It is never too late to modernize your dental office. In fact, since it’s still early in the year, there couldn’t be a better time to do so. Now more than ever it is absolutely necessary that your dental practice be modern to make it all the more convenient for your patients, simply because an outdated and inefficient experience will only encourage your patients to look for dental services elsewhere. Here are just some of our favorite tips to help modernize your office and subsequently create a better patient experience.
Tip 1: Spend Less Time Calling
Your adult patients are busy and they are the ones who need to be contacted for their own appointments, as well as for their kids’ appointments. In the past, dental offices would call their patients to remind them of an upcoming appointment. Today, it is much more efficient to send automated reminder text messages because the recipient can just respond Y for YES or N for NO, and with smartphones, it is very easy to click the date and time in a message and set up a calendar event. Your receptionist won’t have to worry about playing phone tag and your patients won't have to worry about forgetting their appointments in the midst of their busy life.
Tip 2: Upgrade Your Waiting Room
One of the easiest ways to give your dental office a modern look is to simply update its appearance. First impressions matter and the first impression any of your new patients get will build up in their mind seconds upon walking in. It's a great idea to update your furniture and do some paint touch-ups. You may consider investing in new, comfier couches and chairs, a new center table, some art, plants, and even accent pillows. In addition to making your reception area look newer, a comfier, more thoughtful setup may help some patients feel less anxious.
Tip 3: Invest in Dental Practice Management Software
Almost synonymous with modernization is going paperless. Not only does this make your practice more modern, but as a bonus, it also makes your dental office much more efficient. Going paperless can take a while, but purchasing and learning how to utilize a user-friendly management software saves time and keeps your team organized when it comes to storing and locating patient records, billing, and booking appointments.
Tip 4: Transition From a Camera to OrthoPhoto Dental App
Traditionally, dentists and orthodontists use a digital camera to capture clinical images of their patients’ braces progress. After they take the pictures, though, doctors have to spend extra hours after their last patient leaves for the day in order to upload the images, crop them, place them in a slideshow template, and sort them into specific albums and then patient files.
OrthoPhoto, which is available on the App Store and will soon be available for Android, automates this process so that dentists can manage their clinical images in a fraction of the time. Using your iPhone, you can take your patients’ braces images right on the application. It automatically places the images into a template that formats them correctly into their respective patient albums.
Dental Manager is a mobile application for dentists that essentially works as a planner. With this dentist app, dentists can select a patient and add the relevant treatment plans to their file, along with costs. The application also allows you to send this information to patients via SMS or email, but you may also set up a phone call or print the plan. Dental Manager makes it easy to ensure you and your patients are on the same page at all times.
For dentists that also do Invisalign, metal dental braces, or ceramic dental braces, 
DDS GP is a great dentist app for educating patients in a more in-depth manner. This dental app illustrates how certain dental conditions may affect the patient over time. It also allows for a more customized educational experience by allowing dentists to draw on the images and save them so they can be moved to a specific patient’s file. Additionally, the app serves as a means for dentists to create and send (or print) customized treatment plans for patients. 