The healthcare sector, especially the dental industry, has changed tremendously in the last decade. COVID-19 has also been a significant factor in forcing the dental industry to switch its established ways to accommodate patient demands. Custom software in dentistry has enabled dental practices and DSO to adopt new ways while retaining their preferences and requirements.
What is Custom Dental Software?
While most businesses and industries credit the advent of AI, 3D printing, and digitalization as the major factors in the transformation of the dental industry, custom software is rarely discussed. There are a lot of things to discuss about custom software in dentistry, like what custom dental software means, and what kind of custom software is used in the dental industry.
To give you a basic idea, custom dental software is something that has features and functions which cater to the unique requirements of your practice or DSO. Let us give you an example to provide a better picture. Imagine running a dental practice with limited staff and resources, and needing help to improve patient care. There could be various reasons you’re struggling to offer better care.
If you’re losing patients because they are tired of visiting your practice every time to fill in the appointments then you can get an application that offers your patients an online form to get an appointment. Now, they can sit at home, fill out this form, and visit you when they have an appointment. If you get custom software for this, it will have all the desired features and options you want to have specifically for your practice. This may not be possible with an off-the-shelf application.
Customization plays a key role in this area and we have discussed a lot more about dental software customization in this article: Why Customization is the Key in Dental Industry. This article will give you a better explanation of what is customization in the dental industry and how custom software caters to the demands of patients. Also, it has some interesting brand examples to understand customization.
With the basics cleared, let’s discuss why investing in custom software for DSO or dental practice is a great decision.
5 Reasons Why It’s Important for Dental Practices and DSO to Invest in Custom Software in Dentistry
Practice management takes a huge toll on the front desk and other staff at any dental practice and DSO. The time spent on tasks such as appointments, billing, insurance verification, or claims tracking can be used to provide better patient care. While these are some of the common things that affect dental practices, there are other factors when patients are considered.
After the whole COVID-19 situation, people have become more cautious. Many patients would prefer to get an online appointment through a website or use a telehealth app to get treatment. Around 40% of millennials prefer a user-friendly website to get help and information for their dental requirements. This is an example of why adapting to technology is vital for your dental practice or DSO.
Here are a few other reasons why dental practices and DSOs should invest in custom dental software:
Streamline operations with custom software in the dental industry
Did you know that an office manager at a dental practice spends around 3-4 hours on various administrative tasks? Similarly, a physician spends close to 2 hours a day on EHR tasks. Imagine if you can save all that time and automate your dental practice or DSO with a practice management system (PMS) or any other custom software to finish these tasks in a few minutes. Your practice or DSO could see substantial growth in productivity and improved efficiency.
By integrating or using custom software in dentistry here are a few operational advantages you’ll notice:
- Automated administrative tasks.
- Streamlining appointment scheduling, claims tracking, insurance verification, etc.
- Automated billing and inventory management.
- Online appointment scheduling makes it easier for both patients and the front desk.
- Option to centralize patient data like treatment plans and records.
- Helps improve communication with your staff with better organization.
Patient Care is Improved
This should be obvious that automating various administrative or dental processes will help your practice free up time for improving patient care. With fewer tasks to worry about, you and your staff can better listen to and offer improved care to patients at your dental practice.
After you start using custom software and automating various tasks, some of the things you’ll be able to do will include:
- Enhancing patient experience.
- Providing personalized patient care.
- Reducing wait time at your practice.
- Preventing manual errors and eliminating patient discomfort.
- With certain tools like Dear Doctor and Guru Dental, you can also educate your patients.
Own the Competition
Improved patient care means your patients are going to be content with your services. Such patients are more likely to provide good word of mouth, resulting in increased customer loyalty. One other thing you can do to stand out from your competition is to offer unique services with your custom software.
Features such as:
- Two-way chat option to talk to doctors
- Automated appointment reminders
- Integrated payment options
- Dental notes for patient
Get custom software that can offer these features and provide immense value to patients. This will help you improve patient retention, increase referral rates, and an inflow of new patients.
Increase in Profitability
An apparent result of improving patient care is that your dental practice or DSO sees a huge increase in profitability. With data analysis and automated workflows, your dental practice or DSO is better organized to track each metric precisely. While off-the-shelf software does help as well in this area, custom software in the dental industry is better suited for most requirements.
Dental practices and DSO can implement the following practices to improve profitability with custom software:
- Reduce costs.
- Improve staff productivity.
- Use financial reporting and analysis to improve ROI.
- Optimize treatment planning and improve case acceptance.
Throwing your money on every software that can help your business grow is not a smart move, considering a single custom software can do the job. Save your time and resources by investing in custom software in dentistry to see tremendous growth and ROI.
Conclusion
The dental industry is adapting to new trends and technologies which shouldn’t just be limited to hardware. Many practices are still settling with manual workflows or half-baked software solutions. It’s time they transformed the way they operate with custom software in dentistry.
BPK Tech offers custom software solutions for businesses in the dental industry regardless of their business scale. Our cloud-based dental software solutions help dental practices and DSO automate their front desk and many monotonous processes along with improving business ROI with data analytics.
These cloud-based dental software solutions also include extensions and add-ons to existing PMS. We also help with API integrations like Open Dental API, Eaglesoft API, Dentrix API, Denticon API, etc. These are just a few of our custom dental solutions, and we can do much more depending on client requirements. Contact us today and tell us your requirements.
