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Detrimental factors on Staff quality in  Dental Practice

When a dental practice needs an additional team member and you have determined that you need to hire another employee there are so many factors aligned along the same. This decision is  made for one of two reasons:

1. Your ability to increase production, provide better service for patients, or support the current providers in the practice is hindered because you don’t have enough team members to cover.

2. You have a demand for a specific skill that is not present in your existing team, for example, PDA or treatment coordinator.

When you hire someone, you need to do it correctly and seriously, which means doing it in the most cost-effective and time-efficient manner possible. Hiring a new employee may seem like a fairly straightforward endeavor, but it’s important not to decide before you carefully prepare. 

Factors to Improve Employees Quality in  Dental Practice

While there are never any guarantees that the person you hire will work out, there are some steps you can take to attract the best candidates and precautions you can take to improve your chances of making a good decision.

Determining what you need

Before you start the process of hiring somebody for a new vacancy, you must know what you’re looking for. The more completely you understand the position for which you’ll be interviewing, the better you’ll be able to evaluate applicants and choose the apt ones for consideration. 

Job descriptions and specifications are two tools that will help a great deal in evaluating all the potential candidates. A job description is a written record of the responsibilities of a respective job. It indicates the qualifications required for the position and outlines how the job is relevant to others in the practice. In a clean, concise manner, the job description should indicate position title, salary or compensation method, area that person will work in, to whom they are accountable, their work schedule, a summary of the job, major responsibilities, and qualifications needed for it.

The job description should be organized in such a way that it indicates not only the responsibilities but also the vitality of these responsibilities. Within the categories mentioned above, including such information as the following examples computer experience required working conditions, and terms of employment.

If the position is new, the job description will help you clarify what the position demands and the necessary qualifications. If you’re filling a position that ‘s been vacated, and if it’s possible to do so, ask the departing employee to update the entire job description. Job descriptions can become quickly outdated. A former employee may also help you review the job description to determine if activities being performed still add value to the practice.

It is important to be able to answer these questions:

What is the purpose of the job?

What day-to-day duties are performed?

What other duties are performed?

How is the position supervised?

How much or how little control is exercised over this position?

What instruments, computers, or equipment must be used?

What external or internal contacts are required?

What verbal, numerical, or computer skills are necessary?

2. Determining the requirements of the position

When you’re deciding on the hiring criteria, you’ll need to examine experience, education, intelligence, and personality requirements. By establishing these requirements objectively by making use of the job analysis, job descriptions, and job specifications, you will eliminate bias that might be caused by poor values, and you’ll be able to look objectively at the traits tied to the performance of the job.

As you define selection criteria, you will need to look at the job performance of the former employee and isolate a few characteristics that have the most impact on successful job performance.

 Before you start your search for qualified applicants, consider education, experience, physical requirements, and personality requirements. Be conscious that each requirement you identify is specifically job-related. This can help prevent potential problems later. Don’t make these job determinations in a vacuum. Ask the other team members for their perspective.

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Dental Marketing Simplified: 5 Guidelines to help you through pandemic  time

With the dental professionals slowly getting back in action, it is highly recommended that you should be moving ahead with a revised marketing strategy. 

The daily workflow and conversations with your patients are no longer going to be the same. With in-person appointments falling drastically, it is necessary that dental practices stay well connected with your patients adopting new and effective ways of communication. 

To help you through the process of how you can communicate with your patients at these times of uncertainty, here are a few guidelines which we would like to share with you. From promoting your practice’s online presence to revising your marketing strategy, these five guidelines are definitely going to assist you navigate to the new normal. 

Reach out to your patients 

Even if you are not in direct contact with your patients due to the decreased volume of in-clinic visits and appointments, you can always consider reaching out to them. A simple text message or an emailer that says you are with them in these difficult times or sharing an informative blog on how to take self-care of their dental needs are definitely going to move their minds. It will reassure your patients that no matter what you are thinking about their well being too; and not taking advantage of the situation.  

It is not some marketing pitches that they are looking forward to. Reach out to them with empathy and understanding that in-business or out of business you value your patients the same. This will help you to regain your patients quickly as the normal clinical appointments start kicking off. 

Do not be quiet at these times. Tell them more about how you are getting back the hold on your practice, consulting with patients through telehealth conferences and online scheduling. Post about the new updates from your practice on your social media platforms. Engage with them and ensure that the new procedures are for the safety of the patients and that you strive to provide quality dental care even through these difficult times. This not only helps you to gain more appointments but also allows you to build stronger relationships with your patients ensuring an increased loyalty and trust towards the practice. 

Extend out of the practice care 

This is your opportunity to show your patients that it’s not only always about revenue and patient collections, but also about the oral health and well-being of them. Keep your efforts more about providing insights on how your patients could keep a tab on the preventive care, their oral health and other necessary safety measures in the middle of the pandemic. Push out more messages and blogs on the importance of being top on their health and safe well being. Even though it feels like no one is listening, pivot your marketing pitches in a way as to extend the care any patient would look for in these times. Think like a patient and proactively have conversations with them on their recent worries and concerns regarding health. 

Conduct webinars or run campaigns for your patients just to tell them more about being healthy in the middle of the pandemic; just give in a few tips, a new routine to follow or may be a free dental checkup online. These are what your patients going to see and measure at a time when the in-practice visits are yet to get normalized. 

Update all your patient facing platforms

You must be just getting back to the normal, but your patients who are still at their homes concerned about getting infected from unnecessary clinical visits will never know what to expect from you as you reopen the practice. It is therefore important to communicate efficiently with your patients regarding the progress you are making with your practice and the recent shift in safety procedures you have brought in to ensure a safe consultation experience for them. 

Update the progress you are making on all your patient facing platforms or convey them directly through messages and emails. Tell them that you are out there working for them providing them all the facilities they need like teledentistry, curbside check-in and online scheduling to ensure a safe and convenient patient journey. 

Through regular social media posts or emails guide them through the new process. Let them know what all services that you are providing currently through virtual offices and how they could avoid unnecessary clinic visits for a simple dental checkup. If you can undertake any emergency procedures let them know that too along with a proper layout as in how you will be dealing with the procedure to ensure the safety of your patient. With unwanted travelling being restricted at the moment, your patients will definitely appreciate the effort you are making to guide them through the virtual process and letting them have online appointments. 

Be consistent with your communication

Keeping your practice up and running along with dealing your patient communication is an enormous task. The new normal is definitely going to catch you off guard with its numerous safety guidelines and procedures to be taken care of after each patient visit, which means more time would be gone looking after your practice than your patient engagement. 

Therefore creating a schedule to communicate with your patients will help you to market your practice more proactively and efficiently. It is advised that you keep your schedule up for a few days. In this rapidly changing environment nothing is going to last as we presume them. Thus, it will be easy if you could stick on to a time assigned to a couple of days where you can compose messages to be sent and schedule them on any automated scheduling tools. In such a case you will not be wasting your time to create messages impromptu on the days that you want to engage with patients. 

Revamp your marketing strategy with the trend

Take this time  to revisit your website. Your practice workflow is getting revamped and so should your marketing strategy. Make the updates regarding the way your practice will be functioning from now onwards. Keep in mind the SEO listings to the changing times and change your strategy and website according to the shift in patients searches. 

Search for your dental practice taking insights from Google trends and see if your practice is being listed in the first page. If not revamp your business listing and your content strategy. Give more focus to the new keywords that have emerged at the times of pandemic. 

