Tips on How to Prevent Dental Lab Case Delays

Today the dental industry is facing numerous challenges, including rising costs, declining insurance reimbursement rates, and the inability of more and more patients to pay for their treatments. Add to these the challenges of working with your dental lab, such as delays interfering with patient scheduling, and you have a lot on your hands!

Whether you have worked with your dental lab for years or are trying out a new one as a back up or possible replacement, finding ways to decrease those delays is essential.

So, what can you do to help alleviate these situations and improve the dental office/lab collaboration?

3 Tips for Limiting Case Delays with Your Dental Lab

Fortunately, there are ways to improve the collaboration with your preferred dental lab. It all starts with communication and building a foundation of trust. Below we provide three tips to help limit delays.

1. Create a Case Submission Checklist for Your Dental Practice

Checklists are simple tools that can benefit your office. Utilizing them can provide the following benefits:

·       help keep you organized,

·       motivate action and completion of tasks,

·       allow you to delegate with confidence, and

·       increase productivity.

Create and maintain a checklist of the information to provide for each case you submit to the dental lab. With it, your office is less prone to leave off important information. For example, one of the most common omissions from dental lab cases today is the shade. Another is material selection and also preferred due date (which usually coincides with the patient’s next appointment). When this occurs, the lab must call your office to find out the information before proceeding to enter the case in the lab queue. If you are unable to take the call or the lab must leave messages, it can delay your case. A checklist can help you remember to include all the necessary information for each case you submit.

2. Understand the Case Submission Process

   
   

Misunderstanding the case submission process for your chosen dental lab(s) can lead to frustrating delays. Instead, make it your mission to understand the process and train your staff accordingly. Here at Wright Dental Designs, we take the time to help you become familiar and comfortable with the case submission process for both digital scans and traditional impressions.  For those times when you need to clarify a case that is too challenging to simply write down and submit, we are also available to speak with you directly.

3. Take Your Time with Digital Scans

Intraoral scanners continue to find their way into dental practices and are changing the way offices and dental labs collaborate. On the one hand, cases can be sent to a lab in less time. On the other, those digital scans can be incomplete in some way that delays the outcome.

Issues dental labs occasionally see include submission of blurry, misplaced, or limited scans. These issues are especially problematic for your dental practice because you will often have to request the patient come back in for new scans.

To help counter related delays, take your time and consider what digital scans will be most helpful beforehand, preferably during the patient appointment. If you’re unsure, you can always call and talk with the Lab Manager or a technician in our lab.

Work with Wright Dental Designs to Help Eliminate Case Delays Today

Let us know if we can help you get started or facilitate an easier approach to submitting cases to our dental lab. We are always just an email or phone call away!