How much time do you think one of your dental hygienists spends daily rummaging through cluttered drawers to find the tool they need? Now, consider how much time your staff may collectively waste simply hunting for items. You can create a more efficient and productive business by implementing a few dental office organization ideas that will reflect well on your patient experience and reduce wasted time and resources.

At Dental Intelligence, we want to help you achieve success with your dental practice, so we provide a comprehensive guide to increasing dental production. Our all-in-one platform makes running your business a breeze, from collecting payments to scheduling appointments and communicating with patients. Below, we discuss our top six steps for reorganizing your office. 

1. Get Rid of the Items You Don’t Need

Before organizing anything, you must purge. We recommend gathering all your materials in one place to easily review what you do or don’t want to keep. You can do this room by room or by department to avoid tearing the whole office up at once. 

As you sort through the items, make piles of things to keep, recycle, donate, and throw away. Items you may no longer need could include:

• Pens that don’t work
• Worn-down erasers
• Old batteries
• Any items in excess (i.e., a dozen staplers)
• Outdated dental instruments
• Excessive decor (like holiday decorations)

We recommend working through this with your desk staff and office manager so everyone can agree on what dental office supplies you do or do not need. 

2. Sort Tools and Supplies Together

Now that you have your keep items, you can sort them into more logical piles. For example, you may have piles of pens, pencils, erasers, staplers, paperwork, binders, clips, toothbrushes, exam packs, dental floss, sterilization equipment, and operatory products. Keep these items separated based on who may need to use them, when, and where. 

You may end up with a pile of items you don’t use daily but don’t necessarily want to get rid of. We recommend storing such items in a back closet where they’re out of the way. 

3. Store Equipment in Organized Bins

Now that you have your sorted piles, you can organize them into bins. If you don’t already have bins, you can visit a local department or craft store or create your own with cardboard boxes. 

We recommend organizing certain tools into dedicated containers with all the required items for specific procedures. That way, your team can quickly grab one container and begin working rather than searching for each item. 

Try labeling each bin so employees know which items belong where. You can also use a color-coding system for easier recognition. For example, you may place all sanitary products in purple-labeled bins and all office-related products in green-labeled bins. 

You may also want to label certain individual items for more complex dental technologies.

4. Organize Drawers with Labeled Bins and Dividers

After filling your bins, you can begin organizing them inside your drawers and cabinets. We recommend the following dental office organization ideas:

• Separate large drawers with multiple bins or dividers
• Place smaller items in drawers and larger equipment in cabinets

• Label the outside of each drawer and cabinet with the items they contain

5. Define Organization Procedures for the Future

After spending hours getting your office in tip-top shape, you want it to stay this way. The only way you can keep your office organized is if the whole team is on board. We recommend hosting a meeting with all staff members where you can review the new organization procedures for the future. 

You can try implementing the following policies:

• Replace all items immediately after use or after the appointment
• Regularly toss items that don’t work
• Review all cabinets and drawers before closing each night to ensure that everything looks right
• Purge, sort, and reorganize every quarter to continuously keep up with everything
• Keep cleaning or organization schedules on a bulletin board

When you implement your chosen policies, clarify who will oversee each task and when they should complete it within their daily duties. 

6. Streamline Your Internal System

Dental practices must also organize how their internal tech system works. Outdated patient management software kills efficiency, creating “digital clutter” and poor patient experiences.  

We recommend selecting a comprehensive platform to manage all your business transactions and integrations in one place. At Dental Intelligence, we offer advanced patient scheduling, payment collection, digital forms, patient portals, and team chat software all in one place. 

Request a demo from our Dental Intelligence team today to learn how our dental office organization ideas can transform your practice.