Referrals and reviews matter a lot to your practice. Make sure that your dental practice has updated reviews from patients who have visited you or have consulted with you through the virtual platforms during the pandemic.Get some images with your patients consent and upload them on your business listing. Patients who browse for the practices near them will definitely relate to your practice quickly if they see original photos of patients like them consulting with your practice. This will boost their confidence to take similar actions which will further increase your appointment volume and revenue generated. 

Even in these incredibly challenging times a well planned marketing strategy can still influence your patients positively. No patient can deny the challenges you must be facing to bring them the best dental care. It’s just that you let them know that as a dental practitioner you are keeping your patients’ needs at the forefront. As you focus on that it is just a matter of time for your patients to realize that they are in safe hands and to make regular appointments with your practice.

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Scaling Your Dental Practice Post-COVID: A Recovery Plan

With dental practices getting back to business navigating through the effects of COVID-19, the change that was brought in a matter of months has been found quite hard to adapt with. But the only way to figure out this change is to get deep into it, step with the times and make a successful recovery. 

After COVID-19 transformed the way dental practitioners perform, many of you certainly have a lot going through your minds right now from your patients’ safety and convenience to the retention and acquisition of patients and practice revenue. With the new protective guidelines laid out, you would be hesitant to apply them in your practice as you might not really be sure on how they are going to affect your practice; both financially and professionally. But, the best way to be ahead of the curve is always to phase out and finish with assurance because the next normal in dental care is definitely not going to be the one we are leaving behind us. 

Outlining the recovery plan for your dental practice

With 93% of dental providers expecting the changes in the dental industry to be long-term, a new strategic recovery plan is of great importance to your practice’s survival. According to ADA, strategic planning is usually created to review the practice history and to use the relevant information to identify what needs to be done, when it needs to be done and how it needs to be done to ensure a successful future. Thus, the strategic recovery plan should be kept simple and focused to prioritize the three core players in your practice journey: Patients, Staff, and you; the dental practitioner. 

Patient Management

With the safety of your key stakeholder at bay, the disruption of the dental industry is real and long-standing. The reduced patient visits to dental providers are a raising concern. As a solution to this, dental providers are shifting rapidly to telehealth platforms to offer routine dental services. 27% of the dental providers are currently consulting their patients through telehealth platforms while 13% of them are soon expected to take up teledentistry. 

The increased interest in teledentistry is not just concentrated for the providers. With the very low upskill time for using this alternative, around 44% of patients are preferring online scheduling and paperless onboarding to face-to-face appointments. With an all-in-one telehealth software, you can fix your practice hours and allow patients to schedule their appointments, collect their medical history and every other relevant information digitally without much hassle. You can also engage with your patients through high-quality video conferences, documenting the clinical notes using odontograms and smart notes. With the curbside check-in feature that teledentistry offers the patients can check-in for appointments and fill out intake forms from the safety of their vehicles, making the front desk tasks contactless and convenient. 

For these reasons implementing a telehealth platform as a part of your recovery plan is an excellent step to maintain patient retention and appointment volume in these challenging times.  

Safety practices for your staff

It has always been important for dental practices to have a requisite number of PPE, gloves and surgical masks. With COVID-19, these items have gone high in demand, reserving them more for the dental practitioners. But, the guidelines insisting PPE protocols for the front-desk staff is making it hard to get hold of enough supplies. At the same time, the safety of the staff are cornered as they have to be in direct contact with patients coming through the clinic doors.  

Implementing virtual scheduling addresses all of the above challenges in no time. With improved communication in real-time and pre-planning the appointments, you can schedule to minimize the visits of your patients, thereby reducing the amount of staff-patient interactions. (and of course the unnecessary use of PPE) 

Virtual scheduling can also help the staff to answer the patient's queries via text messages; whether it’s a follow-up on the treatment or a change in the next schedule. They could efficiently handle them with a few taps on their tablets or PCs. This reduces the number of pointless patient visits to the clinic. 

Revenue Cycle Management

As the owner of the dental practice, your revenue goals play an important role in the recovery plan. It’s time that you focus more on your patients and overhead cost control than worry about claims management and patient collection. Do away with the traditional ways of conducting your practice and shift to a cloud-based dental practice management software; your all-in-one solution to maximize revenue, growth and operational efficiency.

Dental practice management software offers a multitude of remote features that includes HIPAA compliant billing, online forms, electronic pay per claims, analytics and much more, and all you have to do is take advantage of these practice management products available to help you navigate smoothly through the turbulent times. 

As you lay the last phase of your recovery plan streamline your workflow with efficient practice management systems to reach the maximum potential of the practice owned. Implement the best products available in the market and optimize your practice to be super-efficient to quickly recover from any unexpected downturns. Set targets to increase the practice capacity, case acceptance, and patients appointments to double your revenue as the synergistic effect of these works magic on your profit. 

There is no “return to the normal” 

It’s not the first time that a global pandemic is affecting the dental industry. If it was AIDS in 1980, it is COVID-19 in 2020 and maybe some other contagious disease in the coming years. But the opportunity that they present still remains the same for you. The key is always to keep your dental practice resilient and future-proof that it doesn’t get attacked unexpectedly. As former President Barack Obama had once said, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.” It’s just a matter of time and getting hold of the right products that would seamlessly integrate your practice workflows into a flawless well-established model. 

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Fostering  Dentistry with Practice Management Software

Practice Management Systems (PMS) provides a dynamic solution to coordinate all organizational tasks and processes through improved workflows, added efficiencies, and a myriad of other welfare. This article will provide an in-depth examination of some of the basic benefits clinics of various sizes and specialties can expect by implementing a robust practice management system.

There are a variety of tangible and intangible benefits aligned with implementing practice management systems in clinics of all sizes. Outlined below are a few of the key benefits providers will realize by implementing practice management software.

 Streamlined Workflows and Processes

The most valuable, and most widely viewed, benefit of practice management software is added efficiency; specifically, in regard to workflows and processes. In a double-quick speedy, dynamic care environment, adding efficiencies and streamlining processes has a direct impact on outcome and the clinic’s ability to achieve quality patient outcomes.

Practice management software offers a normal system for maintaining peak performance – minimizing errors and supernumerary to help staff operate smoothly and efficiently and reduce delay. The software’s evaluation and reporting capabilities also help in the early identification of anomalies for troubleshooting and proactive interventions.

 Improved Practice Organization Enabling Focus on Quality Patient Care

 By systematically organizing dental practices, practice management systems allow providers to concentrate on quality care rather than burdensome, administrative tasks. This privilege is achieved by assuming and automating processes such as scheduling, billing due dates, and patient tracking. As the documentation required by the Centers for PMS increases, this function will become highly important to providers.

Updated automation leading to increase in efficiency, productivity, and profitability

PM software better supports staff time by automating standard tasks. For instance, PMS is often capable of involuntary sending appointment reminders and maintaining sufficient supply inventories, which are triggered to automatically reorder when inventory is low.

 Improved Billing Processes Leading to Faster Reimbursement

 Practice management systems streamline payment processes and facilitate faster indemnification. PM software also enables billers with critical access to patient records and reports, which can be searched to address questions and fill in critical gaps in claims information. Such access greatly expedites the reimbursement process by reducing the “back and forth” between practices and billing entities that can often result in costly delays.

