Dental practices play a critical role in maintaining people’s oral health and hygiene. Patients need to see dentists, but how can dentists earn more from their services?
In this blog, we will discuss the strategies that offer valuable profit potential for dental practices. Learn to increase your profit with these strategies.
5 Ways to Increase Your Dental Practice Profitability
1. Increase Patient Retention Among Existing Patients
When it comes to increasing profit margins, many practices overlook their current clients. They believe that they need to attract new clients to earn more, but this is not entirely true; patient recall is incredibly important to the success of your dental practice.
Happy patients are guaranteed to come back and purchase your services. They do not need to be won over like new clients—they are already loyal to your business. That’s why it’s incredibly important to ensure patient satisfaction continues.
Approach patients and survey them about their experience at your dental office. Don’t just choose clients that give you great reviews—make sure to choose clients that have left a negative review to give you unbiased results.
Gathering feedback will allow you to improve your services and patient experience. Happier patients mean a bigger profit margin for your business.
2. Enhance Your Practice’s Marketing Efforts
Marketing is an important part of creating a profitable practice. It’s how you attract new patients, and new patients help you earn more. That is why every dental practice needs a comprehensive marketing plan.
Most dental practices use outbound marketing strategies like billboards, brochures and postcards reminding patients to book appointments. While these are effective strategies, they can cost a great deal of money. You need to pay to design your marketing materials, print them off, and either mail them or post them somewhere that current and prospective patients may see. Dental offices should continue to use these methods if they are profitable, but they should also consider expanding to online marketing.
Online marketing is a type of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is where patients come to you, rather than you go to them. Think about it this way: instead of mailing a brochure to a new patient, you can use specific tactics to show up exactly where patients are searching online. Since you are right where they are looking, they will come to you for their health decisions instead of another practice.
Reach out to a marketing agency that can help you boost your company’s reputation through digital marketing. They can build out a digital marketing campaign for your practice and help you attract more patients to your office.
Did you know that social media affects customer loyalty? You can build greater loyalty among your patients by using social media.
3. Improve Your Practice Management
A successful dental practice is a practice that has a smooth, efficient way of operating. Everyone knows their responsibilities and the entire team collaborates to ensure patients are seen, treated, and satisfied with their service.
Practices can achieve an efficient, high-quality standard of service by improving their practice management. Set out core expectations for your staff, provide professional development opportunities and support.
Great management will improve efficiency and overall quality of treatment, ensuring patients are seen and satisfied.
4. Rely On Your Dental Assistants More
Many dentists often like to position themselves at the heart of every treatment. They see every patient that walks through their doors, complete treatments, administration tasks, and run the business side of their office. While this is great, it does have its downsides; it can effectively slow down practices and reduce the dental offices’ limit, thus treating fewer patients.
Many dentists need to take a step back and accept that their assistants can perform specific treatments and duties on their own. Not only will this help reduce the responsibilities dentists have, but it will also increase the number of patients that your practice can treat in a day.
So, rather than trying to run your entire practice by yourself, rely on the other professionals on your team. You can increase your profit margins by leveraging the skills of your dental assistants.
Dental assistants can complete cleanings, take x-rays, and apply sealants alongside their other tasks. It will help reduce dentists’ responsibilities and increase patient capacity. That way, a dentist will only need to be involved when it comes to completing a treatment plan, performing mandatory and elective procedures, and more.
Be sure to hold staff training before giving your assistants their new duties; training will ensure that staff members understand their new duties before putting them into effect.
5. Better Your Accounting & Bookkeeping
Much to many dentists’ surprise, their dental practices are earning more profits than they expected. But, these profits are being distributed to cover other unnecessary costs, thus reducing their practice profits. A financial plan can help.
Take a close look at your accounts and books to find ways to increase revenue. Many dental practices often overspend on supplies or dental insurance. While these costs may seem minimal, they can greatly impact the amount of money your dental practice earns and keeps.
If you are struggling to find costs that you could reduce or eliminate, seek help from a professional accountant. An accountant that specializes in the dental industry can evaluate your books according to industry standards, offer suggestions, and help revise your strategies to save more money.
