How to plan the treatment cycle in a dental practice

Step 1: model treatment units as resources

In a dental practice the bottleneck is rarely the person alone but the pairing of chair and person. So start by modelling how many treatment units there are, and set the cycle you plan in: 20 minutes is usual.

The cycle is a planning unit, not a working time unit. Working time runs alongside it and also covers what happens between treatments.

Step 2: turn your delegation framework into staffing rules

Transfer your delegation framework into staffing rules once: which activity requires which further training. After that, prophylaxis hangs on the qualification and not on the free chair.

Anyone planning by presence instead books appointments that nobody is allowed to take on that day. Which services are delegable at all and what that follows from is set out on the industry page for dental practices.

• Store the qualification per person, not per position.
• Keep prophylaxis, X-ray and assistance as separate activities.
• Several qualifications per activity are possible where several routes are permissible.

Step 3: keep supervision as an activity of its own

Delegated services need somebody on site who orders and oversees them. In the plan that becomes a second condition alongside the qualification, and it gets lost when the presence of the treating dentists is kept only as working time.

So enter it as an activity of its own. Then it shows up during planning when prophylaxis falls in a time window where nobody is on site to supervise, rather than on the morning itself.

Step 4: handle drop-outs via the pool rather than via management

If somebody drops out, the open activity goes out as a request to everyone with the matching qualification. Whoever accepts is scheduled, and the plan updates itself.

That is the difference from a plan in a spreadsheet: there, somebody has to know who could step in and call them.

Step 5: record working time separately from the cycle

What is recorded is working time, to the minute and without rounding. The treatment cycle runs alongside as planning. Anyone equating the two records too little working time: sterilisation, preparation, documentation and ordering would otherwise drop out.

At the end of the month, the evaluation per person is ready with target, actual and balance, plus the variance between the plan and the actual time.