5 ways dental groups can centralize operations to drive better outcomes

Dentistry has not historically been an early adopter of new technologies. However, there are many technology solutions currently available to dental groups that can help optimize operations and drive better results.

During a Sept. 15 webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review and sponsored by Henry Schein One, two industry leaders discussed technology-based strategies to increase efficiency and convenience when managing dental practice operations.

The speakers were:

  • Jill Nesbitt, strategic customer success manager, Henry Schein One

  • Greg Mahoney, senior director of operations services, Elite Dental Partners in Chicago

The speakers discussed five strategies dental groups should adopt to drive better outcomes:

  1. Become cloud-based. Having a cloud-based software system allows dental practices to house their patient records in a standardized place. When Elite Dental Partners needed to merge practice locations that were near each other, Henry Schein One's Dentrix Ascend practice management system "made it really easy because there were no servers or databases that needed to be moved," Mr. Mahoney said.

  2. Manage globally. Greater centralization makes for less risk. The global management of fee schedules, referral source lists, adjustment types, and other items reduce the risk of embezzlement and inappropriate discount application.

  3. Standardize reporting. Reporting needs to be standardized not only to increase the efficiency of inter-practice operations, but also because this allows for more scalability. Dental office managers will often use one report that they filter through multiple practice locations, according to Mr. Mahoney.

  4. Digitize. Ms. Nesbitt shared a story about a dental group she was working with that accidentally rolled out their digital payment program before they had completely finalized it. Their collections improved so much during the time the digitized system had been prematurely launched that they decided they could never go back to the previous system.

  5. Be agile. Mr. Mahoney said Dentrix Ascend's "power report" function fostered agility by answering questions specific to his dental group's needs and allowing him to get updates on collection and production numbers so that he wasn't working with stale information when doing calculations.

To learn more about Dentrix Ascend, click here. To listen to the full webinar, click here.

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