5 Strategies for Building a Cohesive Dental Practice

Once a dental practice is up and running, the day-to-day management often goes on autopilot. However, in order to build a cohesive dental practice, you need to zoom out and re-evaluate your practice.

Team huddles

One of the best ways to build a cohesive practice is through good communication. When everyone works toward the same goal, expectations remain in-check, trust grows, and operations run more smoothly. Consider scheduling a short monthly meeting with the entire team to get on the same page about the month ahead. This is a great way to discuss scheduling and time off, address any updates in protocol or technology, or recognize team achievements. While it’s hard to carve out time on everyone’s schedule, making the effort once a month goes a long way in improving the practice long term.

Access to similar equipment, technologies, and workspaces

Consistent equipment, technology, and workspaces across a dental practice can help teams feel more aligned. Striking a good balance between focusing on state-of-the-art equipment, your team will find it’s easier to navigate the day-to-day of their job. When the playing field is balanced, staff feel less like they’re competing with their peers, and more like equals all working toward the same goal. Do workspaces need to be re-evaluated to reduce clutter? Is the access to equipment and technology the same across the practice? Listen to your team and focus on improving efficiencies in order to achieve a more cohesive workplace.

Appropriate training

Training your team should go well beyond orientation. Ongoing training is vital to keeping your staff savvy with the latest technologies, confident in their skill and knowledge base, and feeling that they are contributing to the overall success of the practice. Document your administrative protocol for easy reference, such as step-by-step guides for answering new patient calls, collecting overdue payments, and filing patients’ insurance. Conduct a few office-wide training days throughout the year to act as a refresher for the whole team. Include presentations by experts on accounting, products, equipment and technique, as well as running staff through role-play scenarios.

Universal cloud-based practice management system

Technology does a fantastic job in creating efficiencies, reducing errors, and uniting a practice. And, choosing the right cloud-based practice management system is a sure-fire way to improve cohesion across the team. While many systems specialize in one area of practice management, choosing an all-in-one solution will bring a universal outlook to your processes, including billing, scheduling, imaging, and charting. With the ability to easily track insurance plans, confirm appointments, and access patient charts, your practice management will be much more streamlined. In addition, with an encrypted digital patient portal, your patients can enjoy easy access to make appointments, pay bills, and access important information from home, work or their smartphones.

Employee recognition program

An employee recognition program highlights, appreciates, and reward great work done within the practice as a form of positive reinforcement. There are many ways to implement such a program, but the results should look the same. Encouraging staff to go above and beyond, and then recognizing their hard work along the way leads to improved workplace morale and retention rates. Consider a program where staff can nominate their peers for recognition in order to learn about the high performers in the office.

Leverage financial support

If you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, PlainsCapital is available to support your team as a valuable financial resource to the dental industry. For more information on how PlainsCapital Bank can help you build a cohesive dental practice, call us at 866.762.8392 or visit your local bank branch today.