Optimise your diary with the practitioner utilisation dashboard

As a dental practice, keeping the diary full  is one of your biggest priorities. And here at Dentally, we understand it can be a challenging and time-consuming task.  

That’s where the practitioner utilisation dashboard comes in. 

Practitioner utilisation, at a glance 

This new dashboard allows you to quickly visualise diaries through colour-coded blocks, up to four weeks in advance. You can view the percentage of a day that each practitioner is booked, making it easy to swiftly identify underutilised time slots and take proactive measures to fill it. 

From the main Dentally dashboard, simply click the dropdown in the top left corner and change it to ‘Analytics’ to find your personalised practitioner utilisation dashboard. 

The colours indicate how much of the practitioner’s day is occupied with bookings. The darker the block, the busier their diary is. You’ll also see an overview of your whole practice’s utilisation at the bottom. Read more about understanding your dashboard in our handy guide here. 

So how does it help your practice? 

Even if you know what actions you can take to fill white space, clicking through each week in your calendar to find it can take time away from other important tasks. 

With the practitioner utilisation dashboard, you can look ahead at the weeks to come at a glance – so you can focus on any issues, with plenty of time to find a solution. 

If you've identified some underutilised time in your dashboard, here are a few things you can do to help fill the diary: 

• Try contacting patients booked in for the following week. They may be free at a similar time the week before, and might like to be seen sooner!
• Have overdue and lapsed patients, or patients with open treatment plans who haven’t booked yet? Get in touch and get them booked in!
• Noticed a trend relating to your white space? This is a good opportunity to optimise your practice’s recall strategy – get in touch with your Elevate Consultant for help with this!

Optimise your diary workflow 

There are some important things to remember about the practitioner utilisation dashboard, to help you get the most out of it and to keep your calendar as full as it can be: 

• Ensure all your practitioners are marked as 'active' and that your practice opening hours are correct.
• Make sure you are accurately showing practitioners' availability, using schedules, breaks and the override feature. Avoid using recurring appointments for time off, as this will skew your utilisation stats by showing practitioners as booked when they aren’t.
• If you’re a multi-site practice, note that you can only view the dashboard for each site individually – so make sure you toggle between sites using the dropdown in the top right corner of the screen to keep on top of each practice!

Run your practice more smoothly 

Reviewing the breakdown of utilised and unutilised hours directly from your Analytics dashboard, will empower you to make data-driven decisions to help keep your calendar full every week!  

Need a hand with understanding the practitioner utilisation dashboard? Want more guidance on optimising your calendar workflow to keep your diary full? Get in touch with your dedicated Elevate Consultant to understand how you can take your practice to the next level and get the most out of Dentally!