Striking the balance between patient care and running a successful business can see dental clinic owners trapped in a cycle of long hours and growing stress.
For busy clinic owners, wanting to free up time to spend with family, on hobbies and for professional development is a common wish but can often feel out of reach. Is the answer to bring on an associate? To cut down your patient-facing hours? If none of these options feel right, this is where Digital Smile Design may be able to help.
In this article, DSD Clinic owners explain how becoming a DSD Clinic has had a dramatic impact on their flexibility and control of their schedules without compromising their business profitability.
Why is it so hard to maintain work-life balance in dentistry?
For starters, in a traditional dental practice the principal dentist may need to spend five or six days a week doing clinical work to maintain sufficient income. Dentists in traditional practices can also become stuck using inefficient workflows or analog methods such as manual impressions and model-making, which may cause stress, take up valuable time and lead to unpredictability in treatment outcomes.
This can be exhausting – and mean that you are left with limited time to spend with family, dedicate to hobbies or pursue other professional goals.
How Digital Smile Design can help dentists achieve more flexibility
While becoming a DSD Clinic requires an initial investment, including a monthly membership fee and a learning phase for the dentist and the team, it can deliver significant returns in terms of flexibility and freedom.
Here are seven key ways being a DSD Clinic can help you change your practice and improve your work-balance.
1. Increase your average treatment value
Implementing DSD helps dental clinics to go from quadrant family dentistry to comprehensive care. Pursuing comprehensive care in their practices means bringing together great dentistry and great business, and leads to better care and meaningful treatments, along with stronger relationships with patients and increased business growth.
Through this approach, dental offices not only achieve higher case acceptance rates, but also move from lower value treatments to an increased average treatment value per patient.
Dr Simon Clavell-Bate, from Clavell-Bate & Nephew Dental Surgeons in the UK, acknowledges that when he first implemented the DSD system in his clinic "the workflow and everything is completely upside down on traditional dentistry," but the outcome has been well worth the effort. He also emphasized that: "Every case that I do with DSD is the best case I have ever done.”
Meanwhile, Dr Bartosz Cerkaski from EndoEstetica in Poland notes: “If you are really serious about your business of dentistry but also really care about the clinical aspect of dentistry, I don’t think you can find any other methodology that will give you both combined... the clinical part and the business part”.
2. Delegate more to your team
DSD systems empower the team to take on more responsibilities while maintaining consistently high standards. This allows the principal dentist to step away from the chair and focus on other aspects of the business: “Because of DSD in our clinic I am able to move out of dentistry,” says Dr Cerkaski. “That may be strange, but I decided that I don't want to work every day like I used to but I still wanted to have influence and control over the clinical part – and this is exactly what DSD gives me.
It gives me the tools to control quality: to have doctors who of course are experienced, but who might be less experienced. Because of the technology and DSD I can keep the level of dentistry on a good level. I can be sure that things are done the proper way – at least the way that I want it.
And I couldn't find any other methodology that allowed me as the owner of the clinic, to give the tools to my staff, and have the work be done in the way that I would like to be done, and allow me to step out of the chair.”
3. Make your workflows and systems more efficient
The replicable systems taught by DSD have been proven in dental practices worldwide. They can help dentists to enhance treatment accuracy and reduce the need for remakes, which can in turn dramatically cut down on wasted time and costs. This can free up a clinician’s time for other things.
Dr Clavell-Bate recalls that before DSD, his comprehensive cases averaged three remakes whereas now, with guided dentistry, the fit is “guaranteed” the first time.
Dr Stephan Eckrich, from Eckrich & Kollegen in Germany, explains how DSD changed the workflows in his clinic:
“Before I started with DSD, we did our whole workflow in the clinic in the analog way. We did impressions and made our models, and we did our wax up in the laboratory on the models. And we did not have a phase in order to create the designs fitting to the face and all that stuff. And we had a lot of trouble with several try-ins in order to deliver perfect designs, function and all of this. And of course, we spent a lot of time discussing a case together with other specialists, for example, or in the surgical cases, maxillofacial surgeons sometimes, and all these things.
So, the case planning and the whole workflow was a headache, because it needed a lot of time and it was definitely not as predictable as it is now. And, of course, because this took a lot of time, I spent much more time in the clinic, much more time of my actual free time which I now have.
“From the beginning, when I read on the DSD homepage about the concept, it was quite clear for me that when I go with DSD, I will get the full range. No other competitor had the full range. I mean 2D planning, 3D planning and production of products”.
