Establishing a consistent social media presence for your dental practice is a key component of effective marketing and patient engagement. However, managing your profiles takes time and effort; even seemingly small tasks can create a surprising challenge, like writing dental social media captions.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are rich sources of potential patients, but your primary focus should be connection rather than simply sales. Below, we explain all about social media captions, including best practices, useful tips, and why they’re a critical aspect of digital marketing.

How Dental Social Media Captions Fit in Your Marketing Strategy

At Dental Intelligence, our advanced dental marketing solutions include omnichannel content, including social media. We understand the importance of developing a cohesive approach that avoids the “hard sell,” focusing instead on engaging with your followers and building genuine relationships. The captions on your social media posts directly impact viewer interaction and performance, and here’s the evidence to prove it.

According to HubSpot’s Instagram Engagement Report, posts with longer captions (between 1,000 and 2,000 characters) have a 50% higher engagement rate compared to shorter captions¹. Another interesting study by Agorapulse compared the performance of Instagram posts. The posts with captions had an increase of 53.03% in likes, 28.78% in reach, and 127.5% in comments².

Clearly, adding captions to your social media posts can drive results, but making them interesting, descriptive, and attention-grabbing is easier said than done.

To give you some guidance, follow these tips for creating engaging captions.

1. Follow the Same General Outline and Steps

You can simplify the creation process by developing a formula you and your staff can refer to when writing captions. Here’s a quick example:

• Strong hook or opening line
• Entice the viewer to keep reading
• Concise summary
• Call to action
• Hashtags

Also, don’t forget to keep a copy of your dental practice’s social media policy and guidelines handy for other staff to follow when posting³.

2. Define Your Intention and Audience

Before you write a single word, determine your overall purpose of the post, its intended audience, and the emotion you want to evoke in viewers. Is it an infographic of the services and procedures you offer? Maybe a quick video bio of the new dental hygienist you hired? Once you define the intention of your post and what audience you’re targeting, it becomes easier to write a caption.

3. Keep it Short, Simple, and Persuasive

The data shows that longer dental social media captions are better than shorter captions at engaging users and typically receive more likes and comments, but that doesn’t mean you should ramble. Avoid jamming too much information into a single post. Instead, emphasize the core message and make it easily understandable.

Remember to use persuasive language that highlights the benefits and advantages of the dental services you offer.  

4. Include a Call to Action

A powerful call to action (CTA) should be at the end of every dental social media caption (but before any hashtags). CTAs should be clear, direct, and prompt the reader to perform a specific action or task, like scheduling an appointment, visiting your website, etc. Here’s an example for teeth whitening: Call us now to book an appointment and get ready to love your smile again!

5. Encourage Engagement

The primary intent of social media posts is to connect with your followers or patients. So, your captions should inspire viewers to click, share, like, comment, etc. Or, just ask them outright!

Include a line that says, “Don’t forget to like, comment, and share this post!” Another trick is including open-ended questions that will compel viewers to answer with a comment and express their opinion.

6. Add Value to Every Post and Caption

If you want to snag the attention of your followers and encourage interaction, focus on adding value to your social media posts and captions. For example, you could post an infographic explaining how to maintain excellent dental hygiene or what foods and drinks can negatively affect oral health. Another way you can add value is by promoting other local businesses and organizations in your community.

By adding value, you can establish credibility and authenticity for your followers and potential patients.

Drive Growth and Success with Dental Intelligence

Writing the ideal dental social media captions can be deceptively difficult; however, there’s no denying the benefits of investing time and effort into your practice’s social media presence. At Dental Intelligence, our dental marketing tools provide an end-to-end solution to help your practice establish a strong online presence and continue growing. Schedule a demo of our cutting-edge product.

Resources

¹ Hubspot

² Agorapulse

³ ADA

Facebook is a platform that many people either love or hate, but there's no doubt about it: Facebook is an effective dental marketing tool. A large portion of your potential patient base likely uses Facebook every day, and you can connect with them directly by using the platform as well. 

However, just like all marketing strategies, dental Facebook marketing requires careful consideration and planning to be successful. Read our five tips to craft a powerful, engaging Facebook marketing strategy for your dental practice. Then contact us to learn more about elevating dental marketing with Dental Intelligence.

1. Utilize Various Types of Facebook Ads

Facebook offers several different ad types, and including a variety in your dental Facebook marketing campaign can improve your reach. Some users simply respond better to certain types of ads than others. 

The most popular ad types include:

• Image ads
• Video ads
• Carousel ads (include up to ten photos/or videos in a slideshow)
• Instant experience ads (take up the user's entire phone screen)

While it's fun to play around with these different ad types, make sure you're being purposeful about which type you choose for each ad. Facebook ads come in different price ranges, and you don't want to waste money on a more expensive ad type for no reason. 

