Design Dental Group wins business award thanks to the Oasis Academy

The successful Oasis Academy that combines practice management consultancy together with implementation assistance using Oasis practice management software has continued to thrive following the merger with Software of Excellence.

The Academy, under the steerage of Tracy Penn, is open to all Oasis users and provides in-surgery consulting on a wide range of management issues.

Design Dental Group in Sunbury, Victoria, has benefited from the Academy's consulting for some time to the point of recently winning a business award.

"We've found participating in the Oasis Academy to be very worthwhile for our practice," said practice manager, Denise Robertson. "I don't come from a dental background so it was an excellent experience for me to gain valuable insight into world's best practice.

"Tracy is a walking tower of knowledge and we had an instant rapport. She came to our practice and got a feel for what we needed and what we wanted to accomplish from day one. She then customised a training program to suit. She's very intuitive and can adapt to suit every practice individually which is important to us."

Denise came in to manage her husband, Dr Nigel Robertson's practice, from a Customer Business Management background. The practice has been established for over 10 years and has a "Tooth for life" philosophy with a preventive focus. The Oasis Academy was seen as an opportunity to take the practice to a new level.

"Based on the Academy training, we went from no treatment planning to having a treatment plan for every patient," Mrs Robertson said. "That has been so important for the practice and as a result, treatment acceptance rates have increased dramatically.

"Tracy's knowledge and experience allowed us to accomplished in months what it may have taken us years to learn if at all. Tracy was then able to help us get the most from all facets of Oasis, both in terms of day to day operations as well as management reporting so that we have key performance indicators and can immediately see how we're tracking at any time.

"We then started going to the Academy Days with other practices and we've always come away these very motivated and with a fresh perspective."

"It's opened my eyes to the business aspects of the practice," said Amanda White. "We only used version 7 of Oasis for the appointment book but now we've upgraded to version 8.24, we have integrated it throughout the practice. We use it for recalls and treatment planning and it's been a boon for us clinically and from a management perspective. We've templated the appointment book and every day now has a production target. We have priority lists of patients to call if we get a cancellation at short notice and a range of other systems in place to make the day flow more easily and productively."

The practice's Oasis Practice Management Software is now optimised to work in with all the practice's system and procedures and this helps support and reinforce the Academy's training.

"When we hired a another dentist, we started marketing to attract new patients to the practice. We started advertising - something we never did before," Mrs Robertson said, "and we were able to target our marketing to a specific group. We would never have been able to do this without Tracy's expertise. We're also doing a lot more internal marketing and patient education and we've started a practice newsletter. New patient numbers have increased and the percentage of patients accepting proposed treatment has also increased."

"I had a vision of where I wanted the practice to go and a vision of where I wanted the business to go," Dr Robertson said. "And Tracy has been instrumental in helping us achieve this. We can now project treatment, what treatment is coming up in the future and immediately address any quiet spots, for example, with a marketing campaign on tooth whitening to fill the gaps.

"Everyone now has a job description and knows their areas of responsibility. This has increased our productivity markedly. Overall, the Academy has been a very positive experience for our practice and very worthwhile. So much so, we are very proud to have just won the 2006 Leader Business Awards for Professional Services in our area."