How Ascend Helps Me Spend Less Time on the Phone and More Time Helping Patients

When I think about why I love running my practice on Dentrix Ascend, the first thing that comes to mind is how much easier it makes the everyday work of managing a dental office. As an office manager, my absolute favorite feature is the cloud-based component. That’s for a number of reasons, but one of the big ones is that we get a lot of snow here in Massachusetts. The old-school way to handle a snow day was to print out the schedule, bring it home, block your phone number, call patients from your cell phone, and hope they answer an unknown number. 

We don't have to do that with Ascend. I never have to cancel the day ahead of time because we're concerned about weather. I can wait until the morning of, log in from home or from my phone, and manage the day's schedule. It’s one of the first cloud-based dental software I’ve used, and I know most practice management solutions (PMS) don’t have that kind of cloud-based component right now.  

A single solution to run our entire practice 

Flexibility is one of the biggest reasons I would choose Ascend, but I’m also pretty confident saying we use every possible integration Ascend offers, including text messaging, automated billing, and automated phone calls. Everything is in one place, and it all integrates and works together. You aren't trying to manage one thing in one system and another thing somewhere else. It's all inside a single solution. 

That matters because the way practices communicate with patients has changed. I spend way less time on the phone now, and that's only usually to talk to tech-adverse patients or make the occasional outgoing phone call. Having integrated text messaging is huge, and honestly, essential. 

One of my favorite things about Ascend’s text messaging capabilities is that it's not just integrated text messaging. There is a hyperlink to the patient’s appointment right in the text message, so when I’m texting someone, I’m not going between screens thinking, “Oh, hey, when are they scheduled?” It’s right there. 

Verification without having to call the insurance company 

That same thing is true with insurance. Having the integrated capability to automatically check eligibility without even touching a telephone is awesome. 

And having a cloud-based platform that integrates everything is huge for HIPAA compliance, too, because you aren’t copying and pasting ID numbers from one website to another. Everything is right there. 

Before Ascend, I would spend upwards of 40 minutes just trying to reach a human at one of the more difficult insurance companies. Some of the local companies were better, but even then, it could still take 15 minutes. That's just an enormous waste of time. 

On Ascend, it's not even five minutes. I press the button, go to a different screen, and by the time I’m done doing my task, the information I need is there and ready for me. That means I'm not spending my whole day listening to hold music, pressing zero, and screaming “representative.” 

Simplified clinical and administrative processes 

Ascend also helps simplify the clinical and administrative pieces that can slow a practice down. I love the voice perio feature. I wish more of my team would use it because if they did, they’d spend less time writing notes and we could maybe add more people to the schedule.  

For me, the value of Ascend is also in the reporting. I love power reporting, and the new recare manager. I can look at perio and prophy patients or our $79 new patient offer and see whether someone came in after that first visit or just never came back. 

The fact that you can create your own recare schedules is really cool. You're not just selecting things already on the books. With Ascend, you can build what you need. That’s a big reason to choose Ascend: it gives you the tools to manage the practice the way your practice actually works. 

Communicating with patients the way they want  

It also meets patients where they are. Being able to text a patient a hyperlink and say, “Please pay your bill,” is great. Nobody has to pick up the phone, and they can pay within seconds. The same thing applies to treatment conversations because we can send someone their x-rays thanks to Ascend’s integration with Videa. Everybody says, “I need to talk to my spouse,” or “I need to talk to my mom." Being able to say condense their x-ray into a file and send it by text message so they can share it with their family after their appointment is really cool.  

Offices without AI are at a huge disadvantage right now because I can have that conversation with someone’s family member, even when they’re not there, just by being able to send that information to the patient. It’s a really easy way to turn that “maybe” into treatment acceptance. 

Help when you need it most 

Another reason I prefer Ascend is that it's easy to learn and easy to get help when you need it. Whether you have Dentrix or Dentrix Ascend, you can get in touch with a person really, really quickly. The help center is very accessible, and I like that a lot. I also find Ascend really easy to use. If you watch a 45-minute training video, you’ll know how to do basically everything. 

Even if Ascend is the first PMS you're choosing for a practice, every member of your team can easily learn how to use it because it’s so intuitive. When I first started with Ascend, I hated the software, but not because of the software itself. It was because of the restrictions the company had put on it. As soon as those restrictions were lifted, I fell in love with it. Now I’m the go-to girl when people cannot figure something out. 

At the end of the day, I choose Ascend because it lets me help patients at any time. If someone says, “Hey, Megan, I’m running into a work meeting. Can I text you later?” I know I can go home, put food in the oven, log back in from home, and text that patient at a time that's convenient for them. 

That's what makes Ascend different for me. There are fewer headaches, especially compared to other offices where we had to use two of three different types of software to manage everything Ascend does in one system. With Ascend, everything is connected, patients are easier to reach, and I can run the practice without feeling tied to one computer, one phone, or one way of doing things.