Case Study: How Brightmile Dental Practice calmed its waiting rooms and cut admin with PosterBooking

The Client

Brightmile Dental Practice was founded in 2008 by Dr Helen Okafor and her husband Dr Tom Okafor, both general dentists, starting from a single surgery on a residential high street in south Bristol. Word of mouth and a reputation for gentle, family-friendly care helped the practice grow steadily, and in 2017 they opened a second site closer to the city centre to serve a growing patient base that includes young families, NHS patients and a private cosmetic dentistry client group.

Today Brightmile operates two surgeries with a combined six treatment rooms, two waiting areas, two reception desks and a small administrative office. The practice employs twelve staff across both sites, including four dentists, two hygienists, a practice manager and a reception and admin team of five. Between the two locations, Brightmile sees around 450 patient appointments a week.

Running two sites meant every piece of patient-facing information, from appointment etiquette to post-treatment care advice to the latest NHS charge bands, had to be produced and distributed twice. That duplication, combined with how often dental pricing and guidance changes, created a persistent administrative burden that had been quietly absorbing staff time for years.

Life Before PosterBooking

Each waiting room at Brightmile had a wall-mounted leaflet rack, a corkboard and a laminated A4 sheet taped near the reception window listing current NHS charge bands and private treatment prices. Practice manager Sandra Whitfield was responsible for keeping both sites consistent, which meant that whenever NHS charges changed annually, or a new private treatment package launched, she had to update the document, print two copies, laminate them, and physically take one to each site since the practices are a 20 minute drive apart.

Patient information leaflets covering topics like post-extraction care, denture maintenance and children's dental health were ordered in bulk from a dental supplies catalogue, at a cost of roughly £60 a month across both sites when restocking was needed. Leaflets ran out unpredictably, racks looked messy by the end of a busy week, and outdated leaflets sometimes sat in the rack for months because nobody had time to audit them regularly.

When the practice wanted to promote a new service, such as teeth whitening or a children's new patient offer, Sandra would design a poster in Microsoft Word, print it on the office inkjet, laminate it with the practice's tabletop laminator, and Blu Tack it to the waiting room wall and the corridor noticeboard. If a poster needed correcting, for instance a pricing error or an expired offer, it often stayed up for days or weeks longer than intended simply because nobody got round to taking it down on both sites at once.

Reception staff described a near-identical set of questions arising dozens of times a day across both practices: "How much is a private check-up?", "Do you still treat NHS patients?", "What do I do if my filling needs checking after hours?", "Is there parking nearby?" and "Can I pay in instalments for Invisalign?". Sandra estimated that answering these repeat questions consumed around 5 hours of reception time a week across both sites, time that pulled staff away from booking appointments, taking payments and managing the phone queue, which was often already backed up during busy morning slots.

Altogether, Sandra calculated the practice spent roughly 6 hours a week on designing, printing, laminating and distributing signage and leaflets between the two sites, plus the 5 hours a week reception spent repeating the same answers. That totals around 11 hours a week, or close to 48 hours a month, spent maintaining a system that was frequently inconsistent between the two surgeries. On top of staff time, the practice spent approximately £85 a month combined on leaflet restocking, laminating pouches, ink and paper.

Dr Helen Okafor had seen digital screens in other healthcare settings and liked the idea, but was wary of expensive signage contracts that required dedicated IT support, something a two-site family practice did not have in-house. A recommendation from a dental practice management forum led her to try PosterBooking instead.

The Solution

Brightmile chose PosterBooking because it let Sandra manage both sites from one login, with the ability to push the same content to every screen at once or tailor specific screens per location when needed, such as different parking instructions for each site. The cloud-based dashboard meant no software needed installing on practice computers, and content could be approved by Dr Okafor and scheduled by Sandra without either of them needing design skills.

They began on PosterBooking's free plan, comfortably within the ten-screen allowance across both sites, and rebuilt their patient information as a set of rotating digital playlists covering treatment pricing, aftercare advice, appointment etiquette and practice updates.

Where They Implemented It

Brightmile installed six screens across its two surgeries, three per site, each assigned a specific role:

• Waiting room screens (one at each site, the largest and most visible screen in the practice): rotate current NHS charge bands, private treatment pricing, payment plan options and general practice announcements, giving patients something informative to look at while they wait.
• Reception desk screens (one at each site, positioned just behind and above the check-in desk): display today's clinic hours, which dentists are in that day, and simple instructions for checking in, reducing the "where do I go" moment for new patients.
• Corridor screens (one at each site, near the treatment room entrances): show oral health tips, aftercare advice for common procedures and reminders about the practice's emergency out-of-hours contact details.

