hiring & Staffing
- Procurement
- Continuing Education
- Marketing & Practice Growth
- Compliance & Regulation
- Process Innovation
- & More
However, it is worth stressing one word: right. The right dental support organization can be a partner who helps you increase your profitability and get time back. The wrong dental support organization could actually decrease your work satisfaction. Many dentists sign on with dental support organizations and are shocked when they realize their control over practice decision-making is changed with a new partner. Others cannot sell their practice at the best possible price or struggle to achieve mutually beneficial terms in the closing process with the dental support organization.
That’s why you must contact Triumphant Transition Partners and find out if a dental support organization is right for you!
As your dental broker, we will….
- Help You Understand The Value Of Your Practice
- Show You Qualified Buyers From Our Private Buyers Network
- Represent You Through The Process
- Equip Your Attorneys With Relevant Practice Evaluation To Get You The Best Terms Possible!
Contact Your Trusted Triumphant Transition Advisor for a Courtesy Consultation!