We live in a fast-paced world, and it’s only getting faster. As long as time remains a finite commodity, we’ll want each step of our work, our travel, our shopping, our eating, to consume less and less of this precious resource.

As patients, we’re no different. We want fewer, shorter appointments. We want zero wait time. We want to be served, feel better and get on with our lives.

Truth be told, treatment providers share the same goals. We can bill only so much for our service. If that service doesn’t go to plan, we begin losing money as we work to make it right — when otherwise we could be serving someone else.

Dentists are painfully aware of this every time they have to adjust a poorly fitting crown or bridge, every time they have to make or remake a chairside temporary, every time they look at their calendars and see cases in progress — knowing they still have weeks to wait until they can deliver the final restoration and bill for services rendered.

They’re aware of this every time their patients are disheartened by the amount of time between prep appointment and delivery.

I wrote in the last issue about the improvements in speed and quality made possible by today’s digital technology. But tools tell only half the story. Over the past few years, Glidewell Laboratories has made a concerted effort to maximize our operational efficiencies by: 1) streamlining workflows, 2) eliminating wasteful downtime, and 3) implementing 24-hour production cycles. As a result, we’re achieving three-day in-lab working times on 90% of our crown & bridge cases — at no cost to quality, and no additional cost to you.

Our goal in doing so is to bring you the quality you deserve, while reducing the duration of the typical treatment cycle. Not recklessly or haphazardly, but methodically and consistently. Because the less time patients have to wear temporaries, or suffer from parafunctional or debilitating conditions, the happier they’ll be.

And the shorter the billing cycle, the happier your front office will be.

The customized nature of dentistry presents no shortage of unique challenges for all of us. And with each improvement or enhancement in our processes, a new bottleneck is typically revealed. We’ll never eliminate every deficiency, but we’re continuously striving to do just that — to search diligently for waste or weakness, and to weed it out before looking for the next.

For the health of your practices, and those you serve.