Dentrix Ascend Profitability Coaching Dental Case Study: Main Street Implant and Family Dentistry

“I Didn’t Know How to Access Everything”

Dr. Andrews remembers that when he ran reports, “I knew there was information in Dentrix Ascend, but the software is very robust. I didn’t know how to access everything I needed.”

At the same time, outdated information in their records was skewing some numbers in reports, Scheduling Coordinator Amanda Troxell says. She knew that there was more to discover in the software that could help her and the team use their practice management system better.

Immediate Improvements

After seeing a few insights reports from Henry Schein One Profitability Coach Kim Thornton, Dr. Andrews was intrigued. He realized how much his practice could benefit from working with a profitability coach.

Kim Thornton, who began working in the dental field in 1992, has been a software trainer and coach since 1999. She specializes in helping practices like Main Street Dental use Dentrix Ascend to become more profitable. Kim met with the team in regular conference calls and noticed improvements right away, noting, “They were all eager to learn and applied pretty much every recommendation.”

Dr. Andrews notes, “Kim was excellent. She could answer any question. She’d remote in on the computer and show us step by step how to work something out.” Amanda agrees: “The training we got was really good. Kim gave me ideas of percentages to use and goals to set for re-care.”

It was important to Dr. Andrews that his entire team participate. “We each have different roles,” he says, and learning to use the software in the best ways for each role was “very beneficial for everyone.”

Getting Actionable Insights

Dr. Andrews says that Kim “simplified searching for different reports” so he could quickly get important information. Main Street Dental then uses that information to improve care. For instance, now the office better tracks patients who need to come back in for the next step in treatment who otherwise would not show up until re-care. Dr. Andrews also appreciates knowing how to build his own reports now so he can get exactly the data he needs.

Although the practice was previously busy, the schedule is now completely full for several months out, with an ASAP list that keeps cancelations filled. Dr. Andrews says Kim helped them learn which Dentrix Ascend reports were best for finding patients to fill the schedule.

Amanda says they also learned how to clean up the data in the system so their reports were more accurate. By better tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) now, Dr. Andrews says, “We know where we’re sitting and where we want to go.”

“Unless you are very efficient at running all the numbers and knowing everything inside and out, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to do coaching.”

Dr. Nolan Andrews

Improvements That Kept Building on Each Other

With each meeting with their profitability coach, Main Street Dental made incremental improvements that built on each other, leading to more and more efficiencies each month. Dr. Andrews says that has helped him gain greater visibility into his practice so he can continue to improve and change what’s not working.

Kim saw Main Street Dental’s numbers improving every time they met. She ascribes the practice’s success to everyone’s willingness to learn and implement new knowledge, and she praises the team’s great effort that brought about positive changes.

The Main Street Dental team went from not being sure how best to use Dentrix Ascend reports and other features to using them to make goals and track KPIs in order to increase both efficiency and profitability. Working with a profitability coach was such a positive experience for his whole team that Dr. Andrews would consider it again for future needs.

He notes, “Unless you are very efficient at running all the numbers and knowing everything inside and out, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t want to do coaching. There were a lot of things that are super beneficial that I would never have known.”

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