Good Management is the Key Element to a Successful Dental Practice

Without correct management, dental practices are inhibited in how much they are able to expand, and their patient clientele may even decrease in number. That's fairly obvious, but what does it take to manage a dental practice correctly?

There are a number of key points to consider, probably the main one being a competent manager to handle the day-to-day activities. However, if there is not a good organizational structure in place, the practice may fall to pieces - no matter how competent the office manager is.

Let's take a look at the individual jobs within any given dental practice. (These are jobs that are "worn" no matter if there are individuals assigned to them or not.) There is the dentist, the dental assistant, x-ray technician, office manager, schedule coordinator, account manager and receptionist. (Depending on the practice and it's particular specialty, there may be more jobs than are listed here.) Each of these positions is key to a smoothly running office.

What happens if any of these people in an office is not totally sure what they are supposed to be doing? There will be resulting confusion and to the degree that confusion exists the practice will be inhibited in it's ability to grow. Why? Any sort of confusion will bring about slowed administration and possibly the patient is made to experience this.

Let's give an example - The schedule coordinator is not aware of the fact that he or she is also responsible for the number of patients that can be scheduled in a day, and that in actual fact part of the job includes the concept of scheduling the maximum number of patients within an hour. Then, the patients being scheduled might be lower than they could be in any given day. Patients may be made to wait longer for their treatment and the practice sort of "cruises along" at a mediocre level in terms of it's patient base. It couldn't do otherwise. However, if a schedule coordinator understands that part of the purpose his or her job is to assist in maximizing the number of patients treated in a day the scheduling will likely go much more smoothly with the patients being treated in a more timely fashion. As time goes on, the practice may possibly employ more technical and administrative staff to handle the load - and the practice continues to expand from that point.

On a broader scale, if the Office Manager or Managing Administrator is not aware of what each of the jobs in the office entails, he or she will not know exactly what to do when a confusion arises, may wrongly "correct" the problem and so further confusion is created.

Each job in a dental practice should have distinct definition, purpose and function clearly laid out and the information made available to each staff member so that there is no question of what each person should be doing. On top of this, the manager should be familiar with exactly which person should be doing each job and what each job exactly entails so that he or she can correctly help the staff, and therefore the practice will run smoothly and will allow for growth.

One solution for this is job training manuals for each of the staff, studied and applied by each person in the office as appropriate. When these types of manuals are available and used, practices will inevitably run smoothly and will begin to expand - almost like magic. When a manager is ensuring that the information from the manuals is being used and correctly implemented then each person in the office tends to be more productive - the final result is well-treated patients and an expanding practice. Dental practice management can be made simple.