4. Reduce the number of corrections and remakes
A lack of predictability in treatment is a common source of stress for dentists. In addition, it can mean the clinician having to spend time they don’t have on corrections, remakes and extra patient appointments. This is where DSD workflows can help. Dr Clavell-Bate recounts a commonly experienced situation of needing corrections from the lab pre-DSD:
“When you get a load of restorations delivered and you fit them and they don't look right, then what you're doing is you’re dismantling everything, sending it all back to the lab, paying for it to be replaced, booking some extra time, and explaining to the patient that there's been a problem – which is always an awkward conversation”, he explains.
“So you'd lose clinical time. If this has happened two or three times, then you're now on hours of treatment time lost. You've got increased costs, not just in terms of lab fees and things like that, impression materials, crowns.”
"The first and only word is predictability”, says Dr Cerkaski about the importance of predictable treatment outcomes. “I mean, this is everything in dental clinics, in business, but especially in business that involves people's health.
And you need to be sure about your product, let's say. So, you need to know that everything that you're offering to the patient is going to happen in the way that you promise them” (...)
“With DSD, there's no problem. I always get what I want. So when I get this predictability, it's very easy to explain it to the patient. So that's why I say that predictability gives you the power to explain to the patients, to give you the feeling that you're doing the right things, that your business is going to go in the right direction. It’s predictability. That's something that when you're sure about your product, it changes everything”.
5. Gain extra team members from the DSD Planning Center
DSD Clinics count on the support of the DSD Planning Center to implement comprehensive digital dentistry. The interdisciplinary team takes some of the load off a dentist’s plate when it comes to planning cases: "Being able to delegate to DSD has been invaluable because it gets very difficult for you to manage when you do a higher number of Invisalign cases”, says DSD Clinic owner Dr Victoria Holden, from Briars Dental Center in the UK,about working with DSD on the ClinCheck management for her high-volume Invisalign caseload.
For Dr Clavell-Bate, there is huge value in collective intelligence and having the DSD Planning Center at your side for planning and case support:
“When you're at, sort of the top of the pyramid in the practice, I didn't have anywhere to go.
If I had a difficult case or something that was complicated I'd have to just sort of manage or try and talk through the lab, and so obviously that leads to the interdisciplinary planning which is fantastic because I now have a comfort blanket where I've got somewhere to turn where I'm struggling.
6. Reduce your planning time
As we mentioned above, DSD Clinics count on the support of the DSD Planning Center team for their patient cases. The detailed interdisciplinary treatment planning performed by the DSD Planning Center can go a long way to reducing the time a dentist spends on planning.
For example, Dr Eckrich explains that planning which used to take 4 hours now only requires a 30-minute case discussion:
“Imagine when you have to do the planning of a complex case, which the interdisciplinary planning from the DSD Planning Center definitely is. You have to sit down for a minimum of four hours. If you plan the ortho, if you plan the perio, the measurements, all that stuff, if you plan the implants – and all this according to the smile that you have to design before that. And you have to match all these things together.
Now I have a Zoom call – and everything is prepared for us to discuss. We have the collective intelligence of specialized people in their field so I am assured that everything we discuss is very effective.
7. Reorganize your working week
Dr Thomas Fiege, from Zahnarztpraxis in Germany, describes the way that he has been able to restructure his work and his week:
“The way I work changed a lot. It's much more structured. Treatment is two or three days a week.
One day, restorative treatment, a complete afternoon just for diagnosis. Monday afternoon it's just about supervising my assistants who do the scanning, supervising hygiene. So, it's much, much, much better. Maybe it's my personality because I always say, I will spend four hours in an operatory room with one case. That's not a problem for me. It's like, in surgery, you are used to it, but what I don't like is to have 10 minutes with one patient, then a little fitting here, a little one here, maybe doctor you can have a look here”.
What is the outcome for DSD Clinics?
The ability to step away from the chair and focus on other personal and professional goals is not just a possibility, but a realistic outcome for those who embrace the DSD methodology. Freed from the daily grind of extensive clinical hours, dentists can invest time in continuing education and training, spending time with family or pursuing hobbies and interests.
But not only that: the Digital Smile Design methodology and workflows can change how your dental practice operates and offer a more predictable path to success and happiness. DSD Clinics do this by joining and achieving our top-tier membership option.
Want more flexibility in your schedule?
If you would like to gain more control over your time and your schedule, all while continuing to run a successful business and provide the patient care you strive for, DSD could help you.
Choose an option below to learn more about getting started with DSD through a course or the DSD Clinics program:
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