2. Evaluate Your Metrics Regularly

Since you're spending money on Facebook ads, you want to ensure they're doing what they're supposed to. You can easily review data about your Facebook ad performance by logging into your Facebook Ads Manager. 

You'll gain access to the following key performance indicators:

• Total impressions
• Cost-per-click
• Conversion rate
• Click-through rate

These metrics provide information about the number of users who clicked on an ad, the percentage of people who followed through with your call to action, and more. With this data in mind, you can cut ad campaigns that aren't working well and continue funding ones that are, allowing you to reap the greatest return on investment (ROI). 

3. Use A/B Testing

A/B testing is a method of determining which type of ad performs best. We highly recommend using this strategy to perfect your dental Facebook marketing campaign. 

With this test, you'll roll out two forms of a Facebook ad — Version A and Version B — that are the same except for one specific difference, such as the call to action or the photo you include. Then, you'll compare their analytics and determine which works best. 

A/B testing helps you avoid wasting money on ads that don't perform well. You can spend a week or two testing each ad type, then stop funding the version that doesn't engage your audience as well.  

4. Use Paid and Organic Strategies

Paid Facebook ads can help you engage with your target audience, but your practice can also benefit from organic social media strategies. Creating a free Facebook account and posting updates about your dental practice can personalize your brand and remind patients of your services. You can host giveaways, share casual videos of your staff, post important updates, and more. 

If you decide to let employees post to your Facebook page, make sure they fully understand how HIPAA relates to social media use. Consider creating a social media policy¹ that details how your employees can and cannot post to your Facebook page. For instance, you may require all employees who have access to the Facebook page to run their posts by a manager before submitting them. 

5. Humanize Your Practice

Dental Facebook marketing gives you a valuable opportunity to connect with your patient base in a personal, friendly way. You can use your Facebook ads and organic content to let your followers in on a side of your practice they may have never seen before. 

Dental anxiety is a major concern for many patients, and because of this, they may have already formed negative associations with your practice. By posting light-hearted, behind-the-scenes content about your dental staff, you can humanize your team and ease the anxieties your potential patients may experience. 

Engage More Patients with Dental Intelligence

Are you looking for ways to reach more prospective patients? Consider pairing your dental Facebook marketing strategy with our all-in-one practice performance solution. Dental Intelligence gives you access to patient engagement solutions that help you grow your business and improve patient retention. 

Schedule a demo to learn how our software can enhance your marketing strategy.

Resources

¹ ADA

Your patients have several dental practices to choose from, so why should they come to you for their cleanings, exams, and treatments? Brand building is important for attracting new patients to your office and retaining your existing patients to keep them coming back. Establishing a solid brand identity for your dental office will let current and future patients know who you are and what they can expect when they visit for their appointments.

Brand building can seem intimidating for a small dental practice. You’ll need to develop certain skills and collect data about your business and patient base, but it can be simple and effective if you follow these tips.

Why Is Brand Building Important for Dental Practices?

Developing a brand identity for your dental office that matches your workplace values and the services you provide gives potential patients and employees a curated idea of who you are. Your branding is the first impression that people will have of your business. However, branding involves much more than just a fancy logo and website.

Your chances of gaining new clients will increase greatly if your dental practice utilizes strong and unique branding. In addition, employees who feel confident in your company’s branding may have increased drive and pride in their work.

1. Determine Your Audience

One of the most important steps in building a quality marketing strategy is to know who you are marketing to. You can understand your target market by narrowing in on the type of patients in your area and whom you want to offer services to. When determining your target audience, think about their age, employment status, lifestyle, and the types of dental services you predict they’ll need. 

Once you know who you are marketing to, you can build your practice’s branding around that demographic.

For example, some dental practices work exclusively in pediatrics, so their kid-focused marketing would differ from that of an office that works mostly with adult patients.

2. Research Your Competitors

Knowing which dental practices you compete with for patients can help you build a brand that encourages those patients to choose you for dental services. You can check out the competition’s branding and decide what works well and what doesn’t. From there, you can decide which aspects may be beneficial to work into your branding in an original way.

3. Determine the Look of Your Brand

Your brand’s visual identity is one of the most important tools in enticing new clients and potential employees. The look of your branding draws people in and encourages them to look further into the services you provide. 

Keeping the visuals consistent across your website, social media, and paperwork will help you along your brand building journey. This includes your logo design and the colors, fonts, and images you associate with your brand. These choices should align with your brand’s mission and values.

4. Develop Branded Content

An important marketing strategy is to develop strongly branded content that appeals to your target market and remains consistent. This content can be as simple as your business cards and as complex as long-form blogs for your website.

It is just as important to make sure this content reaches your audience. Optimizing your content with SEO can help boost your business to the top of many online search results.

5. Use Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool. You can attract new patients by developing a strong brand and applying that branding to your social media. 

