Five Functions You Should Be Automating in Your Practice (But Probably Aren’t)

Using dental practice management software to automate parts of your daily operations will help make your practice more efficient, which can lead to increased profitability. And because of the COVID-19 pandemic, providing your patients and staff with contactless ways to perform routine tasks is more important than ever.

Here are five functions you can automate in your practice.

Online Booking

In an increasingly online world, patients expect to do more from the convenience of their own home, on their own schedule. Offering online appointment booking provides an easy way to help increase patient visits — not only can it attract new patients who may be using the internet to find a new dentist, but it also makes your practice seem more available to your current patients, even when the office is closed.

Digitized Forms

Using digital forms is another way you can automate part of your workflow. Having patients enter their information directly into digital forms will automatically populate the same fields across your software. Moreover, cloud-based dental practice management software like Dentrix Ascend lets you store your forms online so patients can fill out and submit them ahead of time. This not only lightens your staff’s work, it also helps patients and staff minimize physical contact.

Patient Routing and Workflow Compliance

Your practice management software can help improve patient routing as well. For instance, Dentrix Ascend’s routing panel adapts at each stage of a patient’s visit. Before the patient even arrives, you can see if they’ve missed other appointments; it also displays their contact information so you can reach out to them if they seem to be running late.

You can also improve workflow compliance and your practice’s profitability. Dentrix Ascend has an automated exit workflow that prompts your team to gather patients’ contact information, schedule their next recare appointments and collect any payments.

Imaging

The more you can integrate different office functions, the more the efficient your practice can be. If your practice has a separate imaging server, one of your team members needs to remember to enter the images into the patient’s chart, as well as the ledger. These inefficiencies increase the risk that things will get lost in the shuffle, resulting in financial losses to your practice. Dentrix Ascend merges practice management software with imaging solutions to let you switch imaging devices without disrupting your workflow, automatically update and back up the patient’s chart, and immediately send ADA codes to the ledger, all without sacrificing image quality.

Payment Processing

Of course, your practice can’t be profitable unless you’re collecting timely payments. Offer a patient portal to enable patients to pay bills anytime, anywhere, regardless of whether your office is open. Making it more convenient for your patients can make it easier for them to pay on time.

For more on how automating these five functions can help your practice thrive, listen to this episode of The Art of Dental Finance and Management podcast. Dentrix Ascend can help you automate these and other tasks in your practice with TAMI, or Task Automation Management Intelligence, so that your team can focus on patient care.

To learn more about how Dentrix Ascend can help streamline your practice, schedule a demo today.