Thursday, August 8, 2013
If you bought the world’s best dental handpiece and gave it to a highly trained, intelligent, motivated, well-educated, caring, professional…accountant, would that handpiece make the accountant a great dentist?
Of course not. The question is ridiculous. It is not the instrument that makes you a great dentist. It is your skill, training and experience along with an effective team that makes you a great dentist. The handpiece is “stuff,” how you use it to provide value is the “solution.”
Having stuff does not create a solution.
Yet time and again this is exactly the situation we see in dental offices when it comes to technology. The dentist invests in some expensive advanced technology and then just hands it off to the staff with little or no training and no plan on how to effectively implement this new technology. The dentist and the team have about as much chance of performing well as the accountant with the handpiece.
The most visible component of digital technology is in fact the thing; that is the computer, the sensor the dental software or even the web page. Because these things are so obvious the tendency is to think of technology in terms of these things. In other words “stuff”. If you have the stuff you are high tech.
Having stuff is important, but the real value of technology is using it to provide a solution. For example, the workflow needed to schedule a patient, remind him or her of an appointment and get the proper information to the dentist regarding that patient.
Many dental practices with a Practice Management System such as Dentrix or Eaglesoft will use the system to schedule, but then call the patient to remind him or her, and then dig out a paper chart from the files to record and transfer information about the patient. This practice may have stuff, but it does not have a good solution.
As a high tech solution, the office would use the Practice Management System to make an appointment then connect to a web service to send an e-reminder and get a complete patient record with a single mouse click from any computer in the office.
Good solutions start before the purchase of stuff. They start when the dentist creates a high tech vision and sets goals for the office. One of the two biggest mistakes dentists make regarding the use of advanced digital technology is to buy stuff with no clear goal or purpose in mind.
In order to create a vision the dentist must know what is possible and what options are available. Without this knowledge and vision, dentists often buy random technology that may or may not enhance the office and offer solutions. Once the dentist has a plan he or she is much more likely to make a good buying decision and to choose solutions that enhance the vision.
This is not to say that the actual technology does not matter. It does. It is a whole lot more effective to treat a carious tooth with a nice new highspeed turbine than is would be with a hand instrument and good intentions. We do need the right technology, the right systems and the right people to make it work.
Buying stuff is easy (as long as you have the money). Developing and implementing solutions takes a lot more effort.
The next step is training, training and training. Failure to get enough ongoing training is the second of the two biggest mistakes dentists make using technology.
But training by itself is still not nearly enough. The dentist and team need to develop systems and workflows to take advantage of the technology. Don’t focus on the pieces of technology you are buying but on the result you are trying to achieve. In other words, focus on the solution.
Conventional solutions in dentistry all revolve around the capabilities and limitations of paper. Sticking a piece of high tech stuff into the middle of a paper-based system will not result in an effective solution. It usually results in an ineffective frustrating work around. To avoid this technology misstep:
- Learn what is possible and create a vision of your high tech office
- Find and purchase technology that will enhance the vision
- Training, both on the technology and the new office systems and protocols is needed to achieve the vision
- Seek ways to get better and change—You don’t have to be sick to get better
The future is coming and it will be amazing!