You can think of your brand’s social media presence as digital word of mouth. The benefits of social media for dentists include:

• Inexpensive marketing
• Engagement with current and future patients
• Increased traffic to your website

Social media is a low-effort method of putting your dental practice’s information in front of many eyes.

6. Be Unique

It is okay to use branding that strays a bit from the typical branding in your market. People are more inclined to interact with an advertisement or social media post that is fun or that differs from what they usually see. Those interactions have the potential to turn into dedicated clients and increase revenue.

Dental Intelligence Can Boost Your Brand

At Dental Intelligence, our mission is to help dental practices gain loyal patients and grow their businesses with digital solutions for payments, communication, marketing, and more!

Brand building can be simple with our state-of-the-art analytics and engagement systems. Schedule a demo today!

As a dental practice owner, you know that dentistry is a highly competitive industry. How many other dentists are you competing for business within your area? If you're like many practice owners, the answer is probably higher than you'd like it to be. 

Digital marketing is a valuable strategy to use to stay competitive and grow your dental practice, but where do you start?

With a few tips in mind, you can begin crafting a successful content marketing strategy. Here's what you need to know. 

What Do We Mean by Content Marketing for Dentists?

Content marketing is the strategy of creating written or visual content that promotes your business. Unless you have a videographer on hand, you'll likely want to start with the written aspect of content marketing. 

Written content can come in the form of:

• Website pages
• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Emails
• Text messages

Your written content should be tailored to your target audience, keyword-driven, high-quality, and authoritative.

Checking all these boxes can help your content have the most powerful effect on potential patients. 

Tips for Writing Successful Content

Creating a lead-generating, patient-acquiring content marketing strategy is about more than just putting written words on a page. You need to consider factors like patient confidentiality, search engine optimization, and dental authority. 

Before you start writing, consider these tips for content marketing for dentists.

Put Your Knowledge and Authority to Use

You dedicated many years of schooling and residency to becoming a dental professional, and you put your skills to good use every day at your clinic. But you can also capitalize on your knowledge base with your content marketing strategy. 

Potential patients should view your website as an authoritative source to learn about the various aspects of dental care. You want to make sure everything you include is accurate, grammatically correct, and professional to build this reputation. 

Even if the content you include is technically true, if the writing is low-quality or riddled with errors, it will make your practice look bad. We recommend having a knowledgeable content editor review all your social media posts, blog content, and web pages before publishing them. 

Craft Social Media Posts Strategically

Social media is a direct outlet into your potential patients' daily lives. Using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn strategically can grow your organic website traffic and build your patient base. 

When posting to social media, you want to post consistently, create posts that provide value to your followers, and understand the trends of each platform before posting.

Finally, if you're going to let employees post on your dental practice's social media pages, you'll benefit from creating a social media policy. The ADA indicates a few rules of engagement for dental practice social media policies¹, including tips like:

• Don't post copyrighted content without permission. 
• Don't post any patient information without the patient's consent. 
• Give the final go-ahead for all social media posts, even if you let employees draft them. 

Make Keyword-Focused Content

You should be writing about topics relevant to the dental industry and your practice as a whole, but to narrow your topics further, make sure you're writing about keywords that your website should be ranking for. 

In short, keywords are the terms that users put into their Google search queries when they're looking for information about a specific topic. The keywords your dental practice may try to rank for include terms like:

• Dental services near {CITY}
• Dental cleaning
• Dental exam
• Schedule a dental appointment

By using keywords in your content, you tell the search engine crawlers to include your website in relevant search results. Begin by using a tool like Google Keyword Planner to identify keywords your practice should be using. Be sure to use your keywords strategically in the body content, meta title and description, and headings. 

Dental Marketing Solutions That Grow Your Business

Content marketing isn't the only strategy involved in an effective dental marketing plan. When you work with Dental Intelligence, you gain access to a full suite of dental analytics and engagement solutions ranging from Online Scheduling to 2-Way Communication.

Creating a strategy for content marketing for dentists with the help of our experts at Dental Intelligence can help you achieve your marketing goals faster and more effectively. Schedule a demo today to learn how Dental Intelligence can benefit your dental practice.

Resources

¹ ADA

As a dentist, you perform important oral healthcare services for your patients, and the profits from these services keep your business running. Certain dental procedures offer a better return on investment than others, so it helps to know the most profitable dental services. By adding these to your suite of services, and by using Dental Intelligence's tools to increase dental production per visit, you can grow your practice while ensuring high-quality patient care.

Consider Which Dental Patients You See

Which patients you see the most often depends on your practice's location and the caliber of services you provide.

For example, a dentist located in a wealthier area could focus on promoting cosmetic dentistry. Teeth whitening services, veneers, and other cosmetic procedures bring in great profits. Therefore, it would be sensible for such an office to zero in on these procedures to increase their bottom line.

