You may be more involved with patient care than day-to-day office tasks in your practice—and that's normal. But it's important to make sure you still know daily processes.
Posted in Dental Insights on Tuesday, September 23, 2025
If you’re like some dentists, you leave the day-to-day tasks and processes solely up to your office staff. You don’t get too involved. After all, they keep things running smoothly so you can focus on patient care.
At some point, you may discover you’ve lost touch with the ins and outs of running your practice. What happens if one or more employees quit or are let go? Are you ready to step in if staff members are sick and can’t work for a few days?
It’s better to be prepared before that happens. Familiarize yourself with office staff tasks and processes. Let’s start with the basics.
Everyday Processes You Should Know
In the early days of your practice, you may have helped select practice management software or payment processing equipment. But things may have changed. Know how the following items are handled:
- Opening and closing the practice
- Scheduling
- Billing
- Collections
- Payment processing
- Patient follow-up and messages
- Insurance filing, codes and denials
- Emergencies
Hopefully, your practice already has a policies and procedures manual to make it easier. It should be reviewed and updated often. It’s a great tool for both new and seasoned staff to refer to. If one doesn’t exist, create one as soon as possible with staff input.
Stay in the Loop
Knowing more about the above will open the door to enhanced communication with your staff. Ask them to keep you informed about other things, as well:
- Patient complaints
- Record requests
- Building problems – leaky roof, dripping faucet, etc.
- Late and no-show patients
- Problematic insurance denials
Your staff may not want to bother you with some of these details. Make sure they know they can—and should—bring them up in team meetings with other concerns. The sooner you know, the more likely you can help.
While taking care of your patients is your first priority, staying involved in other practice areas is also important. It may take quite a bit of prep work to reacquaint yourself with various processes, but it’s time well spent that will help your practice be successful.