The Art of the Appointment

Imagine your dentist-clients worked without appointments. Starting at 8am and continuing throughout the day, patients would show up at their offices wanting everything from a crown repair to a full mouth reconstruction. At 5pm - when your clients normally go home - there are still 25 patients in the waiting room that need to be seen. Your clients work feverishly into the evening to finish their caseloads.

Sound like your workday? Appointments are standard in virtually every other industry. Unless a business advertises "walk-ins welcome," we know that if we want a haircut, oil change or need to see a doctor we have to make an appointment - so why isn't this standard practice in our own industry?

"Most people would say that the dentist is to blame, but really, scheduling is the laboratory's responsibility. If we don't take control of our businesses and our workloads, our clients will take control for us," says Tom Moore, CDT. Moore used a pre-scheduling...