Owning a successful dental clinic requires being organized and methodical, along with employing dentists who are excellent at their jobs. Half of running a clinic well comes down to the use of software and managing systems effectively. Keeping the customers happy is the other half.
Here are some useful tips on how to run a safe, successful dental clinic.
How Customer-Friendly Are Your Opening Hours?
It’s natural for anyone who’s used to normal office hours to open a dental clinic at 9AM and close at 5PM. However, for local people with full-time jobs, that means taking off a whole afternoon for a dental appointment that might only last an hour. To accommodate your customers better, come up with a schedule that offers early morning and early evening hours in two shifts. This way, some customers can get an appointment after their work ends and not lose time. Other customers can get an early morning appointment and only miss part of the morning at work.
Make Appointment Scheduling Less of a Headache
Adopt a scheduling system that dental patients can use themselves to book an appointment. It avoids them needing to make a call and trying to get through to the receptionist to make the booking. Doing this frees up the receptionist’s time to deal with patients arriving and those in the waiting room. Using a real-time scheduling system, no-shows and appointment cancelations could potentially be filled in with last-minute bookings too.
Preventing Infection
Avoiding a potential infection by putting safe practices in place is a strong preventative measure. The CDC estimated that infections could be ruled out in around 70 percent of cases when following sensible practices in a healthcare facility like a dental clinic. Using an Infection Control Consultant to inspect the premises and make recommendations for safety improvements is a move that avoids a future temporary shutdown of a clinic should an infection get out of control.
Use Billing Software to Streamline Payments
Taking payments from customers creates a bottleneck for the receptionist when multiple patients arrive or want to pay at the same time. Using billing software, it’s less time-consuming to create an invoice, accept a payment, and move onto the next task. Some software allows customers to pay online too or the dental clinic could start accepting PayPal or Stripe.
Control the Inventory
The last thing the clinic needs is to run out of essential supplies. Most of the supplies used at a dental practice are not ones that are easily procured from local stores. Because of this, you should create a stock inventory system to monitor the complete list of supplies. Be aware of lead times on ordering to avoid getting too low on supplies before placing an order that will take several weeks to fill.
Once all your systems are in place and the dental clinic is hygienic and following safe practices, you’re all set. Then it’s just a matter of marketing successfully to bring customers in through the door.