Alistair Mayoh has key advice and guidance for dental laboratory owners.
For many businesses, every detail of their services and those they seek from others has been scrutinised over the past year. Never has it been more important to optimise quality and efficiency, enabling organisations to boost productivity and bolster profits for short- and long-term stability.
As part of this, dental practices will have evaluated the laboratories they work with. This includes everything from the breadth of services offered to their turnaround times and the quality of the materials they use. To ensure that dentists and their teams remain confident in the services you provide, it is important to constantly review and refine both what you do and how you do it.
This involves building an effective team and then providing them with the materials they need to meet or even exceed expectations of dentists and patients alike.
Recognising team skill
Any successful dental lab will appreciate the importance of a good team. Their skills and experience are the foundation for delivering products and appliances of outstanding quality. If any of your dental technicians took the opportunity to update their knowledge and undergo virtual training during unavoidable downtime in 2020, it’s important their new abilities are recognised and utilised.
This could help to broaden and strengthen the services available from your lab. It enables you to offer new products or workflows that your clients will appreciate. Alternatively, if your team have gained experience with new materials that have the potential to reduce turnaround times, enhance quality or provide long-lasting reliability, your business can benefit from this too.
Recognising the expertise among the team is also essential for motivation, encouraging them to maintain the highest possible standards. An engaged team is more likely to go that extra mile for their clients. Ultimately, maximising the value provided, encouraging your dentists’ satisfaction and bolstering your reputation as a business worth working with.
Staying up to date
There are many reasons for needing to update the materials used in the lab. Only one of these reasons is to develop the skills of the team. Other reasons may include changing demands form clients and patients, a restructure of the lab or a greater focus on specialist areas of dentistry.
Therefore you need to review the tools and materials used in the lab regularly. This ensures that you continue to stock the best and most appropriate products for the work you fulfil and the standards you want to meet.
In any case, this means finding materials that work well in your technicians’ hands. Materials that they can trust to deliver the aesthetic, functional and durable results that patients expect. You also need solutions that have been proven to do what they say they’re going to do.
Ones that facilitate predicable outcomes and come with excellent customer support. For instance, when fabricating dentures, you need a strong and durable material. A material that gives your clients the utmost confidence in its durability. At the same time, the material needs to be simple to use. This is to enable an efficient workflow through the laboratory.
The Acron Hi from Kemdent is a true high impact strength acrylic, ideal for the provision of high-quality dentures. To ensure ease of handling, Acron Hi produces a soft and easily packable ‘dough’. This suits any processing protocols, including injection moulding. The unique Multi-Matrix Technology optimises its fracture and breakage resistance.
Also, its increased stiffness after processing makes trimming and polishing simple. Plus, a low level of residual monomer minimises the risk of allergic reactions for greater patient comfort.
Maximising value
It has never been more important to offer the clinicians you collaborate with and their patients good value. That means quality products with an efficient service and affordable prices. It is essential to remind clients, where necessary, that this is not about cutting costs. Instead, focus on the value of services sought.
Any laboratory with a highly skilled team, that cares about its clients and employs only the best technologies and materials in the market, will always be a trustworthy partner. All of this will ensure not only quality, but consistent quality. This is ultimately needed to support superior patient care now and for years to come.
For more information about Acron Hi and the many other leading solutions available from Kemdent, please visit www.kemdent.co.uk or call 01793 770 256.
This article first appeared in Laboratory magazine. You can read the latest issue here.