Practice software can produce and send e- bills and an e-commerce component allows providers to collect payments online. The software can even be agile in identifying claim errors that could potentially delay payment so that proactive measures can be taken.

 Enhanced Documentation and Fewer Errors

As dental care technology evolves, digital systems for dentistry documentation have become the tagline. This transition to paperless record keeping together with a growing emphasis on documentation – both within dental care standards and insurance practices – has established appropriate documentation as a priority within all claims and billing processes. Enhanced documentation is a key benefit of practice management software, as the technology provides a generic system that effectively reduces errors analyzing over to hand-written provider notes. Documentation can often be done via mobile devices, such as a tablet, at the patient’s bedside, or at the point of intervention. The ability to momentarily document, chart, or code further helps reduce errors that may otherwise occur when lags exist between the point of care and documentation

More Focus on Quality Care

By shaping down and automating processes and administrative tasks, management systems allow providers to focus on the most important factor in the care equation – the patient. The fewer practitioners have to worry about standard tasks and processes, the more time and energy they are able to devote to the patient, which in turn yields better results and fosters an environment in which quality care – and not documentation, scheduling or various other considerations – is the top priority.

 Advanced, Hassle-Free Scheduling

 Practices can attest to the fact that practice management solutions take the pain out of scheduling both patients and staff. Intuitive scheduling and calendar tools allow dentistry personnel to input appointments and make calendar adjustments without fear of double-booking or scheduling during a time slot when a given provider is otherwise unavailable.

The scheduling framework in many systems also includes alerts, such as patient balance due or authorization, which helps proactively address potential patient problems prior to the appointment and reduces the burden on front office staff.

 More Accuracy and Better Error Reduction

Through the mentioned billing and scheduling features, practices have the ability to quickly and easily update patient records and information. From direct links to update contact data in appointment reminder emails, to intuitive programming that auto-corrects erroneous entries by staff, dental software is a trusted tool to ensure patient information is accurate and up-to-date.

The fact that practice management systems are combined with insurance and billing processes ensures that changes made in one system are reflected in the other components “talking to” the PMS as well.

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Business intelligence and analytics solutions, enforced in a multitude of industries, compares the company’s internal data using tools and techniques such as reporting, performance monitoring, data mining, and benchmarking in an effort to improve decision-making and recognizing new business opportunities. In a decade, the U.S. healthcare industry is converting rapidly to business intelligence and data analytics. In return, medical organizations have been able to improve clinical quality and effectiveness, reduce healthcare costs, and make increasingly well-informed decisions. This work-frame is emerging in the dental industry; dentists have been able to attain sustainable financial and clinical improvement by implementing software solutions that extract and analyze data from the clinic’s practice management system  (PMS).

The business intelligence and data analytics solutions, which use data from the PMS to provide valuable insights and advice about the clinic’s performance, encompass tools and techniques such as business analytics, reporting, dashboards, and national benchmarking. For example, these solutions allow the dentist to monitor in real-time hundreds of different KPIs such as Accounts Receivable, Gross Production, Number of New Patients by Referral Source, and Gross Production per Visit. In addition, the solutions provide relevant financial, clinical, and administrative reports like profit and loss statistics, return on investment, trend analysis, recommendations, and procedure analysis to the dental practice software. Most importantly, dentists are able to do real-time clinical and financial benchmarking with practitioners in other specialties or geographical regions, which could help the clinic to identify areas of improvement. Such business intelligence solutions are also able to greatly improve a clinic’s collections by focusing on areas such as fee optimization, reactivate inactive patients, and minimize no shows. For instance, vital inputs from the clinic including procedure revenue, frequency, and time units are combined with external census demographics and cost of living data to optimize the fee schedule.

To keep your business profitable and flourishing, it is important to know your key performance indicators (KPIs), such as:

Active patients

Unscheduled patients

Scheduled production

Unscheduled restorative treatment

Unscheduled hygiene treatment

Cancellations

New patient reappointment

Hygiene reappointment

Data Analytics to Improve Patient Experience

Here are ways to compare the following information to improve your patient experience:

The most/least frequent reason for a patient “no-show”

The most/least frequent cancellation reason

The most/least frequent reason for patient complaints

The most/least successful front desk coordinator

The most/least popular dentist

The most/least successful conversation script

The most/least frequent patient problem

Data Analytics to Enhance Your Pricing Policy

Ways to compare the following information to improve your pricing policy:

Which offer brought you the highest number of patients

Which season works better for special offers

Which season works better for price increases

How medical merit offerings impact your patient flow

Which insurance companies are most frequently requested by your patients

Data Analytics to Improve Your Referral

Ways to analyze the following information to improve your referrals:

Who brings you the biggest part of your referred patients

Which compensation formula works better with your referrals

How often you engage a new referral

Which approach to referral engagement works better

Which approach to referral engagement works less efficiently

Consumer Satisfaction and Analytics Enhances Business Performance

In an effort to gain competitive merit, dentists are increasingly implementing business intelligence and data analytics solutions. These solutions enhance the clinic’s financial performance and enable the dentists to gain control over profit margins, overhead, and performance. For example, research proves that business intelligence and data analytics solutions can increase a clinic’s revenue by more than $50,000. In addition to ameliorating financial performance, business intelligence solutions can also help the clinical performance by allowing the dentist to spend less time on administrative duties and more time treating patients.

With the rise of business intelligence and data analytics, dentists no longer need to manage the delicate trade-off between financial performance and patient satisfaction. These solutions will greatly benefit the practice’s financial performance while increasing patient satisfaction through improved clinical quality and effectiveness. Further, the growth of business intelligence might initiate an irreversible transformation of the dentistry. More specifically, this data revolution will increase the dentist’s focus on real-time monitoring of KPIs, business reporting, and financial optimization.

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Virtual Office And Post Covid Dentistry

One of the most common childhood nightmares was going to the dentist. Who would not understand it? You have to sit in a huge chair by all-seeing light. You have to endure that someone looks inside and pokes around in your mouth using edgy and frightening devices. And finally, when the torture is over, that same someone tells you not to eat your favorite sweets and brush your teeth regularly. Besides the first nylon bristle toothbrush was put on the market less than 80 years ago. That means people were driving cars before they were using an effective toothbrush. But dentistry grew and advanced to such a greater pace that we are at cloud dental solutions and virtual offices.

Teledentistry is quickly becoming a popular option for dentists seeking to stay open and see emergency dental patients during the coronavirus outbreak. While it’s hard to predict what dental technology will look like down the road, one thing is certain: The future is looking bright, just like a healthy smile. Dentists can perform virtual dental consultations for patients both in their geographic area and outside of it. Dentists can also sign up with The TeleDentists to have emergency dental patients forwarded to their practice. Another dentist may be the one that performs the remote dental consultation and recommends the patient get seen quickly, and then The TeleDentists receptionist will provide the patient with the contact information for a dentist in the patient’s demographics.

Dental consultants are adapting online platforms and upgrading their services to the latest practice management software. Since the prevalent situation requires safety and a lot of awareness hence to keep the dentistry on running the entire system is made “TOUCH-FREE”. Starting from setting expectations for patients, ensuring patients remember their appointment and understand your new check-in procedure, communicating with patients when they show up for their visit, walking a patient back for their visit, and payment through online gateways its all taken care of virtually. 

Setting up the best customer experience possible through Virtual Office implementation which saves expense over the help desk employees and safety concerns.  

