10 Productivity-Boosting Resolutions for Your Dental Practice

December 16, 2024

If you’re a planner and/or love goal setting, then you’re probably already thinking about the personal and professional goals you want to accomplish in the upcoming year. And if you’re not, that’s okay too, no judgement! As you approach the end of what’s hopefully another great year, now’s an ideal time to think about the ways you can improve your efficiency at the practice and keep a full schedule that makes your practice owner happy. Here are 9 areas you can prioritize so it has a positive impact on your practice. Whether you choose to call these resolutions, intentions, or something else, use these recommendations to start the new year off on the right foot.

1. Tighten up Your Daily Huddle.

Target date: February 28

Could your daily huddle use a revamp? Daily huddles are an opportunity to connect with your team, examine your metrics, and tackle any issues that have come up. Consider having a set agenda for your daily huddles so everyone is on the same page, and meetings are an efficient use of everyone’s time. You can decide what those agenda items should be, but here are some ideas.

What to do:

Start with team shoutouts and celebrate any wins, like a patient giving a glowing review or hitting a production goal.

Discuss scheduling gaps and what you’ll do to fill them.

Talk about practice metrics and where you’re tracking against your goals. Also, be sure to discuss what campaigns are launching to meet those goals.

Introduce a ‘patient spotlight’ where you review a patient scheduled for that day or week who may need extra attention or have a special milestone to celebrate.

Have a theme of the day for your huddles. You can rotate them out, so all aspects of your practice being covered. For example, you could have a Treatment Thursday to brainstorm strategies for increasing case acceptance. Another example could be Tuesday Testimonials to talk about online reviews. This can include how many reviews you’ve collected, any negative reviews that you’ve received and how they’ll be addressed, any feedback you can implement to improve the practice experience.

If your mornings are typically tight, consider a quick catch-up after lunch. As you revamp your daily huddles, remember that overcommunication is never a bad thing.

2. Evaluate Your Phone Experience.

Target date: Complete by March 31

‍The phone still matters in dental offices. Some of your patients prefer calling over texting and emailing. This means it’s still a strong place to generate more appointments and give both potential and current patients a positive practice experience. However, when handled poorly, the phone is also where your practice can lose new patients. Eighty-seven percent of new patients won’t leave a message or call back if their calls go to voicemail.

So, make this the year you revamp your approach to the phone. Here’s how:

‍Step 1: Evaluate your team’s phones skills

How would you grade the team’s phone etiquette?

Are you asking open-ended questions, so patients have a chance to share more information?

Do you have phone scripts for team members so they can confidently navigate more complicated questions?

Are you staying on the phone with a new patient for the right amount of time?

How do you handle a patient who’s calling to gather information about your practice instead of wanting to make an appointment?

Step 2: Assess your current phone system

Does your phone system give you important patient info as soon as the phone rings?

Can you text your patients from your main phone line’s number?

When you’re on the phone, can your patients wait on hold, or are they sent to voicemail?

Does it offer features, like auto-attendants, so you never miss a call?

Does your phone system offer call recording for training purposes?

Does your phone system sync with your PMS?

3. Cross-train one New Skill Per Quarter.

Target Date(s): Complete by March 31, June 30, September 30, and December 31

No matter your team size, you juggle a lot of roles and responsibilities. And if someone is out of the office, then there needs to be someone else who can step in as needed. Cross training is a great way to help people grow professionally, learn a new skill, and continue delivering great care to patients. Being well-rounded in a dental space is valuable, and you should encourage your team to have a t-shaped skillset. That means that each team member possesses deep expertise in one area like insurance and billing, but also has some general skills in other areas, like treatment plan follow up and dental marketing. This type of approach is common in other industries and other roles so consider taking this approach in your front office.

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What to do:

Map out which four new skills each teammate should cultivate during the year.

Chat with your team about which new skills they’d like to develop or improve.

Share relevant documentation and resources with the team so they can review them and ask questions.

Set up shadow meetings between the primary owner of the job and the cross-trainee.

Modify job descriptions and compensation to include the new skills and add new achievable performance goals.

4. Add Two New Marketing Touchpoints.

Target date(s): Complete by March 31 and June 30

For the upcoming year, add at least two new touchpoints to your marketing efforts. Scheduling a dental appointment is one of many tasks your patients have to remember. And one way to keep their oral health top of mind is by regularly staying in touch with patients via marketing activities. It takes an average of 7 touchpoints before someone might act so you have to be intentional with all your activities.

Marketing can look different for each practice because it depends on your goals and budget. This could involve a mix of digital marketing like social media, paid advertising, SEO, and consistent email communications. Once you get clear on your goals and budget, then you can determine what your next steps should be in marketing. Here are some ideas to keep in your back pocket.

What to do:

Send time-sensitive or theme-based campaigns such as an expiring benefits reminder campaign between the end of Q3 and early Q4 to patients who have unused funds. Another idea is to send a back-to-school campaign to families or college-aged students encouraging them to make a dental appointment.

Create a monthly or quarterly newsletter to engage patients and drive more appointments. Some patient engagement systems have a newsletter campaign that you can use and simply plug in and update the content.

Post consistently on your social media channels to educate patients, build trust, and ultimately motivate them to book an appointment.

Keep your website up to date, mobile-friendly, and secure since it’s one of ways patients decide whether to make an appointment or not.

Invest in paid media based on your specific practice goals. For example, paid advertising and paid social are excellent ways to quickly generate leads who can convert into new patients and to widen your online exposure.

