9 Reasons Why Dentists Are Automating Their Practice
"Dental practice automation has become a significant trend over the last couple of years and continues to climb at a rapid rate. Recent research predicts the market for healthcare chatbots alone to reach $703.2 million by 2025, a 25.5% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019. Dentistry industry trends suggest that we can continue to expect the introduction of more novel and ground-breaking technology, which will immensely benefit both dentists and patients.
But, why are dentists implementing digital automation platforms in their practice(s)? What are the benefits of doing so? Let’s dive into that...
Digital transformation is changing how dental practices operate and how dental professionals interact with their patients, team, peers, and vendors. Notably, the ability to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to enhance decision making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience will drive the payoff for digital initiatives through 2025.
In response to rising patient expectations, escalating costs, and the need to do more in less time with fewer resources, AI-powered digital automation platforms will become the norm for many dental practices moving forward, automating interfaces between systems, processes, and users to enhance practice efficiency, boost profitability, and improve the patient experience.
Digital automation platforms help dentistry professionals simplify and streamline their practice workflows to minimize paper-based administrative tasks, reduce operating costs, and improve communication and collaboration across the healthcare ecosystem. This includes but is not limited to:"
Time savings
Adopting an automation platform enables you gain more personal time for family, friends, hobbies, and physical activity with efficient, integrated workflows. You can seamlessly and efficiently connect and collaborate with multiple stakeholders, including patients. Unnecessary and time-consuming administrative tasks in your practice are eliminated. Supplies from vendors to replenish stock are automatically ordered so you never run out or have excess that expires. Your billing and accounting is simplified through system integrations.
Reduced errors
Human error is inevitable, but it can be eliminated with the automation and integration of your entire healthcare ecosystem. Administrative mistakes and duplicated effort with efficient, reliable connectivity and communication are minimized.
Increased productivity
Operational roadblocks can happen when workflows are lacking optimization. With an automation platform, you can boost efficiency of business processes, such as staff scheduling, inventory management, and payroll. You can ensure healthcare personnel are in the right place at the right time with the resources they need to do their jobs and simplify their training across multiple clinics. Plus, patient interactions are streamlined for appointment scheduling and rescheduling, patient communication and follow-up.
Reduced costs
Costs can add up quickly in a practice. Leakage can happen in so many areas of the business. Creating automated processes can help reduce these leakages and reduce the headaches and frustration that come from them. With automation, you can improve inventory control and planning with automated ordering of supplies and tools to prevent overstock. Staff schedules are optimized and in alignment with patient bookings to maximize operational efficiency. Patient recalls and communication can be automated to minimize costly human errors and reduce personnel hours. You can leverage economies of scale by managing staff, patients, and operations at one or multiple clinics from a single cloud-based platform, as well as improve visibility to operational costs through dashboard and reports.
Practitioner work/life balance
Taking care of patients and managing personal time while maintaining a practice—with all the inefficient, manual administrative tasks and time-consuming behind-the-scenes work that is required to keep the office running smoothly—can take a toll. Dental professionals often find themselves stuck at the office, buried under paperwork and reports, or spinning their wheels trying to grow the business and sacrificing personal time with family and friends. With an automation platform, you minimize stress and friction with streamlined workflows and full integration across the healthcare ecosystem. You replace time-consuming admin tasks with personal time for self-care and connecting with family and friends.
Improved patient experience
Improvements in patient experience have been linked to benefits for both patients and practices. Patients have better outcomes and as a result practices improve patient retention and referrals. With an automation platform, patient experience and satisfaction are improved through a single place to view and manage patient-related information and book appointments, while enabling patients to search for, find and book appointments seamlessly through an online portal. It also supports automatic supply replenishments to ensure you have adequate inventory levels of supplies, tools, and resources on hand to provide high-quality care.
Tightened inventory control
As mentioned earlier, automation platforms support automatic supply replenishments to ensure you have adequate inventory levels of supplies, tools, and resources on hand. Inventory is tracked and monitored with automatic orders placed to vendors through platform integrations so stock levels are maintained and consistent, and you can avoid high costs associated with overstock and expired products.
Bettered hiring efficiency
Whether seeking dentists, dental hygienists, or administrative staff, the majority of dental practices, regardless of size, are finding the process of recruiting new employees “extremely challenging,” according to the Economic Outlook and Emerging Issues in Dentistry published in July 2022 by the ADA HPI. This makes it critical for the hiring experience to be seamless and positive for new staff. Automation platforms help you both onboard and offboard personnel with ease. When recruiting for new or vacant positions, they integrate with online job boards to post and share job opportunities at your practice as well as help qualified candidates find your vacant positions, quickly and easily. They also help you utilize internal personnel for temporary job placements and for backup when staff are on leave.
Positive employee experience
Once your staff is hired and onboarded, that continued positive employee experience is enabled with an automation platform. Staff can view and manage work-related information from a single, fully-integrated platform creating optimized communication and collaboration across the entire healthcare ecosystem. Office workflows are streamlined to reduce stress and frustration, eliminating inefficient admin and data entry tasks to free up employees’ time. In the end, improved work/life balance is fostered for your staff.
Adopting automation into your dental practice is critical towards getting out of the day-to-day operational trenches and into the sweet spot that has you doing more of what you love...helping patients! It helps to streamline office operations and in turn bolster efficiency, productivity, patient satisfaction and profits. From real-time online scheduling and digital patient forms to staff task assignment and management, automated reminders and patient recall, balancing out workflows has never been easier.
For more tips on managing your practice effectively, download our Ultimate Guide to Creating Order from Chaos in Your Dental Practice.
