I’m always amazed at how quickly the technology landscape changes at a dental office. From management software that integrates every part of the business, to 3D imaging, to chairside CAD/CAM solutions, today’s dental offices are full of clinical and front desk tech that was unimaginable just several years ago.
Most recently, we’ve evidenced great technology breakthroughs in another important area of a dental practice: patient communications. When you look closely at the activities that happen in your dental office every day, you’ll realize that a great many of them have nothing to do with dentistry. This is a people business and a relationship business – so it’s no surprise that so much of what you do every day revolves around communicating with patients and nurturing these relationships.
Turns out, you can get help with many of these communications. Today’s advanced patient communication systems can automatically send out recall postcards, reactivate patients, confirm your appointments, provide post-op instructions and even follow-up on pending treatment plans – without you as much as lifting a finger. Sound too good to be true? It’s not, but there are prerequisites.
First of all, you need to ditch the paper charts and files. Automatic patient communication solutions need data (and lots of it) to do their job – so a practice management system like Eaglesoft must be in place to store and organize all things you need to know about your patients.
Secondly, you need to ensure that your practice software is set up and used correctly every day to ensure all data is complete, accurate and consistent. Are recall types set up properly? Are you closing out old treatment plans? Are you providing basic demographic information for every patient? These are things you need to think about if you’re considering letting software do some of your work.
Curious to find out more? Join us for a free webcast on August 22 to hear more about getting your practice ready for automatic patient communications. The one-hour session will help you better understand what today’s patient communication technology can do for your practice, as well as how to lay the groundwork for such a solution in your Eaglesoft system.