Case Study: Dental Practice Management Software Evaluation

What was the client’s challenge?

Using a highly successful acquisition and growth strategy, one of the largest dental support organizations in the United States had grown to over 1700 general and specialty dental practices. As each practice group was onboarded, they migrated to similar on-premises solutions to support key aspects of patient care, including scheduling, follow-up, patient billing, and clinical care.

However, supporting, enhancing, and maintaining these local systems within a growing portfolio soon became a challenge. The outdated on-premises solution made it difficult to support and unify the practices across the company’s wide footprint. In addition, the rapid expansion of the practice footprint also caused operational issues in supporting the practices and their tenants, understanding performance, patient growth, and resource efficiency. Furthermore, there was a pressing need to align the practices with the company’s strategic vision and ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.

The client needed a thorough evaluation of practice management software (PMS) and a transformation strategy to streamline support and operations, ensure consistent high-quality support and patient care, and enable centralized reporting.

The core areas of consideration were:

• How would a cloud-based solution improve the ability to scale further?
• How would the PMS support the organization’s scalability, usability, and cost goals?
• What are the technology dependencies attached to the PMS?
• How would the PMS improve the ability to support the practices across the footprint?
• What operational inefficiencies affecting profitability and growth could be created or resolved with the adoption of a new system?
• Will a cloud-based PMS help maintain a unified strategic vision across a geographically dispersed network?
• What is the cost of implementing a new cloud-based PMS across the footprint?

What was the solution?

To determine if the PMS would align with key needs, Altum led a unified, team-first, detailed analysis of the client’s operational practices along with business requirements and input from supporting departments, clinical operations, doctors, and other clinical professionals.  These requirements were then measured and mapped to industry benchmarks to assist the client in building metrics to measure efficiency within the business. This process included:

• Over 35 workshops that involved critical stakeholders throughout the organization, including practice managers, doctors, and office staff.
• Comprehensive review of operational and clinical workflows.
• Detailed review of technical and security measures.
• The identification of over 380 business requirements for the new solution to address.

Once the business analysis was completed, Altum led the client in engaging with the solution vendor to evaluate the solution’s alignment with the identified business requirements.  As part of the evaluation, Altum worked with the client and the solution vendor to provide customized hands-on solutions demonstrations.  This enabled the client to experience how the solution would measure up and to identify critical gaps that may prevent the solution from working for the organization and its goals.

Altum also led the client through collaborative workshops with the solution vendor to work on the configuration. These workshops were collaborative in nature, where the vendor and client team could communicate through in-depth solution exploration and conversation to gather a transparent and cooperative understanding of the business requirements and needs.  Through this structured forum and overall approach, the client and vendor teams were enabled to identify areas of critical need that were not addressed by the solution. By facilitating collaborative sessions with both client stakeholders and the software vendor, Altum ensured that all parties understood the requirements and constraints to work towards a system that would support the client.

What was the outcome of the evaluation?

During the assessment, the client found that the proposed solution did not completely meet all of the important business requirements. As a result, they have decided to explore other solutions before choosing the next-generation solution. The client and the solution vendor have maintained open communication and have been working together to address the remaining challenges. They are focused on finding solutions that will meet the client’s needs and provide a stronger solution for the industry.

After Altum’s assessment, the client adopted and implemented a fully collaborative approach across their organization and vendor portfolio to foster increased collaboration, mutual trust, and shared success. As part of this organizational change, the client decided to integrate the collaborative approach and guidance provided by the Altum team into crucial aspects of their internal processes.

Empowered by this cultural shift, the client will continue to work with the vendor and, with Altum’s help, evaluate other options in the marketplace to select the most appropriate solution to meet key business requirements.