The main features to expect from Virtual Office package is:

Online Scheduling

The patients will be provided the provision to  schedule appointments, reschedule. The automated system will send patients reminders, track missed appointments, and much more in one interface.

Online Forms

The process is digitalized and flexible, It also Saves paper, saves money. Welcoming the new age of paperless practice.

Pay by Text

Text to pay, also known as an SMS payment, is a payment solution that allows consumers to make a payment via texting on their smartphones. This process can make a seamless experience for both your customer’s business as well as for their clients.

Prescription

Post consultation the prescriptions will be sent across to the patient making the entire system fast and effortless.

Virtual Office can be one of the most cost-effective solutions to get a premium office address without having to pay for hefty deposits, bills, and maintenance expenses of a regular office.

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5 strategies for increasing patient retention

One of the most desirable qualities a dental practice requires is the retention of their patients. It is a task that entails trust and ensures that the services offered by the practice are up to the mark. Here are five different ways you can boost customer retention and at the same time ensure improving quality of standards with each patient visit.

1. Ensure patient satisfaction via a smooth workflow

If the workflow at your dental practice is smooth and transparent, more customers tend to stay and revisit. Imagine a super busy entrepreneur making time for a speedy dental check-up and is left to wait at the receptionist, then at the doctor’s chair and unfortunately end up with an error in his treatment plan. It is unlikely that this person would return. Each minute saved at the practice will be a huge relief and an appealing factor for the incoming patient. A proper scheduler can ensure minimal waiting time for a patient and increased staff productivity. The visit to the dentists should be short, sweet and hassle-free.

2. Improve customized patient engagement by providing undivided attention

Patients much appreciate it when they are treated like humans rather than a number in a queue to see the dentist. When the patient reaches the doctor’s chair side, he/she must be given undivided attention and must be followed up from their last visit. An efficient patient history tracking tool and scheduler will ensure that the doctor is up-to-date with the patient’s history and make sure that double bookings don’t occur. A few extra minutes with the patient will really make a difference.

3. Going 100% paperless

In this ultra-digital age, carrying around books and papers is a hassle on its own. Making the appointment letters, claim forms and other billings digital, ensure a green and hassle-free method which is helpful to the environment, the patient and the practice. A centrally accessible patient data repository ensures ease of accessibility for practices with multiple locations. Patient records can be accessed from any location and eliminates the possibility of redundancies.

4. Ensure data safety

With the recent privacy issues related to social media, patient data needs more protection than ever. Patients who know that their data is safe, tend to have more faith in the practice. Ensure that the patient data you have access to is safe, using HIPAA compliant tools and services.

5. Proper and long-term communication

Communication is the essence of doctor/practice-patient relationship. The best ways to promote proper communication between the practice and patients is by using adequate patient engagement tools, periodic reminders and greetings like birthdays and public holidays. Maintaining a good rapport with the patient will go a long way in boosting patient retention.

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Considerations for choosing your new PMS

According to the ADA, most dental practices in the US are small businesses. A large number of them are organizations that grew organically over the years and slowly adopted a new practice management system responding to the demands of their business volume.

Dental practices typically have multiple software installed on their on-site computers to run several aspects of their workflow. But as the practice grows and its organizational demands expand, most dentists feel a pinch due to the limited functionality of the existing practice software.

But inertia is no mean force. Resources may cringe and employees may resist when there are attempts to bring in new software to manage dental workflow. Additionally, you, as a dental practice owner, may have worries around the loss of workdays or data during system migration too.

But nevertheless, change is necessary to adapt and grow. But there are a host of things you need to thoroughly think through before you make a switch! This is necessary to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Let us see what those are:

Why upgrade the practice management system?

There has to be a very sound reason behind the practice’s decision to move from the existing legacy systems to a brand new one. Having sound reasoning in place will also let you think through every single bottleneck that has been scuttling productivity at your organization.

This will help you make a clear cut choice about the features you need in the new dental software solution. It will also help in planning a more efficient organization-wide roll-out. When you have a better idea on what you need you can even ask for specific customizations in your future dental practice management software.

What are the features?

One way to generate enthusiasm among your team to switch is to show them how their jobs get simplified with the new system. For example, depending upon the features of your new enterprise software, you can show front desk personnel how their daily workflow can be completely automated by modern software. Several upgraded software today can easily search for a slot, schedule an appointment and assign patients to exam rooms, all automatically with zero human intervention. Similarly, you can motivate the back-office staff by demonstrating how to speed billing and more effectively track claims.

How is the user-interface?

More than the enterprise leaders, it is the staff that interacts with the practice management software. So ultimately, the success of the system rests on the user experience it offers to the employees. A better user interface will convince your employees you have made the right decision and make them more enthusiastic for a change.

Does the vendor offer good customer support?

No transitions are smooth. Especially when a non-technical community is adopting technology that is ahead of them there will be an acute need for efficient and proactive service assistance. Make sure your vendor has a great team of guys who will help iron out the glitches and get things running smoothly and comfortably.

Does the new system have efficient data migration and integration?

It is important that all the data stored in your system must be carefully extracted to the new practice management system. This would include clinical and financial data, including the very vital claims process. Depending upon your needs, you may also be using other expensive business-critical systems at the practice. Make sure your new PMS can effectively integrate all these existing systems.

Also you could mull over possible alternative methods in data conversion and integration- like staged or complete module transitions. We would recommend data conversion, training, and implementation in stages, allowing practices to continue operating on their old system while switching to a new system to avoid work and cash flow disruptions.

How good are training and support?

It is important to make sure your employees get trained well-enough to feel confident of using the new system. For this effective training and FAQ management is vital. Team members must feel empowered and excited for the new system and be provided with role-based training sessions. This includes how their daily activities will change, new firm processes and the tools to improve their everyday workflow.

Not all employees in an organization will be equally tech-savvy or have same learning speeds, so a customized and adaptable training program is vital. Ensure your vendor has options for onsite, remote and self-paced training programs and that they respond in good time.

It is important to adopt modern technology to be ready to service the increasing demands of patients. So it is only appropriate that you should be considering practice modernization. Just keep our checklist handy when you start the process and if an option you are currently considering is checking right on our tips then you can expect a rather smooth transition- both organization and resource-wise.

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Utilizing teledentistry to beat COVID-19

The past few weeks have been difficult for all of us. The dental industry has also been affected extensively by this, with most of the practices forced to close its doors and the staff asked to stay at home. We are seeing instances where businesses are resorting to extreme measures such as laying off staff or even permanently shutting down practices due to lack of business. Given the circumstances, the best way dental practices can keep functioning and provide services is through the proper utilization of technology and careful management of business finances. This is where teledentistry comes in.

What is teledentistry?

Telemedicine and in extension, Teledentistry, have been around for quite a while. It is primarily used for situations where patients do not have access to dental services easily, like rural areas (which amounts to almost 20% of Americans). Teledentistry refers to the utilization of technologies like live video conferencing and online portals to run “Tele-appointments”, where dentists are consulted by patients over a live video channel.

During this virtual appointment, the dentist and the accompanying treatment coordinator provides the patient with necessary dental advice and sets up an emergency in-person appointment if necessary.

In some cases, patients and dentists may not be able to meet each other online in real-time. In such situations patients can record their queries, the dentists can view them later and get back with solutions.

What are the benefits of using Teledentistry?

