Challenges in Dentistry
After the covid times, the dental community is undergoing turbulence in many directions. This document outlines the major challenges that in the dental practice in 2022. This document also outlines the solutions to overcome these challenges.
1. Bringing patients to your clinic
Having a waiting room full of patients is not just a dream, but also the biggest challenge for all dental practitioners. Every year there are more than 35000 dentists graduating from dental colleges. Most of them start the dental practice near the existing practices like you.
In bigger cities, dentist to population ratio has gone down as low as 1:750 which means one dentist has only 750 population, not patients. In India, only 10% of people go to dentists. So the patient will be around 75. That is one of the reasons why getting extremely challenging even for established practitioners, not just new practitioners.
2. Converting the prospective people into patients
Nowadays patients have a lot of options when coming to choosing the right dentist for their dental treatments. If they do not like your treatment plan, treatment charges, staff behavior, sterilization standards, etc, they may end up going somewhere else. Dental clinics should have a strong strategy of converting a prospective patient to a real patient. Unfortunately many dental clinics do not a proper strategy.
3. Retaining patients
This is the next challenge faced in dental practice life. We may spend handful time for acquiring patient but we may fail in retaining them. As the number of patients are not increasing as proportional as dental clinics, it is important to retain the patient who visited at least once. Have you faced the above situations in your practice where you provide quality dental treatment at affordable rate and still patient goes to a dental clinic where the charges are high and not providing quality treatment? We are sure as practicing dentists must have faced this problem at least once.
Major 3 Solutions (3Ms) to overcome dental practice challenges
We all know how severe the competition is and how dentistry is floating in our country in the current times. In this article, we focus on the major solutions that will apply in day-to-day dental practice. If you follow all of them you will be unstoppable in your practice.
One of the biggest problems with the majority of dentists is that they are more focused on clinical skills and gives least importance to other essential areas. Unless you do good dental marketing, people will not come to know about your clinic. Unless you do proper practice management, people will not stay with your clinic. Unless you do proper treatment, people will not come back to you. All three solutions are equally important.
1. Professional Mastery
1. Clinical Skills
There are so many dentists around you, but people have selected you only because they know that you have better clinical skills through multiple client reviews. Clinical skill is the first milestone that crosses when a patient enters your premise. The best equipment and all the facilities are also included in clinical skills. On the first day, you may not have all ultra latest gadgets in your clinic. But eventually, you should have all the latest equipment and facilities in your dental clinic.
2. Soft skills
Apart from the clinical skills patients looks at the way you carry out patient consideration, the way you explain the dental problems and suggest the treatment plan, the way you answer their questions and price objections. Your confidence, presentation of the clinic etc all matters in soft skills
2. Dental Marketing
Dental marketing is an ongoing process, it is not a one-time thing. It starts even before your practice starts. Dental marketing steps are as follows:
2.1. Dental marketing planning
2.2. Marketing Foundation
2.3. Practice launch
2.4. Attract Patients
2.5. Retain Patients
2.6. Review & Refine
2.7. Offline marketing
People give more importance to digital marketing, but it takes more time.
2.8. Socializing
Socializing is nothing but you must move out of the clinic and socialize with people as you can. Then people know your skills, facilities, expertise, etc. The most important thing is how can you add value to them.
2.9. Networking
You should be part of any of the NGOs like rotary clubs, lion’s clubs, etc.
2.10. Conduct dental awareness campaigns
You can read more about Dental Online Marketing from our other blog.
3. The dental practice Management
3.1. Dental practice management software
Appropriate dental software can completely revolutionize the way your business operates by allowing patients to effortlessly schedule or modify appointments, make timely payments, and support your staff’s productivity.
It makes sense to select software that would enable patients to arrange appointments online since they desire to do so. The payment process can also be made more efficient. Your office can become more productive by automating procedures, which will free you up to see more patients.
The right dental software can help any practice attract new patients but the following are the features do dentists consider to be deal-breaker
a. Security and reliability.
Patient information must be protected, and the software must work reliably and with a minimum of problems.
b. Ease of implementation and management.
You must choose software that’s easy to onboard and manage.
c. Excellent customer service
You must get top-notch customer service from software companies.
d. Integrations.
Many dental clinics use software and tools for a variety of purposes. The dental software integrates seamlessly with the tools they are already using.
3.2. Behaviour and attitude of the team
Right from the moment, the patient enters the clinic the way your staff is happy and enthusiastic on their face, and the way they treated everything is keenly observed. If their visit, staff, doctor, treatment, and the way things are explained are good, definitely the patient will not go anywhere.
3.3. Sterilisation, Hygiene, and Cleanliness of the clinic
Especially after the pandemic, people’s awareness about health, hygiene, and sterilization has gone up to the next level. Dentists work in the patient’s mouth so they want to ensure that their place is absolutely neat and clean. Before they sit in the dirty chair, they may or may not tell you about it. The customer is king. If you want long-term patient retention and association, you will have to ensure your sterilisation protocol.
Dental Practice 2022: Result
Clinical skills are equally important to Management and Marketing strategies. So Don’t focus only on clinical skills, you have to focus on soft skills like marketing, presentation, communication, etc. If you can communicate efficiently, you will be able to convince the patient. Marketing helps you to give more patients. Soft skills and effective consultation help you to convince the patients. Good clinical skills help you to retain and satisfy patients. Thus they become your loyal patient.
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