A Salt Lake City dental practice owner took one hour in December to audit the technology stack at her clinic. What she found was jaw-dropping.
The front office used two different communication platforms that didn’t sync. The hygiene team was manually uploading images from digital sensors into the practice management system. The billing manager entered the same patient info into three separate systems. And everyone had a different idea of where files were stored.
Twelve wasted hours per week. Per employee.
At $35/hour, that added up to $262,080 in wasted productivity over the year. One hour of clarity saved her enough to give her team a week off, upgrade their technology, and yes—send them to Hawaii.
Here’s how Salt Lake City dental practices can uncover that same hidden money using smarter managed IT services and cloud-based consulting solutions.
Money Pit #1: Communication Chaos (Cost: $4,550–$6,100/month for a 10-person dental team)
Your front desk is texting patients, using email to coordinate with labs, chatting with the team via Slack and Teams, and still making phone calls for questions that could have been handled in one central platform. Lab cases get lost. Clinical notes are duplicated. No one knows which version of the chart note is final.
The real cost: When your dental team spends 3–4 hours weekly looking for the right message or file, that’s thousands of dollars a month in lost productivity. For a 10-person practice at $35/hour, it’s up to $72,800 annually.
Real example: One local office in Sugar House had this exact problem. Clinical handoffs were done verbally. Post-op instructions were emailed, sometimes documented, sometimes not. The dentist spent time chasing notes instead of reviewing treatment plans.
The fix:
- Choose one platform for each communication type
- Urgent patient issues = Phone only
- Clinical team communication = Practice management notes (e.g., Open Dental, Eaglesoft)
- Quick internal chats = Microsoft Teams (or Slack, not both)
- Patient communication = Secure texting platform integrated with PMS
- Lab coordination = Shared digital tracking in the PMS
Establish one rule: "If it’s not documented in [your PMS], it doesn’t exist."
Time saved: Just like the Sugar House office, reclaiming 3 hours per employee weekly equaled 1,248 hours annually for their 8-person team—worth $43,680.
Your Hawaii fund: Streamline communication and you could save $2,000+ a month. That’s first-class tickets and beachfront rooms.
Money Pit #2: Disconnected Systems That Don’t Talk (Cost: $400–$1,900/month)
New patient calls in. Your front desk manually enters them into Dentrix. Then again into your online forms system. Then creates a new profile in the imaging software. Then manually sends insurance info to the billing platform.
That’s four duplicate entries for one person.
Real example: A Millcreek dental group had no integration between their scheduling software, intraoral imaging system, and practice management software. Each new patient took 15+ minutes of administrative setup across disconnected tools. With 80 new patients per month, they wasted over 20 hours monthly on manual data entry.
They switched to integrated, cloud-based dental software and added automation for new patient intake. Now forms flow directly into Open Dental, imaging syncs automatically, and patient info populates billing instantly.
Time saved: 20 hours/month = $8,400/year in staff time. Accuracy improved too, because humans weren’t retyping patient DOBs and policy numbers.
Your Hawaii fund: Consolidating systems and automating new patient intake easily frees up $7,000–$20,000 annually. That covers your team retreat and then some.
Money Pit #3: Paying For Software You Don’t Use (Cost: $500–$1,500/month)
Still paying for that cloud storage plan your practice manager set up three years ago? What about the online scheduler you turned off last year but never canceled? Or that premium video consult tool no one touches?
You’d be shocked how much "ghost software" dental practices are paying for.
Real example: A downtown Salt Lake dental practice audited their software subscriptions and found they were paying for:
- Two different cloud backup platforms
- Multiple e-fax services
- Two imaging viewers (one bundled with their sensor package, one standalone)
- A "free trial" that auto-renewed into a $99/month platform no one used
Total wasted cost: $9,000 annually
The fix:
- Set a 30-minute timer
- Pull the last 3 months of business credit card statements
- List every recurring software charge
- Ask: Have we used this in 30 days? Do we already pay for something else that does this?
- Cancel or consolidate everything that fails those questions
Your Hawaii fund: The average small dental office uncovers $6,000–$15,000 annually in unused or redundant tools.
Total IT Waste: How Much Are You Really Losing?
Let’s keep it conservative. For a 10-person Salt Lake City dental practice:
- Communication cleanup = $36,400/year
- Integrated systems = $8,400/year
- Canceled subscriptions = $6,000/year
Total savings: $50,800
That could cover:
- A fully paid team trip to Hawaii
- Year-end bonuses for your clinical and front office teams
- New equipment or operatory upgrades
- That backup solution you keep putting off
And these are recurring savings. You’re not just freeing up cash for one year—you’re making your entire practice more efficient and less stressed moving forward.
Time To Audit Your IT (And Fund Your Beach Getaway)
The Salt Lake dentist who saved $262,080 didn’t do it by working harder. She spent one hour auditing her tech and then called a local IT provider who specialized in dental systems.
At Qual IT, we help Salt Lake City dental practices eliminate IT waste, integrate smarter systems, and build secure, cloud-based workflows that actually support your team.
Click here to book your free network assessment with Qual IT.
Because your money should be going toward better patient care, team morale, and maybe even beachfront sunsets—not forgotten software and duplicate data entry.
