Key takeaways
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Despite evidence suggesting there are a large number of dental professionals experiencing burnout, there are ways to reduce stress with a connected cloud-based system
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Streamline admin with automated features like the short notice filler and clinical AI notes
- With growth built-in, Dentally can scale with you depending on what this looks like for your practice
- Consistency for patients is just as important as consistency for practitioners
- With a central, connected system, you can keep your data in one place even if you aren’t
Providing the best patient experience possible is paramount – but at what cost? With the expectation to balance clinical pressure, never-ending paperwork, staff management, regulatory changes and more all while treating patients with unique requirements, it’s no surprise that according to a survey by Dental Protection, almost two thirds of dentists experience burnout.
Being pulled in different directions often means there is no time or energy to focus on one thing, let alone juggle admin, interruptions and complicated systems. As a result, mental health takes an impact with 18% of our Henry Schein One white paper respondents citing stress and disillusionment as the reason they would leave the profession.
Perhaps the key to reducing stress isn’t simply more time to complete the ever-growing to-do list, but that work actually being done in the background. With a connected system, automated workflows and effortless communication, teams can boost their wellbeing and swap friction for focus: “The more you can lean into tech, use that to augment your workflows, to pick up the bits you don’t need a human to do, we’ll start to see less burnout in the industry” - James Harker, Executive Director, UK & APAC, Henry Schein One.
The result? A stress-free practice that offers a calm and connected experience for both patients and practitioners.
How to improve the efficiency of your dental practice
There are ways of automating and cutting down admin, despite it taking up the majority of time in the practice. From appointment booking and cancellations to notes and scheduling, teams can waste hours on manual paperwork and before they know it, the day has disappeared. Instead, Dentally offers a cloud-based, centralised system that cuts wasted time and removes stress, so practices can get back to patients, not paperwork.
According to the Henry Schein One white paper, 66.7% of UK dental professionals see AI as an opportunity to increase efficiency and save time. and we are already seeing these benefits with clinical AI notes. Built directly into Dentally, this is a smart, secure way to capture your notes. Type or dictate the important details and use AI to create a clear, structured summary. With the option to use this feature alongside existing note templates, simply generate then review.
Early adopters are experiencing immediate benefits and completing their notes before the patient even leaves the chair. Saving up to five minutes per appointment, that’s hours back each week to:
- Book in emergency appointments
- Focus on personal and team wellbeing
- Simply leaving work on time to relax at home instead of spending another late night in the practice
Plus, with the expectation from the General Dental Council (GDC) that clinical notes should be up to date, AI reduces the pressure of completing flawless notes at the end of a long day by recording compliant and defensible notes while they’re still fresh.
The short notice filler also unlocks hidden time and revenue in the calendar, directly addressing the top two challenges identified by dentists in our recent white paper: staff shortages and increasing costs. Fill gaps in just a few clicks by offering available appointments to patients in the next five working days via automated messaging.
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Based on data from UK customers as of April 2026, the average slot is filled in under 30 minutes, stopping the automation and moving the appointment into the diary
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There are currently over 5,500 appointments being filled this way by UK practices each month, removing hours of manual chasing from short-staffed reception teams
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On average it takes 11 SMS to fill a single slot, leading to over 50x return on investment, alleviating financial pressure across all areas of the practice
Hear from Tom Massey, Operations Manager of Your Dentist, who is experiencing the benefits firsthand:
“We could spend two to three hours over the course of the day ringing patients to fill a gap, but we don’t make half as many phone calls now because we don’t need to. We’ve filled over 50 gaps in the last month...it’s improved the morale of the team.”
Every minute matters and whether it’s optimising scheduling, ensuring compliance or reducing no-shows, Dentally is designed to remove stress before it even surfaces.
Expanding your dental practice doesn't have to mean extra admin
From increasing a team and expanding locations to seeking new patients, growth can mean many different things – but it doesn’t have to mean an abundance of new work. While this is an exciting time in the practice journey, the prospect of new opportunities and new challenges can be daunting, however, scale shouldn’t mean strain. Instead, enjoy everything in one place, even across multiple practices:
- Appointments
- Reports
- Communication
- Patient records and history
- Data
Seamlessly switch between sites and monitor each practice from anywhere with a single cloud-based software. With the ability to refer patients between locations, bring clarity to managers and stay aligned across teams, a single practice management system reduces the stress involved in expansion and makes way for excitement.
Dentally isn’t just designed for the practice of today but that of the future. With growth built into its design, it is already prepared for what’s around the corner: “We wanted a system that could grow with us. Dentally aligned perfectly with our vision, cloud-based, intuitive and built for modern practices” - Dr. Kunal Patel, Principal Dentist at Love Teeth Dental.
How to ensure consistency for staff and patients
While shared diaries and real-time reporting provide consistency for staff, it is just as important that patients feel that alignment too, whether this is across different clinicians or sites. A stress-free environment is built on what stays familiar every time a patient walks into a practice. If they are repeatedly giving their information, manually filling out paperwork or waiting for their appointment, these are the details they’ll remember over the care they received when they were in the chair.
Instead, patients could experience the same reliable, repeatable experience wherever and whenever they are seen, with nearly a third of UK dental professionals saying that tasks can be better managed by technology when asked in a survey for the Henry Schein One white paper. When information moves automatically, forms, medical histories and updates flow seamlessly between sites, so nothing is lost or repeated.
Duplication is removed, errors are reduced and patients are more comfortable walking into a practice they know will offer them unparalleled care and reliability. Instead of adopting the stress of the staff around them, they’ll relax knowing they are in safe and calm hands every time.
How to keep patient data accessible with larger teams
It's easy for workflows to drift once sites start expanding and data is spread further but with Dentally, your data stays connected, no matter how large your team or how many locations you manage. Instead of adding complexity, it actively reduces it.
Introducing practice-wide reporting allows leaders across all locations to understand a specific site’s performance quickly and easily, without wasting time searching for data across multiple places. Setting software permissions also eliminates the stress involved in searching for something nowhere to be found. Instead, individuals can find exactly the information they need at their fingertips.
Reliable reporting, clear roles and shared foundations help each site work with confidence, while giving leaders oversight across the whole practice and the ability to look closer where needed.
Expand without the fear of burnout and get back to enjoying time with the patient while Dentally quietly looks after admin, growth and appointments in the background.
Discover the secret to stress-free dentistry and step into calm, confident care that patients will feel too.