Dentistry has gone digital, to everyone’s benefit. A well-designed digital workflow can cut down on time-consuming manual processes, achieve improved productivity, and create a better and more personalized experience for your patients.
You can integrate digital workflows in two areas of your dental practice: technical, like digital scanning technologies, and administrative, like Virtual Check-In and other advanced clinic management tools from Dental Intelligence. Let’s explore a few best practices in building an optimal digital workflow for dental clinics.
Why Dental Practices Need Smart Digital Workflows
Digital technologies are shaking up the dentistry landscape in many ways, from eliminating cumbersome paper documents to using artificial intelligence to assist diagnosis. To stay competitive, dental practices must keep up with the latest digital dentistry trends, both in treatment and practice management.
An optimal digital workflow can give your clinic:
- Faster processes: By automating many manual tasks, digital workflows allow your dental team to do more in less time.
- Higher profits: A smart digital workflow can speed up treatment, reduce the average chair time, and make it possible to fit in more appointments in a workday.
- Fewer errors: Technology-curated diagnoses and treatment plans leave less room for mistakes and help preserve your clinic’s professional reputation. Dental Intelligence offers treatment plan templates to make treatment presentations easy.
- Happier patients: Digital workflows can improve all aspects of patient experience, including optimal treatment plans, more consistent success rates, shorter waiting and treatment times, and a higher level of patient comfort.
An Example of a Dental Clinic's Effective Digital Workflow
Here’s an example of how a smart digital workflow could function for a patient who comes in for a dental crown procedure:
- Digital scanning: An intraoral scan produces an accurate 3D image of the patient’s teeth in just a couple of minutes and without any unpleasant effects of conventional alginate impressions.
- Treatment planning: The dental professional uses advanced CAD/CAM solutions to design the patient’s dental crown.
- Manufacturing: The digital designs go out to a dental 3D printer to create the patient’s crown in under 20 minutes. Then the dentist fits the crown during the same appointment.
Meanwhile, efficient digital workflows can also handle the administrative side of this patient’s journey, including online scheduling, timely reminder messages, user-friendly digital intake forms, and seamless payment collection.
Best Practices for Creating the Perfect Digital Workflow for Your Practice
So how do you start building a seamless digital workflow for your clinic? The following steps will help you revamp your processes.
1. Assess Your Existing Workflows
How has your practice worked so far? Analyze your current workflows, with extra attention to steps that take the most time and labor or involve the highest number of errors. Identifying problematic areas will help you set goals for a more efficient digital workflow.
2. Improve Where You’re Lagging Behind
See where your dental practice is trailing behind its local competitors and use your findings as a blueprint to start your digitization plan. If other practices in town are rapidly adopting intraoral scanning and CAD/CAM technology, you should keep up to make sure your clinic stays competitive and attractive to patients.
3. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
Your dental practice may have fallen into certain work routines, and it can take some time and effort — not to mention money — to adopt innovative technologies. Nevertheless, it pays off to level up your game with digital dentistry workflows. The initial investment will help you grow, cut labor costs, win new patients, and retain existing ones.
4. Ensure Cooperation
As you build a new digital workflow for your practice, make sure you keep the entire team in the loop. Are your lab technicians ready to switch to CAD/CAM technology? How much training will your staff need to adopt innovative procedures or streamline clinic administration? Consider these aspects as you move toward dental digitization.
5. Plan for the Future
Digital dentistry is evolving rapidly, especially with the onset of new AI-assisted digital technologies. Staying open to change and periodically reassessing your digital workflow will help you reap the benefits of innovations in dentistry, including more accurate diagnostic tools and faster, more efficient procedures.
Dental Intelligence: Smart Tools for Productive Digital Workflows and Happy Patients
At Dental Intelligence, we’re proud to offer smart, intuitive tools to help your dental practice keep up with the digital revolution. Dental electronic health records, Patient Finder, 2-Way Communication, and our other innovative features will help your dental clinic build the perfect digital workflow and provide an outstanding patient experience.
Ready to try our solutions? Schedule a demo to see modern digital workflows in practice.