Teledentistry can make patients feel safer as they can get the dentist’s services sitting in the safety of their homes. As they do not meet the dentists or travel to the practice they will have nothing to worry about catching an unwanted infection. Even if a patient needs an emergency in-person appointment, all the follow up can still happen online.

Dentists can also save the money they spend on maintaining a large office if they can use teleconsultations. Not to mention the travel cost savings both to the dentist and the patient.

How can your dental practice offer Tele-Appointments?

Currently, HIPAA regulations have been modified to allow dentists and patients to use non-public facing technologies like  Apple FaceTime, Facebook Messenger video chat, Google Hangouts video or Skype for tele-appointments.  According to the current rules, they can continue to use these technologies till the lockdown is over. But dentists should avoid using public-facing technologies like Facebook Live, Twitch and TikTok. Further, the allowed platforms are not completely safe, so the dentists must inform the patients about privacy risks and use encryption wherever possible.

Tele-appointments and Claim Reimbursements

Patients do not have anything to worry about how to pay for teledentistry appointments. This is because most insurance carriers have announced they will cover the costs if patients seek teledentistry services during the lockdown phase.  All that dentists and patients need to do is ensure the special codes, D9995 (synchronous) and D9996 (asynchronous), are specified while submitting the claims.

Offering Teledentistry options to your patients

Any dentist can offer tele-appointments but if a dental practice has an automated practice management system then it can offer teledentistry way more safely. Patients may be worried about data safety while using common online portals for tele-appointments and may even avoid using it altogether. But if you have a secure, HIPAA compliant, interactive teledentistry product to offer them, they are more likely to choose you.

Taking your dental practice one step further

Several cutting-edge dental practice management software (PMS) like CareStack offers just that. With CareStack, dentists and patients can meet on extremely safe, cloud-based encrypted platforms and there will be no data leak worries. Also, CareStack has an inbuilt audio and video interface that will allow dentists to securely meet their patients synchronously (real-time) or asynchronously (recorded and forwarded), do an online triage, exchange clinical documents like x-rays or test reports and prescribe medicines online.

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Proactive safety measures against data theft

Data theft has been making news quite a bit off late. Dental practices manage sensitive patient data and are also responsible for data security as per HIPAA guidelines. These regulations have added a lot of operational hassles with a lot of effort going towards ensuring compliance and allaying the constant fear of potential legal problems.

It is easier to shift the responsibility of data security to a HIPAA compliant practice management solution provider with good security features. The advantage here is that all this data is now stored on a secure server that is guarded by trained professionals 24 x 7. This gives you complete freedom from ensuring compliance and even allows you to use any device of your choice, from a mobile to tablet to a PC.

This also adds an extra layer of security against data loss, since most cloud based service providers utilize data redundancy systems and store the same information on different sites at the same time to ensure there is no loss. The data is also encrypted using high grade tools.

The features to look for while choosing a practice management system are going to sound mostly like technical jargon. We will look at the important ones and see how these features help you secure your data.

Unique user credentialing:

One of the most important steps in ensuring HIPAA compliance and data security is to restrict access to sensitive information for non-essential personnel. Unique user credentialing can help you add users, edit their permissions or even temporarily suspend their access to ensure confidentiality of information.

Transmission encryption:

One of the points where data is most vulnerable is during transmission. All your data passes through your ISP and further through various public channels. Cloud based dental solution  platforms employ end to end encryption using strong protocols to ensure the data, even if breached will not make sense to the attacker. Look for SSL encryption to protect your data when it is in transmission against all kinds of threats.

Audit trails:

Keeping track of who edited what and when is necessary, through a comprehensive HIPAA compliant audit log. This ensures ability to backtrack any breach to the person responsible and acts as deterrent to such acts.

Secure communications:

It is also important to look at the tools you can use for internal communication. Most of the data security related news we see today is linked to internal communication being hacked. Choose a system that enables users across locations and roles to exchange messages, notes and documents in a secure manner.

Automatic log off:

Forgetting to log-off is a human error that is hard to prevent. The best way to safeguard against this is to be able to set customizable timers to automatically log-off users after a period of inactivity.

Continuous monitoring:

Apart from all the preventive measures, it is also necessary to be able to mount a quick response to any active threats. Ensure that your system has continuous monitoring to go assess requests in real time and get notified for any suspicious activity.

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Cash flow management for dental practices

Revenue cycle management for dental practices is quite complex for the size of the organization. This is due to various challenges like generating and collecting revenue from both insurance and direct channels, as well as other nuances like UCR (Usual, Customary and Reasonable) fee schedule and various measures to optimize revenue and reduce denials.

The biggest challenges faced by dental practices include ensuring effective reimbursements, optimizing upfront patient payments, and bringing overall efficiency in the revenue cycle process.

Let us try and see how to organize all this in a simple strategy.

Five key areas that should lie at the core of your strategy are:

Reducing collection costs:

Keep looking at where the major costs in collection come from. It may even be your time to resolve problems. Reducing errors maybe your best way to reduce management time spent on the task. Maybe you have to route a lot of patients to collection agencies, increasing the cost of collection considerably, when regular follow-up alone could have solved the issue.

Raising net collections:

An active regular follow-up of accounts receivables is important. This helps to reduce lost production value and adds to your revenue. Focus on increasing net collections by automating follow-ups and reminders and sticking to a routine regular process.

Reducing effort and error:

It is important to confirm dental insurance coverage for specific procedures, so that when a patient sits in the dental chair and contemplates a treatment, the costs are at the dentist’s fingertips. This helps faster decision making and reduces errors and hassles.

Increasing speed of collections:

Modern systems provide advanced revenue cycle management features like automated tools that work to improve dental office billing and follow-up to enhance the speed of collections. Automated ERA postings can also help dentists get a grip on the situation faster.

Revenue cycle management in practice management systems:

Getting a modern cloud based dental practice management system with built in advanced revenue cycle management is perhaps the simplest way to bring the best practices in revenue cycle management to your office. This is almost a plug and play solution that takes care of everything from cross checking insurance eligibility to sending out payment reminders.

The final strategy should be designed based on these principles, in a way that works on your local community and your practice. Once this strategy is in place, the next step is to ensure smooth and consistent execution.

Choose a practice management system that has the following features that can help you implement your strategy:

Integrated electronic payments: Securely process debit and credit card transactions using integrated electronic payment solution.

Patient credits: Easily add payments and adjustments to all patients in a family during checkout.

Payment plans: Set up financial agreements for services done over a period of time and use them to create payment plans.

Finance charges: Apply finance charges to accounts which have overdue payments.

Fee schedule management: Maintain multiple provider fee schedules across multiple insurance plans.

E-claims and paper claims: Create and send batch insurance claims for all locations and providers from a central site.

Carriers and plans: Set up common carrier, plan and code lists to be used across a single or multiple locations.

Claim tracking and denial management: Monitor responses from the carrier / clearing house and notify the users with action items.

Manual payment posting: Post payments for services done for a patient at a claim level as well as at a code level.

Collections: Integrate with participating collection agencies for seamless collections management.

Electronic payment posting: Setup remittance posting rules and auto-post ERA’s. Manual intervention is only required to handle exceptions.

Statements: Quickly list patients with outstanding dues and send them statements by email or mail and allow patients to pay online.