5. Update Your Intake Process.

Target Date: Complete by March 31

‍Creating a paperless dental office has a ton of benefits for dental practices these days.

Make sure your forms writeback to your PMS data fields and/or are stored in your PMS document library.
For patients who don’t have easy online access, offer a tablet experience at your practice that allows them to fill out forms in the office.
If you must send multiple packets, carve out time to create the most used packets ahead of time so they’re already available for a team to use.
Utilize pre-built forms that you can modify based on your practice’s needs and services.

6. Master 1-2 Social Media Platforms for the Upcoming Year.

Target Date(s): Facebook or Instagram (Meta) by March 31, or TikTok by June 30 or by September 30

‍Social media is one of the best ways to connect with prospective and current patients. But understandably it can feel overwhelming managing it for your practice. The good news is that you don’t have to be on every channel. You can decide which one(s) to be active on based on your ideal patients and current patient base.

Try these tips if you already have a social media account set up, but you don’t post regularly.

If you have access to these metrics, look at your engagement metrics to understand which posts and channels get the most engagement and/or generate appointments.

Update your pictures and about us or bio sections if you haven’t updated it since you first created the account.

Engage with new and current patients via automated or customized content.

Post new types of content like patient testimonials, behind the scenes videos, oral health tips, short educational videos to understand what content resonates with patients.

If you’re interested in joining a new channel, start with these tips:

Ask yourself and your team what are the reasons and goals for joining a new social channel. Is it to find more new patients, increase your online exposure, or to educate patients? It’s important to understand the ‘why’ behind your decision.

Ask your current patients if they’re active on that channel. You can do this by asking them in person during check-out or including a survey question in your newsletter or intake forms.

Think about our ideal patients too. Are your ideal patients the same as your current patient base? This combined with knowing the goals for joining a new channel can give you a clearer idea of whether it’s worth pursuing or not.

Many patient engagement systems have social media management built into their platform, so you don’t have to hop in and out of your tools to post on those channels. They often have existing content you can use so you can schedule and post from one place. Some patient engagement vendors also have offer digital marketing services, including organic and paid social, where they manage it all for you. Based on your practice goals and specific social media goals, you can consider partnering with a vendor.

7. Freshen Up Your Online Profile Either Quarterly or Twice a Year.

Target Date(s): Complete by June 30 and September 30

Some prospective patients still use online directories to find healthcare providers so it’s worth keeping them fresh so they can see what your practice offers them. Plus, they help to boost your online presence and keep up with the competition.

What to do:

Claim your practice page (if you haven’t already).

Ensure your practice information, like your address, contact information, website, hours, including holiday hours, and payment information, are still up to date.

Update your practice description including new service offerings if available.

Add new photos of your practice so patients can get a sense of what it looks like because appearances do leave an impression.

Make sure your reviews are shown on your directories to add credibility.

8. Collect More Patient Reviews in a Strategic Way.

Target Date: June 30

Almost 75% of patients use online reviews as the first step in finding a new healthcare provider so reviews are a deciding factor in whether a potential new patient will book an appointment with you or not. It helps to have a process in place to gather online reviews on a regular basis.

What to do:

Set up a review request campaign that helps you collect reviews after a patient leaves your appointment. Send the campaign via the channel your patients prefer to receive practice communications so they’re more likely to engage and act on it.

In your review request communications, direct them to your Google My Business profile to leave a review. Google My Business reviews impact whether patients can find your practice in online searches and add more credibility.

Have an action plan to address negative reviews. Be sure to address them immediately by reaching out to the patient privately. Don’t forget to implement any feedback you receive because it’s equally as important as contacting the patient.

Take advantage of the online reputation tool in your patient engagement system to manage your online review process from one place. This cuts down logging into different review sites and social media platforms to monitor your reviews.

9. Evaluate How Your Verify Patient Insurance.

Target Date: September 30 or December 31

For some practices, 50% of front office time is spent on verifying patients’ eligibility. This means there’s potential to quicken this process so you can focus on other tasks you like.

What to do:

Make sure your documentation for verifying insurance is up to date and accurate. Update it as soon as something has changed in your process and notify your team via email and your daily huddle.

Monitor your online reviews to see if patients have said anything negative about how you handle insurance. Hopefully there’s nothing negative, but if there is, that’s also a helpful way to know what isn’t working and fix it.

Make sure your patient insurance information is current in your PMS. This can impact your ability to accurately verify insurance and give patients the right cost estimates.

Invest in an insurance verification tool to automate your process. A verification tool cuts down the amount of time you spend on the phone with providers and/or logging in and out of provider portals to collect and verify this information.

10. Share These Resolutions and Revisit Regularly.

Target Date: Complete by January 1 of the following year.

The last tip and certainly not least is to gather feedback and share these resolutions with your team so everyone can contribute to getting them done. Depending on your team size, you can work with your team to come up with these resolutions or gather a few people to collect feedback. Once you agree on what to focus on, be sure to share it internally and assign tasks to people.

Keep in mind you don’t have to implement all these ‘resolutions’ if it’s not feasible. Use the recommended target dates and focus on some of these initiatives. You’ll still make an impact even if you can only implement a few of these.

If your practice has an annual meeting, that would be a great time to bring these up because some of them can influence your practice metrics. Whatever you decide, use these resolutions to keep improving your efficiency because when you feel like you can do your job well, it impacts every part of the practice experience.

Next recommended read: How to Set and Track Performance Goals