Manage profitability with powerful practice- management software

Posted by Shriya Rathod on March 23rd, 2017

Every dental office team should consistently strive to become more productive and profitable. In my time working in dental offices, I was fortunate enough to witness the growth and many rewards brought to a dental office in both of these aspects. That success was achieved by having good, intuitive practice-management software to support our team.

To realize these benefits, every member of the dental team should take advantage of features their practice software has to offer. Here’s how:

1. Make use of scheduling software —Scheduling is the platform for so much of the office work flow. A smoothly running scheduling system can help positively impact many other areas of the practice.

Use the features available to you with your scheduling software. Your software program may allow any staff member easy access to a short call list, and it may track how long patients are kept waiting for their appointments.

Also take advantage of provider “busy time” features which allow the office to track when the best times are to fit in quick checks and hygiene exams. Block time so that patients with large cases can get started with treatment quickly.

The ability to schedule appointments from the operatory gives team members much needed control and flexibility.

2. Use your software to easily communicate and document your patient treatment plans — Use your computer software to communicate what treatment the patient expects to be accomplished during each appointment, what was done on each patient during the appointment, and the next steps for the next appointment. Software best documents this type of information.

Once treatment information is recorded in the patient digital record, you can pull reports of all unscheduled treatment or reports of patients who started but did not finish treatment. Imagine the advantage (both financial and legal) of simply getting a report of all patients who had scaling and root-planing and never followed up with a perio maintenance visit.

The dental appointment software  can also help you track patients that have not had a panorex within a determined time frame. You can even get a report of patients that were referred for other treatments and never followed through.It is the responsibility of each office to document and follow through on patient treatment recommendations. Computerized patient records most easily allow for this process.

3. Build personal production goals for each team member — Meeting production goals in the dental practice does not happen by chance. To meet overall production goals, each staff member must have clearly defined individual production goals and an easy path to track how they are doing in meeting these goals.

Source:http://www.dentaleconomics.com/articles/print/volume-101/issue-10/features/manage-profitability-with-powerful-practice-management-software.html