Boosting practice profitability
UncategorisedPosted by: Dental Design 6th April 2020
Winston Churchill once said, “If you mean to profit, learn to please”. As a dentist, you strive to please your patients in order to develop a profitable practice. This involves juggling the pressures of being an excellent clinician with running a successful business. The challenge that you face is keeping your current patient base happy, whilst attracting new patients to continue growing your business. There are some key steps that you can take to boost practice profitability and ensure an exceptional service.
Staff
Although it may seem counterproductive to your business, investing in staff training and development can positively impact practice profitability in a myriad of ways. After all, a highly skilled team can deliver a better service, thereby increasing patient satisfaction with treatment, which can help you grow and maintain a healthy patient base. Skill and knowledge enrichment ultimately gives your staff the insight and capabilities to develop innovative ways of delivering higher quality outcomes for patients.
Employees who are empowered within their roles are also more likely to be engaged and energised about their work. This can translate to higher productivity in practice, directly impacting profitability and enabling you to generate more business. With a well-trained team at your back, you can reduce the risk of costly errors, improve the quality of your service, and streamline processes to ensure a more efficient workflow. Moreover, training your staff properly can ensure that the entire practice team has the skillset to compete, scale up and remain profitable in the longer-term.
Treatment
The growth of your business ultimately hinges on your service. Therefore, you might want to offer treatments that can bring added value to the services that you already provide. For example, some patients may benefit from facial aesthetics to complement any cosmetic dental work that they have invested in. As you already know, there are treatments that are more popular at certain times of the year. Requests for professional tooth whitening or orthodontics, for instance, may increase during wedding season.
Regardless of the treatment you offer, it is worthwhile keeping track of procedures that are particularly sought after, and adapting your service offering in order to cater for patient demand. Providing limited-time discounts or promotions on specific treatments can be an effective way of standing out from competitors and attracting patients to your practice. Timely, relevant special offers can make a positive difference to your overall bottom line, but it is important to have a well-developed strategy in place to ensure success.
Marketing
With increasing competition within the profession, dental practices cannot afford to take marketing opportunities for granted. Good marketing is key to attracting new patients and reinforcing relationships with existing ones. It is easy to know that you should market your practice, but much more difficult to know exactly how. That is why it is crucial to determine what works best for your business. You could advertise within the local media – whether through print, radio or TV platforms – but social media channels and word-of-mouth recommendations might be more beneficial marketing avenues.
These are the easiest, most inexpensive ways of promoting your practice and can often generate a great deal more business compared to some traditional marketing strategies. Many popular online networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are free to use, simple to manage, and provide a far-reaching virtual space for you to engage with existing and potential patients for maximum exposure. It is important to take advantage of a professional practice website as well, which should be search engine optimised and regularly updated to ensure it sets a good impression of your business.
Technology
Investing in new technology can improve the functionality of your practice on multiple fronts, thus supporting strategies for boosting practice profitability. The return on investment in new dental equipment can be much greater than the initial cost of the technology. For instance, the latest digital imaging and CAD/CAM systems can help increase productivity by enabling clinicians to provide a more efficient service. The new Primescan intraoral scanner supplied by Clark Dental can be combined with cutting-edge CEREC systems to support single-visit dentistry. This makes it ideal for a wide range of dental disciplines, from dental implantology to orthodontics.
Innovative technology such as this can facilitate the delivery of various high quality restorations chairside in practice. As a result, the fees required to fabricate restorations are reduced, as are the costs that are typically involved with additional patient visits and traditional impression-taking processes. Furthermore, practitioners are able to streamline treatment so that they can treat a greater number of patients in less time, immediately increasing practice profits.
Boosting practice profitability doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple adjustment to the way your practice is managed or investment within a specific area of your business can improve the efficiency of treatment and, therefore, increase productivity. This can lead to higher patient satisfaction with your services, which enables you to remain competitive and continue improving the overall standard of care provided.
For more information call Clark Dental on 01268 733 146, email info@clarkdental.co.uk or visit www.clarkdental.co.uk
No Comments
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
