Unlocking Your Practice’s Full Potential

Running a successful dental practice—whether that practice is a single location or a group operating as a unified business—requires balancing a wide range of demands, and modern dental practice management applications are designed to help track and manage all the tasks and details. Although modern practice management solutions began as digital versions of patient records and practice schedules, they now incorporate everything from clinical charting and imaging to patient communications and education, to financial metrics, and more. The newest platforms, such as Fuse from Patterson Dental, are cloud based to allow greater user flexibility, as well as easier and faster updates and upgrades.

Although these innovative platforms offer dental professionals numerous ways to interact with the software to manage aspects of the practice’s operations, keeping up with all the capabilities and using software to its full potential remains elusive to many practices. In a recent survey of dental professionals, more than 60% of respondents were already using their current practice management application for patient scheduling, treatment planning, digital imaging, billing and insurance claims, financial reporting, patient communications, and practice analytics. However, 52% said using the full potential of their platform remains the biggest software challenge.

At first glance, these two survey outcomes seem difficult to reconcile, but when looked at alongside additional results from the survey, a clearer picture emerges—an additional 23% of respondents listed training staff to use the practice software as their biggest challenge. This clearly shows that although capabilities of the latest dental practice management software platforms are wide ranging and can positively impact numerous aspects of running a practice, there is a need for additional, ongoing training to help practices succeed with their software.

Having practice management software that is intuitive and offers robust training and ensuring you’re getting the most out of the software platform is likely seen as priority. One-third of survey respondents either recently changed platforms or are planning to within the next 12 months. This means a practice’s software is a long-term investment that must be capable of meeting the practice’s changing needs.

As the Patterson cloud-based practice management solution, Fuse is designed to grow and evolve along with the practice. For success from the start, a customized training plan led by a certified Fuse Technology Advisor ensures all team members - from front office to clinical to business teams - are trained prior to their first day using the software with patients.

The Keys to Software Success

Getting the most out of practice software should be a goal for every dental practice, and working toward that goal should involve every member of the practice team. Training should be an ongoing process, but it doesn’t need to be a burden on the practice, and with the right software partner, it can be a part of the process.

Ongoing training should be a part of the practice management platform, with flexible options to meet the different needs of different practices. This can be handled in many ways and can be most effective when numerous training formats are used. The key to getting the most out of a practice management platform comes from what happens after this first phase of training.

Having a software provider that is responsive and available through multiple channels, like live chat, phone and email, is critical to answer questions quickly as they arise. You need a responsive support team because the last thing you want is spending your day on hold waiting for help instead of providing the best patient experience.

Other use cases for training are team members who might need a quick refresher on how to complete a task they don’t frequently handle or when someone is filling in for a team member and may not know exactly how to do something in the software. Fuse has the unique WalkMe solution directly in the platform that provides guided prompts as you complete the task helping you understand the next step until the task is complete.

Having robust training is also essential to success when onboarding new hires or building skills across existing teams. Working with software experts, like the certified Fuse Technology Advisors, that offer training anytime customized to fit your practice needs and workflows allows you to onboard quickly and grow your team’s skills.

Even further, having access to ongoing training materials beyond dedicated sessions allows team members the flexibility learn when it’s convenient for them. The Fuse Academy contains training materials by role and task to help team members get up to speed quickly.

Dental practice management software is the central cog in a dental practice machine, but these expansive applications can feel or seem daunting to implement, and most practices feel they are not using theirs to its full potential. However, with the right partner support and training, a motivated team, and a modern, flexible, and powerful solution like Fuse from Patterson Dental, any practice can truly unlock the full potential of their practice management application.