Dental industry news, trends and information from Patterson Dental.
By allowing hygienists to select and purchase products, a practice can take advantage of their hygienist’s professional expertise, answering important questions about what equipment is needed and how these choices will work best to treat patients. Here are three key considerations to make when selecting hygiene equipment.
Dental handpieces are hard-working tools with very delicate internal parts, which is why proper ongoing maintenance can make for the best possible performance and longevity. Here are a few ways to keep your handpieces in tip-top shape.
Air quality has been a hot topic for a long time and COVID-19 has further illuminated the focus on aerosols in the dental setting. This video from Linda Harvey, RDH, dives into what you can do to be safe and achieve higher quality air in your practice.
See how April Mills, a new co-owner of a Columbia, S.C., dental practice, used Eaglesoft to help her find efficiencies and fill up the schedule at her new practice.
Dental hygienists account for, on average, 30% of a practice’s revenue and are an integral part of any practice. Here are four tips for ensuring a practice is making the most of its dental hygiene service.
The simplest way to prevent aerosol generation in the dental office is to use equipment that does not generate aerosols. For dental hygienists, during the COVID-19 pandemic this has meant little to no use of ultrasonic scaling equipment, a greater reliance on hand scaling and an increased risk of hand and wrist fatigue. The AeroPro Cordless Prophy Handpiece System is one solution.
The dental profession can play an important role in controlling the environmental impact of the practice of dentistry, and individual practices can contribute on a grassroots level. Here are a few ways dental practices can Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
One of the challenges the pandemic posed was increased cancellations due to illness or exposure to COVID-19. Solutionreach allowed for a fluid schedule the practice needed. Electronic intake forms, patient text messages and remote access all worked together to keep the practice running smoothly.
Kerr’s Simplicity line has proven to be the ideal solution to alleviating restoration inventory headaches. Simplicity significantly simplifies the number of brands needed to perform virtually any type of restoration to just three.
Make the claims and collections process more efficient and help alleviate patient frustration by creating workflows that include software tools, hiring insurance negotiators and working with patients to address their needs.
After trying several different patient engagement solutions, West Lakes Family Dentistry turned to OperaDDS software to meet its needs, experiencing ease and efficiency in the process.
When choosing a CEREC block to work with, given all the choices on the table, it’s important to carefully assess each characteristic of the material in relation to how those attributes will best serve you, your team, and of course, your patients.
Celebrating World Oral Health Day is a great opportunity to go beyond the walls of your dental office by raising awareness within your community. Here are five ways to educate both your patients and your community on the importance of good oral health.
While patient safety has long been paramount to modern dentistry, the newest challenges posed by COVID-19 have inspired many practices to review their policies and procedures. To help promote patient safety, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) has created a list of recommendations.
DARW is organized by the American Dental Assistants Association (ADAA) and is meant to recognize dental assistants for the key role they play in dental practices throughout the year. Here are 10 ways to show your appreciation for the dental assistants at your office.
Compliance is a critical aspect of any successful dental practice. As such, it’s important to stay on top of current standards, laws and guidelines to safeguard your dental practice and patients. Here are five common denominators of compliance every practice should consider.
Dr. Rice discusses four areas of your practice to improve on to increase productivity.
Keeping an appropriately stocked inventory of materials and instruments is a bit of a balancing act. You have limited space, but you have a busy practice. You don’t want to be short of a material in the middle of an emergency procedure, but you also don’t want to keep whitening gel past its expiration date because you ordered too much.
When Sonai Roy started as a patient coordinator at John Powers, DMD, in 2017, she quickly recognized the untapped potential of the practice’s patient engagement software. But it wasn’t until COVID-19 hit that the need to more fully apply RevenueWell’s features came into sharp focus.
The Solea all-tissue dental laser opens up a new level of productivity for your practice. From workflow to scheduling, the Solea laser helps your practice achieve more each day while also conserving personal protective equipment (PPE) in the process.
With the importance of performing pediatric dental procedures quickly in mind, a recent evaluation in Dental Product Shopper looked at durability, fit, ease of placement, practice benefits and overall satisfaction of Patterson Primary Molar Stainless Steel Crowns.
National Children’s Dental Health Month is a great time to remind yourself and your patients why pediatric dental care is so important and revisit the steps that can help ensure a lifetime of good oral health.
Wearing PPE is one of the most tangible ways healthcare workers can protect themselves from increased risks of COVID-19 infection. But due to the extended use and extra precautions taken, PPE can become uncomfortable.
Almost a year since the COVID-19 pandemic forced public awareness of PPE, disinfection practices and social distancing, even those who were previously compliant with biannual dental visits may think that unless something is noticeably wrong, in-office dental care can be postponed indefinitely. But reassuring adults is only one challenge, another highly important task is conveying to parents what efforts your practice is making to maintain a child-safe environment.
The myths of who and what constitute a great leader are so powerful that many in dentistry simply steer clear of leadership all together. David Rice, DDS, shares several ways practice owners can effectively lead their teams, even during uncertain times.
In an update about her now finished dental studio, Irene Iancu explains how she made her vision of owning her own hygienist-run dental practice with a strong voice on social media come to life.
While cloud-based practice management software offers many business benefits, it’s important to consider basic safety protocols such as data security, remote login policies and passwords protection. Linda Harvey discusses how to keep your data safe and HIPAA compliant.
If you ask any dentist about the biggest problem they have in running their practice, invariably the answer will point, in one way or another, to staffing issues. But new hires is not always the best solution. Automating tasks like processing new patient information, triaging after-hours emergencies, medical prescreening, and curbside check-ins relieve your overburdened team members to be able to do what they do best; take care of patients.
Patients become no-shows for a variety of reasons, and the impact that has on a dental practice is well documented. Finances, fear, forgetfulness, transportation and last-minute issues can all lead to a no-show. But there is another side to the no-show issue that is important to recognize: a no-show patient may be looking to receive care from somewhere else.
Finding new ways to increase dental office productivity can improve the agility of your staff, boost the patient experience and help you bring in new patients. Improvement in any of these areas can help increase revenue in the process.