At present, dental health care is delivered mainly by private practitioners all around the globe. More importance was given on the design of the dental treatment rooms than on the design of business management. The planning of the business office workspace is also a key factor and such an area should be carefully designed as the business staff can deliver its tasks with maximum efficiency. Any patient who first time comes to the dental clinic is the most important person for the dentist. The infrastructures can improve practice efficiency, reduce administrative costs, and improve communication with other providers. Also, there are various dental software’s that are available in the market for practice management. The appointment system is very important in dental practice management, and it must be managed effectively. Usually, the system contains lists of all the scheduled patients as well as events for the dentist and staff. It is the control center of the office and a determinant in the success or failure of a dental practice. Dentist during their daily practice face hurdles regarding legal aspects and standards of care while rendering dental care to the patients. For the protection and safety of the patients and society, both independent and legal requirements must be provided according to legal standards. Therefore, though the complete procedure of ideal dental practice is not possible to attain, day by day improvement is necessary for betterment. For effective dental practice management, it is necessary that the overall dental team works in an efficient manner and follow the proper rules and laws.
It’s time to revisit your working space and practice methodologies. During the last several week’s hospitals have become dreaded spaces which could be potential hotbeds of fatal infections. Same is the case with dental practices, especially ones that do not have a dental practice management software installed in them.
Imagine entering a dental practice before the lockdown. A patient might drive in half an hour before the consultation. Next, he would approach the front desk with his registration ID or start the registration process filling out details in a registration form.
He would stay at the desk for some time, get his registration done confirming his personal details, swipe his card or pay cash for the fees and then look for a seat in the lounge to wait till his turn.
All this while he will be touching furniture, papers, pen, POS machines, and more such things. In the post-COVID-19 era, these things could potentially have been touched by a coronavirus positive person. There is ample room for worry here as the tiny virus is known to live on surfaces for anything between three hours to three days and even with routine disinfection, a person could still be at risk. So if the handles of the chair a patient sits on are made of steel, it could be housing viruses that landed on it three days ago unless very well disinfected.
Now that you have thought through the risks of going to a dental practice you need to understand that these risks exist only if your dental practice is non-automated. A modern practice with an automated dental practice management solution (PMS) is all we need to reduce the chances of infection to less than 3%.
If your dental practice has a good dental PMS, then it would operate very differently from what was explained before.
For starters, you would not be going to the practice for non-essential services. Good dental practices will install teledentistry services for a screening process and avoid in-person contact as far as possible. In cases where operatory care is necessary, patients will be asked to come to practice tad on time and asked to wait in their cars as all their information is already available with the clinic via online application forms.
Patients need to enter the practice facility only when prompted by an SMS token that is sent through the PMS and only one patient will enter a facility at a time to maintain social distancing.
Inside the practice, the patient will straight away walk to the procedure room with no stops at the counters or lobby. The procedure room will have positive pressure and the medical history, files, and images of the patients will be in the screens in front of the dentist, no paper involved. Once the procedure is over patients will be followed up through telemedicine again and asked to come back only if necessary. The payment and even the feedback and future marketing and promotion offers will be automated completely by a good PMS.
With dental software, patients get rid of a large number of possible contagion risks. So it would be wise on their part to choose a dental practice that gives them the benefits of automation because that is the only safe window to care in the future.