It isn’t too late to make your New Year’s resolutions – or maybe you’ve already broken the ones you had and need to start over. Make it your resolution to apply lean business principles to your dental practice, and here is how you can apply these lean business principles to embracing new digital imaging.
1. Willingness to Change
Many offices continue to use inefficient methods because they become accustomed to everyday rituals and habits, and even bad ones are tough to break. Leaner offices are good at cutting out unnecessary steps and costs. Implementing digital x-rays allows a dental office to eliminate the need for the darkroom, cleaning and processing chemicals, the mounts, the film, and a whole lot of time.
2. Use Your Employees’ Time More Efficiently
Get your staff out of the darkroom waiting for film to develop or away from scrubbing the processor – again. You can save the time to capture images with digital imaging over film by at least 20 minutes.
3. Effective Communication
Having the latest technology says “quality” to your patients. Word will get around the community that this technology has made the dental experience a quicker, more comfortable, and more understandable process. Digital X-ray will let you educate the patient with images that can be easily enlarged and enhanced.
Continuous improvement and a lean office helps you to make more out of less, cutting the fat from the budget and, at the same time, concentrating on the most important aspect of the practice – quality of care for the patients.
To read more about how lean business principles, read Dr. Brad Durham’s article, “Lean On Me—Lean Office Practices Are Just Better Business.”