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Key metrics to track in a dental practice

As we discussed in the previous post, data has a big role to play in the coming years for the success of your practice. Integrated analytics functionality, on your practice management system, is necessary for best management practices. But, what are the key metrics to track  in a dental practice to assess its health and progress?

This is an area that requires considerable thought since a lot of metrics can be derived from the vast amounts of data available. While some are useful indicators, others have no real meaning for your practice or may even show the opposite trend.

We can generally look at metrics in 3 key areas: Quality metrics, Operating metrics and Financial metrics. These 3 areas together cover the overall health, sustainability and potential for growth of a practice.

Quality metrics:

Revisits:

Revisits are a very important real metric to measure patient satisfaction. Correcting this metric is also a great way to boost assured revenue in hygiene.

Restorative : Hygiene ratio:

The ratio of number of cases between restorative and hygiene cases is an important metric. Restorative cases are profit earners, but hygiene ensures sustainability of the practice and regular patients who will choose you for restorative care as well.

Productivity:

This is an important metric and can be measured individually at a provider level. Productivity of a provider ensures he is able to discuss and agree on treatment plans with your patients. Tracking this metric allows you to zero-in on the non productive providers and train them in better patient management.

Operating metrics:

Scheduling efficiency:

This metric is the total number of scheduled slots divided by total available slots in your calendar for all providers. This will give you a rough idea where to look at to increase revenue. If the efficiency is 100%, it means you have scope to expand your practice. If this efficiency level is low, it means, you should focus on increasing outreach to get new patients and increase patient engagement to enable better revisits.

Check-in to Check-out time:

If a provider sees 10 patients and his time to see each patient is reduced with better processes by 10%, that means your practice immediately gains a slot for one more patient and all the revenue that slot brings adds directly to your profits, as your overheads are still the same. Check-in to check-out time should be drilled down to further stages and tracked to improve efficiency.

Staff productivity:

Various metrics allow you to measure the amount of time each member of your team spends on a task. You may be overstaffed or understaffed for the task at hand. Over staffing leads to low practice efficiency and under-staffing leads to bad customer experience. If you are overstaffed, you may even consider expanding the services you offer and add new verticals to your revenue stream.

Financial metrics:

Profit:

Though this sounds simple enough, most practice owners are not tracking true profits. They miss out the overheads, they miss out inefficiencies. It makes a lot of difference to have a tangible accurate measurement tracked over time. This is the single most important metric for your practice and should be followed closely and drilled down to constituent elements.

Free Cash:

Another very important metric that affects the stability of your operations and growth plans is free cash. Maintaining enough free cash by rigorously negotiating credit periods and collecting payments and getting claims processed fast is crucial to ensure your practice is growing at its optimal pace. Always remember that money today is more valuable than money tomorrow.

Gross Revenue:

This is another important metric that helps you directly assess your marketing and patient engagement efforts. This will also take your attention to the fee schedules and whether they are optimal. Gross revenue does not include revenue that gets passed on to 3rd party vendors, like labs.

How can a practice management system help you keep track of key metrics?

Some modern practice management systems have built in analytics modules that consolidate all the data and present the key metrics in an easily traceable, well presented dash board. This makes the job of following key metrics extremely simple. Newer intelligent systems can even alert you when something is off, thus maintaining a constant eye on the metrics that truly affect the efficiency of your practice.

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100% paperless practice

Ever since getting into dental school, a big hassle has been managing paperwork. It is a mundane task and completing it only produces further tasks in the form of consolidating and managing large amounts of physical records. Though computers have made our lives much easier by simplifying billing and accounting and even patient records, we are still a long way to go before letting go of our paper habits. But, have you tried imagining how your office would be if it was 100% paperless? Is that even possible?

Dental practices deal with various instances where they are forced to use physical records. These include coordinating with suppliers, dental labs and other service vendors as well as maintaining patient records, schedules, reminders and calendars. Current practice management systems offer integrated solutions that streamline every bit of your practice from 3rd party coordination to internal data storage and ensure easy accessibility for all your data without the need for any paperwork.

There is then, the fear of data loss that makes practices stick to good old paper to back us up if technology fails. However, modern practice management systems store data on the cloud on dedicated servers with 24 hr protections and data redundancy systems. This means a 100% paperless practice is now possible and practical.

Efficient paperless practices with cloud based practice management systems

A modern cloud based dental practice management solution brings major changes in the following areas:

Front Office:

Patient intake forms and eligibility analysis can easily be made paperless, also removing the need for an additional step in entering the data onto the system. Even the scheduling calendar is so functional on modern practice management systems that it is as flexible as your hard calendar, while being substantially more functional. Several other smaller functions like rescheduling ques are also not necessary anymore. Even receipts can be emailed to your patients.

Clinical:

Charting, treatment planning, care notes, perio charting, imaging, patient records and even prescriptions can be done on the chair-side monitor in modern solutions. This makes the whole process considerably faster and more convenient. This also increases accuracy and prevents common errors in treatment code entry.

Financial:

Finance modules feature options for fee schedule management, e-claims, printing paper claims wherever needed without need for manual entry, claim tracking, ERA posting, statements or even regular financial reports. Having all these functionalities on a single system can help a practices achieve a paperless back-office.

Patient portals:

Going paperless should also benefits your patients. An integrated patient portal allows your patients to readily access all their documents and imaging files. This enables easier access to your patients and frees us time of your front office staff.

Benefits of a 100% paperless practice

Accuracy: Data is prone for manual error only at the point of entry. In some cases, even this does not happen, such as in the case of patient intake forms they fill up themselves using their mobile devices. This improves accuracy and increases efficiency of everything from record keeping to claims submission.

Compliance: HIPAA compliance is increasingly becoming exposed and paper documentation adds unnecessary risk to the process. Electronic documentation and databases can be customized with access controls so that only the relevant members of your team can access sensitive data.

Ownership: Now that every action can be traced back to the team member responsible, there will be greater ownership of tasks and lesser mistakes from the team.

Speed: The patient’s check-in to check out time reduces when the office is made paperless. This streamlines the patient-flow between various departments and the overall flow becomes more efficient.

Accessibility: One of the biggest challenges with paper records is accessibility. Electronic records are readily accessible, no matter the time, location or type of file.

Security: Data stored electronically, in cloud based systems have redundancy and security measures, making it safer than paper records.

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Improving dental practice productivity

Have you ever wondered how a 2 minute saving in your treatment time affects your practice? A 2-minute saving is at least a 10% reduction in the time of a visit. This means that you get one additional patient in production for every ten patients. This is a 10% increase in revenue with no capital cost and no other overheads or expenditure. A 10% increase in revenue is thus converted to a minimum of 15% increase in profits. Improving dental practice productivity is crucial in the long run for a dental practice.

Most practices strive to make both ends meet, and an extra 15% can give them an edge to expand and step out of the vicious cycle of lousy cash-flow and stagnant growth they fall into.

Clinical Efficiency: Clinical efficiency is the core metric of any dental practice. Revenues of the practice are directly proportionate to the number of patients met. Given that practices work with specific working hours every month on their labor, it becomes crucial to manage each patient in the fastest possible time without compromising on clinical efficacy or treatment quality. Even employees feel less over-extended with streamlined operations, even with an increased patient load.

Achieving optimal efficiency for your practice

How can you ensure your practice is currently running at optimal efficiency? The critical area to look at is the processes and workflows your organization follows and how easy it is to stick to them.

