If I was building a dental practice from scratch (again) the first place I would look in setting up a system would be my clinical management system within the practice.
This is by far the most important tool your practice has, which has the ability to create the biggest change and positive influence but conversely, provides the most negative of circumstances within the practice if it's wrong or you don't have it right.
It's fair to say that the change in use of our clinical practice management system is down to the vision and workload of Carl Dunstan, who is our sales and business development director in the clinic.
We had integrated Dentally into our clinic before Carl started working with us.
In fact, we had integrated it well over a year before, but when I say integrated, I mean subscribed to it and started to use it. We actually had in no way integrated into our system.
The key with a practice management system, is to know what you've got and to use it to the best of its capability for what you want to do, and it was only after Carl arrived that we began doing that.
One of the most important things about your clinical management system is the ability to match the clinical journey and the financial journey of your patient through the practice.
What this means is that people don't walk out the door after appointments, not having paid for the treatment that they’ve had carried out and not knowing when their next appointment is.
The beauty of Dentally is that it’s extraordinarily powerful in achieving this combination of clinical and financial tie in, but it's also cloud based.
I would not in any way invest in any system in the practice (apart from currently CBCT and imaging systems) that is not cloud based or portable.
This was proven to be absolutely essential through covid and beyond that, it now allows us to work in a way which was unheard of even five years ago.
But that all sounds a bit technical, and I am not working for Dentally and trying to sell you the Dentally system (actually quite the opposite and far from it) but what I do want to do is to try to help independent practices get better and better, have less burn out for their staff and teams, and make a bigger difference to patients.
Managing Dentally and using Dentally in the best possible way makes us more human, not less human, and gives us more opportunity to be face to face with patients to talk about the things that matter and to do the treatment that counts.
I honestly believe that, and I honestly believe that Dentally has been one of our superpowers moving forwards to allow us not only to survive over the last 2 to 3 years, but to thrive.
To give you some examples of how Dentally has worked in our business in a way which was unimaginable before, I'm now able (and I do this regularly on courses as a demonstration) to use two clicks to show people what our turnover is likely to be in the next six weeks.
That is quite an unbelievable and powerful tool to settle things down and allow you to make the right decisions.
If you get to a position where your appointments are properly linked in Dentally then it will tell you what you’re likely to turnover in the next six weeks (I'd like them to move this on to three months for our practice, but I'm sure that will come in time).
What that does is give you the freedom to know where you are and to know which buttons to push and levers to pull over the next 6 to 12 weeks so that you can run your business properly.
It provides you with peace of mind (or, in some cases, the opposite of peace of mind but focus) to move your business forwards.
What we have also been able to do in the clinic is provide standard treatment plans, which can open up in seconds and then be adjusted and modified for patients moving forwards.
That way, it allows us to show a patient a treatment plan (even a massive five figure treatment plan for upper and lower full arch) immediately and in front of them to give them a very accurate guide price for what their treatment will be.
We can modify that plan in front of the patient during a consultation and then, with a really wonderful and extraordinary digital set up; email that to the patient directly from surgery with a pdf document which includes all the treatment information and possible complications, together with the consent form that the patient can send digitally which is then embedded in the patient's notes for them returning to the practice.
Best that I repeat that here so that people who are involved in dentistry such as this and all the admin that goes with it understand.
Within the treatment consultation (where this is possible with clinical information) the plan can be constructed in front of the patient, discussed with the patient, emailed to the patient with all the information for appropriate consent and the patient can then digitally sign this and it appears in the case notes so, the TCO can contact the patient and say that they're happy to proceed with treatment and book all the appointments (which are already set out on Dentally) to move forwards.
This has transformed my practice.
I would always have two consultation appointments for patients but now I'm in a position where a large percentage of my patients have one consultation and either a second short zoom call to answer questions (which is recorded and embedded in Dentally) or an appointment with my clinical nurse specialist for diagnostics with consent already signed.
It takes a long time to get a handle on a new clinical system and the prospect of embedding it is daunting but what Carl developed in our practice was an online training system for Dentally which now is about 25-30 modules long.
This is mandatory training for our team yearly and expands and expands as our understanding and use of the system gets better.
It's based on our own learning management system (another part of our tech stack with The Academy) and is becoming more and more available to people outside of the practice and particularly those guys on our business course.
It's not easy for me to overstate the importance of Dentally and how much it has changed our practice but just to give you some idea, I think it's been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in our practice over the past 2-3 years and so the incentive to do that for most people, is probably quite large.
This is something that we'll talk about extensively on our business courses but also if you watch this space moving forwards and if whenever Carl is ready, I suspect the management system stuff will become available externally for people (for a reasonable charge) and for those people on Dentally already, and some of my friends in dentistry are already using the system, this will transform your staff utilization of the product.
Watch this space for the next tech stack stuff coming up and see how it starts to fit together like a jigsaw.
Blog Post Number - 3320