Improving productivity in the dental practice: a starting point

Materials, patients, and information flow through the business, but all must pass through the dentist's hands. Thus they are the constraint within the dental practice. Dentists therefore must pay close attention to streamlining and simplifying clinical processes, delegating administration where...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNew Zealand dental journal Vol. 92; no. 409; p. 73
Main Author George, R J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New Zealand 01.09.1996
Subjects
Appointments and Schedules
Costs and Cost Analysis
Dental Care
Dental Instruments
Dental Materials
Dental Records
Dental Staff
Efficiency, Organizational
Financial Management - economics
Financial Management - organization & administration
Humans
Income
Investments
Learning
Management Information Systems
Medical Records Systems, Computerized
Motivation
Patient Care Team
Personnel Management - methods
Practice Management, Dental - economics
Practice Management, Dental - organization & administration
Technology, Dental
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Summary:Materials, patients, and information flow through the business, but all must pass through the dentist's hands. Thus they are the constraint within the dental practice. Dentists therefore must pay close attention to streamlining and simplifying clinical processes, delegating administration wherever possible, and outsourcing technical services. It is recommended that techniques such as four-handed dentistry, tray-batching of instruments, computerisation of records, and efficient scheduling of appointments, be adopted to improve through-put. Measures used to assess decision-making and performance-evaluation include the use of a computerised cashbook, appointment-book analysis, comparison of actual versus budgeted income and expenditure, net profit, and return on investment. These measurements are, however, an adjunct to intuition and experience. There must be an awareness that, if patient perceptions fall short of their expectations because of the improvement in clinical efficiencies, such optimisation would be to the detriment of the practice. To achieve on-going improvement, the dentist must create a learning environment where motivated team members are willing to engage in systematic problem solving, experimentation, and the learning and transfer of knowledge.
ISSN:0028-8047