An integrated practice management system goes a long way in ensuring productivity and efficiency by:

Reducing delays in paperwork and information transfer

Enabling faster on-demand access to information

Improving patient stickiness and reducing missed appointments

Improving scheduling efficiency through better queue management and rescheduling capabilities

Considerably reducing time for medical records and related paperwork

Faster eligibility checks and claims management

Better cash flow due to increased revenue and reduced clearing time.

So, the first step is to find a scalable system that can improve on all these areas, while allowing you enough customization so as not to change your current operations drastically.

CareStack offers a cloud-based, easily scalable platform that enables you to expand your system to any scale without the need for any specific hardware. CareStack has been made based on the needs of practices with varying needs and offers easy adaptability to most operating models in the industry.

Features to look for in your practice management system:

Front office management

Efficient scheduling

Rescheduling Queues

Waiting lists

Patient communications

Clinical management

Charting and integrated treatment planner

Template-driven care notes

Advanced perio charting

Imaging integration

e-Prescription

Patient engagement

EHR integration

Patient portals

Conclusion

Clinical efficiency can be improved by integrating clinical management seamlessly with other practice management functions and is best executed with the support of an integrated scalable and adaptable practice management system. Improving dental practice productivity should be a no comprise requirement for your dental practice.

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Automation for dental practices

Most practice owners face the tangled problem of over-worked staff and under-satisfied visitors. Though many steps are taken to ensure patient satisfaction at the chair-side, the experience of checking in and checking out has always remained a pain to the patient. This becomes worse with over-burdened employees who juggle managing patients and maintaining paperwork. Thus it is relevant that automation for dental practices is employed.

A lot of this work is mundane and redundant and does not require a capable human resource. With today’s technology, they can be automated with considerably less cost. Imagine how your practice would change if your front office employees could dedicate much more time to managing patients? Or even to marketing efforts to help expand your practice.

Automation with practice management systems

An efficient practice management system can transform a dental practice into not only a clinical success but also a smooth-running business operation. Task automation is key to a modern practice management system.

A variety of tasks, like routine documentation, record keeping, information transfer, eligibility checks, ERA postings, and even marketing campaigns, can be automated. Several elements of patient engagement, like confirmation calls and reminders, can be automated.

Utilizing an integrated practice management system with advanced automation ability is almost like hiring a new team to handle routine tasks, with a negligible increase in cost. Automation for dental practices must be an essential requirement, though the savings increase substantially as the size of the practice increases.

Automation features to look for while choosing a practice management system:

Business rule manager

One of the biggest challenges any practice owner of an extensive practice faces is not in deciding what strategy to take. It is in implementing it. Policies and rules that are rolled out are often relaxed or bypassed at several points that it becomes difficult to initiate change for progress in the practice. Management policies are decisions made to standardize the organizational workflows of the practice. These are policies that bind methods, requiring them to adhere to a uniform structure. Few practice management systems feature a business rule management module to set up a rules engine for alerting users in the event of a non-compliant action.

Workflow manager

As we discussed above, a lot of work that takes up the time of your employees is routine procedural work. This can be easily managed and automated across locations using a central workflow manager. The triggers, outcomes, frequency, and schedules can be defined for the workflows, allowing you the complete freedom to utilize existing workflows and processes more effectively. This flexibility is particularly important because the closer your newer system is to your existing practice, the better your implementation will be.

Campaign manager

One of the tasks that should take up a large percentage of the time of practice managers but rarely does is marketing. Active regular marketing efforts are often forgotten between tight schedules and day to day problem-solving. However, it is essential to note that your patients are receiving your marketing communication, and they are noticing your consistency. Automated campaigns across web, email, and social media for new patient acquisition enable your practice to stay competitive with low additional work-loads while maintaining high levels of responsiveness to your patients across all platforms.

Patient communications

A simple reminder about the appointment time is a proven method to reduce missed or dropped appointments. This creates a high impact on your profits because all those wasted hours which are incurring all your overheads are utilized in current production when those slots are actively re-assigned. But, the problem every practice faces is in figuring out who can manage all that communication. Automated patient communications for clinical follow-ups and appointment confirmations automate this process and update the records accordingly.

Financial Processes

Many practices suffer from cash-flow trouble due to mismanagement of the necessary documentation. Automation can not just save valuable time and effort; it also reduces errors in processing and brings predictability to your cash flows.

Eligibility verification: Automatic eligibility verification

ERA auto-posting: Based on a set of remittance posting rules, auto post ERA’s and only have a manual intervention to handle exceptions.

Collections and payment follow-ups: Send details of defaulting patients automatically to collection agencies and ensure quicker collections.

Patient Engagement

Patients are the life-line of your practice. The more you know about them, the better your communication with them becomes. The more active and engaging your conversations are, your patients stick to you and refer more patients. However, this is one area that most practices have mostly ignored. Patients are no files to be processed and need individual recognition, attention, and care. Several aspects of this process involve something as simple as a courtesy text or a reminder. Automation can ensure that the right data about patients is collected and made accessible to your team even before their first call. Automation also helps in collecting patient feedback, making sure your patients always feel you listen to them.

Online and custom forms: Customize and integrate patient intake forms on the web and automate the capture of patient information.

Patient surveys: Automatically email patient surveys after appointments and prompt them to rate the practice experience online.

Reports and dashboards

Most practice owners are well aware of the benefits of reporting and follow-up with every team member and every aspect of their practice. However, even when such policies, they break down due to inconsistency and the difficulty in imposing this on the team. A practice management system with automation, makes this process consistent and passive, making implementation as easy as setting it up. View reports and personalized dashboards that are generated automatically based on defined rules and triggers of locations, providers, and modules regularly and manage your practice better.

Conclusion

Automation is a part of modern-day technology, and the healthcare industry is no exception. In dentistry, especially, it gives the means to enhance small to mid-sized, solo or group, practices to reach their full potential. Thus automation for dental practices can result in increased revenue, lesser workloads, and happier staff.

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Business analytics for dental practices

We have re-imagined business over the past two decades. What used to be human-centric has now become data-driven. You will notice this difference when you walk into any bank. But, why has this change happened in every industry across the world? Data-driven decisions and analytics have produced results in increasing the efficiency of almost every industry it touched. Thus business analytics for dental practices comes into the picture.

Are Dental Practices an exception?

Dental practices are no exception, but the industry has been facing problems so far due to the lack of standardized systems and technology that are integrated enough to capture data from every point in the operating cycle. Most legacy systems are software installations at each workstation that work independently of each other.

Parameters like check-in to check-out times, claims-to-payment time, collection efficiency, and revenue from marketing campaigns help you improve gaps in practice efficiency, but analyzing this data becomes difficult with independent systems at each department. This is why practices who want these details need to make use of 3rd party analytics and data consolidation platforms.

There is vast room for improvement in the way data is handled in dental practices.

How can new generation practice management systems help?

New practice management systems are cloud-based and work with every device, whether it is a pc, tablet, or mobile device with the same functionality and convenience. This increases the number of points in your practice where the practice management system is implemented, exponentially increasing the amount of data collected and the inferences that can be drawn from them.

Always choose a cloud-based practice management system that caters to all functions of your practice and has integrated customizable analytics, with features such as:

Data mining and extraction

Data is available at every point of your practice. It has always been there. However, it has never been utilized because of a lack of a system to collect, organize, and report this information. Newer cloud-based practice management systems running at every terminal in your office make this process simple. Regular tracking of data points and necessary feedback naturally brings efficiency.

