DentaltownUK May 2017 - 38

Technology should be the starting point of all
you do to serve your patients and practice
dentistry. Your practice management
system sits at the center of your
technology platform.

Meanwhile, the problems inside a practice
are completely different animals. Your own
inefficiencies kill you-usually slowly. You
often don't feel the severity of these issues until
it's overwhelming.
If you're like most successful docs, you focus
on the people. As you should-it's the people
who make the practice run and make the practice
possible, and a doc's focus should be on the
patient and the clinical expertise going into the
treatment. But past the clinical focus, a practice
owner is also challenged with facing frustrated
staff, high turnover, poor patient experience and
unmet patient expectations. All these problems
that come from inside the practice are often
because dentists stop thinking strategically about
their practices after they've addressed the clinical
aspects of treatment.
Dentists start with the end in mind when
it comes to treatment planning because they
know it's the best practice for delivering the best
care to patients. Carry that strategy over to the
other aspects of the practice in a way that doesn't
create extra work for us or our staff-and just
as important, do it in such a way that creates
automation and efficiency.
Without understanding what your problems
look like, they will seem to continually come
from every direction without rhyme or reason.
You can, however, easily identify how you react
to those problems and make vital adjustments.

What practice problems
can look like
There's an important dichotomy in how

38

MAY 2017 // dentaltownuk.com

dentists generally react to the problems they
face in dentistry.
* The first reaction is inaction, where the
issues related to patient and staff problems,
business and clinical automation
discrepancies, and technology that doesn't
integrate into existing systems hit all at
once, leaving us in a state of frustration.
These combine to form a mess that most
dentists don't have the time or expertise to
fully attack.
* The other road that dentists find
themselves traveling down when hit with
all these problems is distraction. We've
all had moments in life where we have a
hundred difficult things to do, but rather
than thinking strategically about where
to start, we focus on just one specific
thing. Often, in dentistry, it's when we
convince ourselves that a single piece of
new technology will solve all the problems
we've been avoiding, or provide the
"silver bullet" for that amazing patient
experience.
But no single piece of technology can save a
practice. Instead, the answer to the problems faced
in a practice is in applying a strategic mindset
to its foundation.

Technology is the foundation;
patients are the pinnacle
Technology is an enabler, even though right
now in dentistry many of us see it as more of a
liability or a necessary evil rather than an asset
or something more important. But technology
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DentaltownUK May 2017