The Implementation

Brightmile fitted out all six screens with Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K devices, chosen for their low cost and wide availability, with the total hardware spend across both sites coming to around £300. Sandra installed the PosterBooking app herself on each stick, a process that took roughly two minutes per screen: download the app, open PosterBooking, and enter the pairing code generated in the dashboard to link that device to the correct site and screen group.

Content was organised into two screen groups in the dashboard, one per site, so Sandra could push identical pricing updates to both practices simultaneously while still customising location-specific details such as each site's parking instructions and emergency contact number. She built the initial playlists over an afternoon using PosterBooking's templates, adding Brightmile's logo and brand colours once and reusing them throughout. Clinic hours and which dentists were working each day were scheduled in advance using the recurring calendar feature, so the reception screens update automatically without Sandra needing to touch them daily.

Training reception staff at both sites took about 20 minutes per site, covering how to log into the dashboard, edit a playlist and publish a change. Because urgent clinical information, such as updated infection control guidance, needed to go live immediately, Dr Okafor asked for a simple approval step: Sandra drafts the update and sends it to Helen for a quick sign-off before publishing, a process that now takes minutes rather than days.

Life With PosterBooking

The twice-yearly scramble to update NHS charge bands across both sites is gone. When prices change, Sandra updates the figures once in the dashboard and both practices reflect the new pricing within minutes, with no laminating, printing or driving between sites required. If a dentist is off sick and clinic hours shift for the day, the reception screen is updated from Sandra's laptop before the first patient arrives.

The waiting room screens have become genuinely useful to patients rather than just background furniture. Patients regularly ask fewer pricing questions at the desk because the figures are already visible on screen, and the corridor screens' aftercare tips have reduced the number of patients calling in with routine post-treatment questions that the screen already answers. Reception staff say the biggest change is simply not having to repeat the same five answers all day, which has made busy mornings noticeably less stressful.

Dr Okafor also uses the screens to reinforce patient confidence, rotating in short written explanations of what to expect during common procedures like root canal treatment or a first Invisalign consultation, content that would never have made it onto a laminated price list before.

The practice has found the screens especially valuable during the anxious minutes before an appointment. Parents waiting with nervous children often point out the oral health tips, and reception staff say the gentle rotation of friendly, plain English advice has noticeably softened the atmosphere of the waiting room on busy Saturday mornings.

The Results: Time and Money Saved

• Time spent designing, printing, laminating and distributing signage across both sites fell from around 6 hours a week to under 1 hour a week, a saving of roughly 5 hours weekly, or about 22 hours a month.
• Reception time lost to repetitive patient questions dropped from an estimated 5 hours a week to around 2 hours a week, saving roughly 13 hours a month.
• Combined, Brightmile now saves close to 35 hours of staff time a month, over 400 hours a year, redirected towards booking management and patient care.
• Combined monthly spend on leaflets, laminating pouches, ink and paper fell from around £85 to effectively £0.
• Routine post-treatment phone enquiries, such as questions already answered by the corridor aftercare screens, dropped noticeably in the months after rollout, easing pressure on the phone lines during peak morning hours.
• Front desk pricing queries decreased once NHS and private charge bands were permanently visible on the waiting room screen, reducing a common source of friction during check-in and check-out.

Testimonial

Running two surgeries used to mean doing every piece of paperwork twice, including the waiting room signage. Now I update our pricing once and it is live at both sites in minutes. Our reception team is calmer and our patients seem genuinely better informed before they even sit down with the dentist.

Sandra Whitfield, Practice Manager, Brightmile Dental Practice

Frequently Asked Questions

Can PosterBooking manage screens across two separate practice locations from one account?

Yes, PosterBooking allows screens to be organised into groups, so a practice with multiple sites can push identical content to every screen at once or tailor specific playlists to individual locations, all from a single login. This is particularly useful for pricing updates or clinical guidance that needs to reach every site simultaneously.

Is PosterBooking free for a small practice like Brightmile?

PosterBooking is free for up to 10 screens, which is enough for most small to medium dental practices running two or three screens per site. After a 3 month trial period, screens on the free plan display a small watermark, though all scheduling and content features remain fully usable.

What does PosterBooking cost for larger practice groups?

For practices or groups needing more than 10 screens, PosterBooking costs $6.49 per screen per month from the 11th screen onwards. This makes it straightforward to scale up gradually as a dental group opens new sites, without needing a new contract or system migration.

What devices can a dental practice use to run PosterBooking screens?

PosterBooking works with the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, Amazon Signage Stick or Display, Android TV devices, Windows PCs, Chromebox units and Raspberry Pi, so practices can choose hardware that fits their existing screens and budget. Brightmile uses Fire TV Stick 4K devices across both sites for their low cost and simple setup.

What happens to the screens if the practice's internet connection drops?

PosterBooking caches content locally on each device, so screens continue playing their most recent playlist even if the internet goes down temporarily. As soon as the connection returns, the screen automatically checks in and syncs any pending updates.

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