For over 10 years now, we have been progressing towards becoming more digitally efficient as a practice. Now, don’t get me wrong, as a practice manager holding the purse strings and trying to avoid anything remotely clinical or techy, this hasn’t really got me excited until probably the last couple of years, when things started to become much more interesting from not only a marketing point of view, but also for the bank balance, efficiency of our workflows and our patients’ experience.
As a general and referral practice, we offer a wide range of treatments including: Endodontics, Implants, Orthodontics, Oral Surgery, Periodontics and Children’s Dentistry. Our patient journey was in good shape, thanks to our wonderful Treatment Coordinators who do a fantastic job and conversion rates have been extremely good for a long time. However, we still wanted the patients to understand the treatments in more depth and demonstrate the changes we could make to their smiles and oral health.
So here we are in 2019, after selling our original I-Tero scanner and investing in 2 Trios scanners.
I have a very happy bunch of dentists and patients, providing fantastic work that is so much more efficient than I could have imagined.
As a PM or a dentist, I would ask you to reflect on what are the barriers that are stopping you from investing.
Some I have heard recently include:
- They cost too much
- My work is amazingly accurate already
- The patients won’t like it
- We are only a small practice
- I like the lab I already use and they don’t have the facilities to receive scans
- I would have to go on loads of courses
To be honest none of the above should stop you exploring the possibility of investing in a scanner. If you are worried about dipping your toe into the digital world then there is a way you can do so with excellent support and training (in house). We have used UKDentech and have found them to be outstanding.
There are some pretty good ways you can calculate what your potential return on investment might be and how much time and money can be saved.
By looking at how many crowns, bridges, implants and other prosthetics you do in a month and the chair time used (your software should report on both of these for you), whilst considering what your hourly rate is, you can assume that by using a scanner you will save a huge amount of chair time (and that’s not including material costs saved and remakes).
So, going back to my excitement from a marketing point of view. Whilst patients generally don’t care about your fancy new piece of kit, they do care about what it means for them and whether you are the type of practice to invest and continually learn new ways to provide better treatment using better techniques, plus the 3D scans and simulations of their teeth are pretty interesting to look at, even for a tooth phobic like me.
If anyone would like to get in touch with Lisa for help with this please contact president@adam-aspire.co.uk
Tom Lee from Ukdentech added…
“We understand that the future of dentistry in the digital age may seem daunting and complicated but we are here to help guide and support you along that journey.”
If you would like to get in touch, please contact Tom on 07872427798.