Have you ever gotten to the end of the work day and wondered where the time went?
You constantly checked in patients, chased down payments, answered phones, scheduled appointments, and handled insurance claims. There are several important items left unchecked on your to-do list. It seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day.
If you feel this way, you’re not alone.
We recently sat down with dental industry expert and founder of Front Office Rocks, Laura Nelson, to discuss time management and productivity. After more than 20 years in the dental industry and experience working with practices across the country, she’s found one key commonality:
“I don’t care if you’re in New York City, Florida, Washington State, or California,” Nelson said. “The problem we have in every dental office is that time is the rarest commodity we have.”
Since we can’t add hours to the day, we need to be intentional about how we use the time we have. According to Nelson, true productivity requires being strategic with time and priorities.
Rethinking Productivity in Dental Practices
We often define productivity by how much we get done, but this mindset can be misleading.
“Busy doesn’t necessarily mean effective,” Nelson clarifies.
Busyness means having many things to do. Productivity means effective effort that moves you toward important goals. Understanding the “why” behind the “what” makes tasks more meaningful and team members more effective.
Shift from Output to Impact with “Why”
To stop being merely busy and become more productive, practices need to define their “why.”
“Why are we here? Why do we do what we do?” Nelson asks. In the dental industry, our ‘why’ is huge: helping our patients keep their teeth healthy and live a longer and better life.
Focusing on the “why” helps practices prioritize activities and services that serve their overall mission.
Spotting Hidden Time Drains
The first step to better time management is identifying and eliminating distractions and habits that quietly drain your team’s time and energy.
“If we’re not aware of where we’re spending our time, we can’t do anything about it,” Nelson says. “If you’re not getting to things or if you’re trying to get more control in your day or your week, what I recommend is doing a time study.”
How to Do a Time Study
For one day or one week, use a piece of paper or your phone to track what you’re spending your time on. It should be a judgment-free zone, where you’re observing, not criticizing. After this exercise, you can look at your time and ask yourself: What can I do to give myself more time?
Nelson gives an example of an employee who discovered she was spending a lot of time on patient check-ins and check-outs. To free up some of her time for other tasks, check-in duties were spread out between multiple staff members, and she learned to use technology tools to speed up the check-in and check-out processes.
Classifying Tasks to Spot the Patterns
To get even more out of your time study, use a simple rubric to categorize activities and tasks into different categories:
Critical Activities
Critical activities are highly important and urgent. Many of the day-to-day tasks of keeping the practice running fall into this category, including checking in patients, processing payments, and filling the schedule.
Important Goals
Important goals are highly important but not urgent. Things like implementing new technology, team meetings, and inputting insurance claims fall into this category. When the office is busy, we’re most likely to push these tasks to the back burner.
Interruptions
Interruptions are urgent but not important: a surprise visit from a salesperson, for example. Digital pings, emails, and phone calls can qualify as interruptions if they’re about trivial things. Interruptions often demand your immediate attention but aren’t critical to your operations.
Distractions
A distraction is not important and not urgent, like scrolling on social media or gossiping about a patient with your coworkers. We can’t completely avoid interruptions and distractions in a busy office setting, but it helps to be aware of where your time is going and recognize these low-value activities.
Actionable Strategies for Making More Time
Now, you know where your time is going, and you’ve categorized your activities by urgency and importance. However, you still face the challenge of finding more time in your day to tackle important goals. According to Nelson, you need to upgrade your workflow: automate, delegate, and eliminate.
1. Automate
“There’s a certain percentage of your day which are projects only you can do,” Nelson explains. For example, you might be the go-to person for managing patient check-ins or payment processing. While you can’t delegate or eliminate these vital tasks, you can look for ways to do them better, more efficiently, or faster.
Digital tools like Rectangle Health’s Practice Management Bridge help dental teams streamline and automate many of these vital tasks. With the right technology, you can automate many front office tasks, including payment processing, appointment reminders, and compliance training.
2. Delegate
If a task takes up too much of your time and someone else can take it on, delegate it. While it might feel like nobody can do a certain task as well as you can, delegation is essential. Helping each other out may require cross-training to ensure that at least one other person knows how to do each task. Sharing the workload builds trust among the team and helps the practice run smoothly.
3. Eliminate
If a task is not important or urgent, consider eliminating it. You can and should eliminate activities that fall into the “interruption” or “distraction” categories above. You should also eliminate unnecessary tasks you do simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“You should understand the intention and the ‘why’ behind everything you do,” Nelson says.
When it comes to the unavoidable daily distractions in the office, Nelson recommends a few strategies:
- Set aside dedicated time blocks for important tasks, like making recare calls or conducting consultation presentations.
- Communicate your need for uninterrupted time, and honor other team members’ requests for time.
- Hold each other accountable to respect these boundaries and work together effectively.
Leaning on each other to manage time and minimize distractions helps build a strong, healthy team that works together toward common goals.
Redefining Productivity for Long-Term Success
You might wish for more hours in the day to accomplish your goals. But the truth is that a lack of time isn’t the real problem; a lack of direction is.
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot,” Nelson concludes, quoting entrepreneur Michael Altshuler. We have more control over our time than we think.
Want to learn more about building a time-efficient dental practice? Listen to the full webinar for actionable strategies and expert insights! Speaker Laura Nelson is an industry leader and expert in dental front office training. Her real-world insights can help your busy practice optimize workflows and manage time without burning out.