A smile expresses feelings that words cannot. It is a universal expression that transcends boundaries, holds all space, and cuts through barriers. But what about them who keep the whites of the smile pearly? The question is important since we have recently celebrated National Dentist Day to return the favor to the professionals who toil hard to make a precious smile more elegant. Regrettably, we still have not done enough to help dentists and dental practices improve their business and clinical sides so that they can focus on serving the patients efficiently. Especially when more than one in four U.S. adults—almost 26 percent—struggle with untreated dental cavities, supporting dental practitioners and practices becomes essential.
Dental practices have, for years, relied on manual, outdated processes to conduct their critical operations. There is no way to deny that the adoption of technology for dental practice management has significantly increased in the past few years, but most of these technologies work in a silo or do not communicate with each other. This impels dental practices to juggle multiple software solutions for seamlessly running their everyday operations, including prescribing and insurance verification. These operations are so critical that any minor flaw can have a disastrous impact.
Take prescribing, for instance. Many state governments, along with the federal government, have raised a war against the opioid epidemic. They have mandated that the transmission of prescriptions for controlled substances must be done electronically. Now given this scenario, dental practices are required to upgrade their tech stack so that they can provide prescriptions to patients in a frictionless manner, no matter where they are, while registering the PDMP database. Seamless insurance verification is also a critical aspect of a successful dental practice. Without the proper technology at the place, this task becomes extremely difficult and time-consuming, negatively impacting the business bottom line of practices.
But dental practices always need to remember that technology alone cannot help them win the war. People, processes, and technology must be aligned to create great results. To build the process, dental practices need to hire an efficient team that has a comprehensive understanding of how dental practices work and the problems that patients face. They must have a clear vision of where they want to lead the practice and how they will make it different in the market.