Custom reporting

Not all information is relevant to everyone. Displaying the right information to the right person at the right time goes a long way in achieving meaningful results. Custom reporting allows users to decide the parameters for generating custom reports that cover all the different and complex aspects of the practice. Such statements can also be automatically generated on a weekly or daily basis.

Personalized dashboards

It is not only crucial that the right information is available to you and your team, but also equally important to ensure the information is presented simply that every member of your team can understand and track. With modern practice management systems, you can create personalized data-rich visual dashboards to keep users focused on their goals and metrics.

KPIs and drill-downs

So, what do you do when some metric you are following is not performing as expected? The first step, just like with a dental patient, is to understand the problem and its etiology. Drilling down into the components of these metrics allows you to understand the root cause of the problem and know where to look to find a solution. Practice management systems with advanced analytics capabilities allow users to drill down to multiple levels of granularity to enable them to understand their KPIs better.

Trends

If you follow the number of patients visiting your practice daily, it shows you how you are performing now. But, how will you know what to expect going ahead? To predict the potential gains and losses in the future, it is necessary to track how these metrics are changing over time. You should identify trends and patterns influencing patient behavior at multiple locations over a period and fine-tune practice workflows accordingly.

Goal setting and tracking

Finally, every operation in your practice is run by people and not numbers. Human beings need motivation and aim to work tirelessly. Create goals and accurately measure employee and provider performance against the set goals to improve actual performance and convert your number based predictions into real results.

Key insights

For strategic decisions on where to invest extra cash you have in hand, you may want to look at how improving one function will affect the bottom line or patient satisfaction. These high-level decisions require insight into how each metric is co-related and how they work together. Use advanced analytics integrated practice management systems to gain insight by understanding the correlation between the data related to financials, patient demographics, scheduling, and treatments.

Conclusion

Business Intelligence and data analytics are known to provide a boost to any business. The dental industry is no different. Research has indicated that business analytics for dental practices can increase their revenue significantly.

For more details visit - https://carestack.com/

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Things to consider while expanding your dental practice

The difficulty of managing a single-location practice increases exponentially as new locations get added. However, in today’s market due to increasing competition and reducing revenues, expanding the dental practice has become the need of the hour. Let us explore the challenges that you come across as you expand your dental practice and arrive at potential solutions to these problems.

Challenges in expansion:

Lack of operational control: Being geographically distant reduces the efficiency of your day to day management and you become increasingly reliant on systems to compensate.

Scalability of work-flows and processes: Most single location practices run on improvised systems which may not work well in scale. The moment the system scales, many gaps become visible. It is important to change your workflows to ones that suit your requirements.

Problems with coordination and communication: Your patients would expect the same experience in all your locations. It becomes important to share information and transfer documents regularly between these locations.

Problems with efficiency: Suddenly, all your efforts to fill up the open scheduling slots are not enough. You have an increase in production and your marketing should increase multiple-fold to be able to cope up with the added production capability.

Problems with people management: This is especially a problem in ensuring compliance to various redundant tasks that are essential for a multi-location practice but have not been necessary when you were running a smaller practice.

Cash-flow: This is perhaps the most important problem to prepare for. Your overheads suddenly go up and you should have enough cash being generated to drive the new location to break-even.

Record keeping and data security: This becomes increasingly difficult as the processes get more and more complex and there are additional points that bring vulnerability to your data.

Reporting: It becomes difficult to get face to face quick summary reports from your team. A well planned reporting structure and processes are needed to keep the practice in its optimum functioning. The importance of data analytics and tracking becomes more important.

How can practice management systems assist in solving the problems of scaling?

There are several features that can help you manage as you are expanding your dental practice. However, the most important ones to look at come under the following:

Establishing better control:

Modern systems can help you establish better control over all aspects of your practice by features such as:

Multi location management: Add, remove or deactivate locations, providers, users and chairs into the application setup, all from a central setup console.

Access control & permissions: Enjoy easy and centralized control over user permissions as roles and responsibilities of users evolve over time.

Centralized scheduling: Set up the calendar for your practice across locations and customize to suit the exact needs of the practice and the staff.

Single patient record: View patient records at any location, by any provider and ensure that all users always view up-to-date and same patient information.

Single provider record: Give providers the freedom to work across locations and track treatment procedures across locations with a single provider record.

Care protocol management: Centrally create templates for care notes and configure clinical settings across locations to ensure unified care coordination

Clinical asset management: Centralize the storage and viewing of X-Rays and scans on the cloud through an integrated imaging solution from apteryx.

Document management: Maintain and access clinical, financial and patient related documents across locations through a central repository.

Streamlining operations:

Practice management systems ensure your workflows are streamlined, whether they are shared between departments or locations. The following features are helpful in streamlining operations:

Clinical decision support: Recommend better treatment plans to patients on the basis of similar patient profiles, leading to higher case acceptance rates.

Integrated patient portals: Capture patient information using an online patient portal which can also be used by patients to make payments and confirm appointments.

Integrated patient engagement: Set up automated communications via sms / email for appointment confirmations, festive greetings and recall reminders.

Collaboration portals: Securely collaborate with patients to share reports, plans and financial documents through a secure patient portal.

Secure messaging: Ensure collaboration and exchange of ideas through instant and direct exchange of messages without any security breach.

Automation:

One of the quickest ways to get around the hassles of adding new locations is to automate as many workflows as possible. We are listing down few of the automations that can greatly enhance your efficiency:

Business rule manager: Set up a rules engine to prompt users across all locations to reduce errors and ensure better process control.

Workflow manager: Manage and automate a variety of routine tasks and office workflows across all locations using a central workflow manager.

Marketing automation: Engage with existing patients and acquire new patients through automated marketing campaigns across web, email and social media.

Patient communications: Automate patient communications across modules for functions such as clinical follow ups, appointment confirmations and festive greetings.

Auto scheduling: Automatic prompts suggesting the best possible date, time and provider combination for an appointment.

Online & Custom forms: Customize and integrate patient intake forms on the web and automate the capture of patient information.

Patient surveys: Automatically email patient surveys after appointments and prompt them to rate the practice experience online.

Automatic report generation: View reports that are generated automatically on the basis of defined rules and triggers of locations, providers and modules.

Personalized dashboards: Automatically create personalized and data rich visual dashboards to keep users focused on their goals and metrics.

Revenue Cycle Management:

These features are equally important while looking at a scalable practice management system. A bad revenue cycle management combined with sudden expansion is the recipe for disaster. Look for these advanced revenue cycle management functionalities in your practice management system:

Auto eligibility verification: Automatically verify insurance eligibility of patients through real time connectivity to thousands of payers and plans.

Electronic claims: With real-time e-claims and advanced billing rules, identify issues before submission and get more claims paid on the first attempt.

Auto ERA posting: Based on a set of remittance posting rules, auto post ERA’s and only have manual intervention to handle exceptions.

Auto collections & follow ups: Send details of defaulting patients automatically to clearing houses and ensure quicker collections from such patients.

Central insurance management: Maintain a single database of employers, carriers, plans, fee schedules and collection agencies for all locations.

Central billing office: Create workflows around a central billing office responsible for centralized claim creation and payment processing.

Reporting & Analytics: Aggregate data from multiple sources and enable centralized reporting across clinical, financial and administrative workflows. 

For moredetails visit - https://carestack.com/