On the other hand, a dental care provider located in a rural or lower income area may see more patients who need serious dental work, such as root canals. Marketing cosmetic procedures in this area may not provide a reasonable return on investment.

Although there are disparities in dental and oral care, placing your focus on the type of patient that comes into your dental practice most often can increase your profits while providing the best care for them.

The 6 Most Profitable Dental Services

Certain dental procedures bring in more profits than others, and encouraging patients to seek such work could increase your total annual surplus. Such profitable services include:

1. Teeth whitening: Teeth whitening services are highly appealing to many patients, as whiter teeth are seen as more attractive and healthier. In many cases, you can perform multiple whitening procedures on a single patient in one sitting, increasing profitability and making patients happy. 

2. Dental implants: If a patient has missing teeth or unhealthy teeth that require removal, encouraging them to consider a dental implant could improve their oral health and result in a profitable appointment. Although the initial cost may be more than other similar services, informing the patient that they could save money in the long run may help make the sale.

3. Surgical procedures: Many patients need wisdom tooth removal. These procedures can be life-changing for patients, and they bring in high profits once you invest in the necessary tools and training to perform them.

4. Root canals: Root canals can be a tough sell because many patients have preconceived notions about the pain level associated with them. However, pain reduction methods have advanced, and if you can guarantee a comfortable experience to patients, they are more likely to use your services.

5. Dental crowns: Dental crowns provide a higher return on investment than fillings alone, and they provide greater strength for the patient's tooth in the long term. Encouraging patients to seek a crown over a filling can increase profits while keeping their teeth healthier over time.

6. Invisalign or clear aligners: Many patients are also interested in Invisalign services to straighten their teeth. They are less expensive than regular braces and easier for your dental office to provide. Marketing this service is a great way to introduce potential new patients to your office. The ease of providing Invisalign makes them one of the most profitable dental services.

Other Ways to Boost Dental Practice Profits

Encouraging your patients to undergo necessary dental services that provide the best return on investment is a sure-fire way to increase your overall profits. However, there are other steps you can take to increase profits in addition to performing actual procedures.

Marketing plays a big part in how many new patients your dental office receives. Consider adding a patient referral program to your marketing plan. Offering high quality rewards and creating an easy-to-use program could turn big profits.

If possible, expanding your office to accommodate more patients at one time will help generate more revenue. Adding additional employees or more exam rooms will allow your business to work more efficiently.

Creating your own monthly payment plans for patients can also increase revenue because you will be able to accept more patients without dental insurance. Insurance companies could cut into your revenue by imposing specific prices for the treatments you offer.

We’re Here to Help with Profit-boosting Dental Solutions

Dental Intelligence can help your business navigate dental insurance and analyze your data to increase the effectiveness of your practice. With our Patient Loyalty Program, 2-Way Communication, and other features, you can increase patient engagement and grow profits. Schedule a demo today and see our tools in action.

Common hiring mistakes may lead to decreased profits, inefficient workflows, and upset patients. By knowing bad hiring decisions to avoid for important positions, such as office managers or receptionists, you can set your practice up for success.

5 Common Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

Hiring the appropriate person to fill an open position at your dental practice may seem daunting. It can take a lot of time to fully assess a potential employee, but failure to do so could lead to expensive consequences and an average of 21 weeks of wasted time before you correct the mistakes¹. 

Avoiding these common hiring mistakes can help you ensure your employees are fit for their jobs and join your team successfully.

1. A Weak Job Description

Make sure the job descriptions you post for open positions at your dental practice are as detailed as possible. You could lose out on great talent by failing to include relevant information in your job descriptions. Include information such as the:

• Expected daily tasks
• Experience an applicant should have
• Expected work schedule
• Your practice’s general location
• The position’s salary

Including the salary is crucial, as some applicants may avoid applying to positions that don’t show them how much money they could be making.

2. Rushed Applicant Reviews

Once you stop accepting applications for an open position, you should thoroughly review the applications that have come in. Looking at an applicant’s background too quickly could result in a hire that does not fit your needs.

Review certain parts of a resume in detail, such as their employment history, education, and skills. A resume with a large employment history gap or little detail could indicate that an applicant is not reliable. 

Reviewing the applicant’s history in depth will help you ensure they have the appropriate education and experience to execute the duties of your open position.

3. Poor-Quality Interviews

Quick interviews are one of the most common hiring mistakes. The interview process gives you the opportunity to meet potential applicants and see how they behave. 

Speaking to applicants on phone calls prior to in-person interviews is highly recommended. In the interview, ask the most relevant questions to applicants, such as their salary expectations and why they feel they are the best fit for the role. Through conversation, you may learn that the applicant is not willing or is incapable of meeting your needs.

4. Poorly Delegating Work to New Employees

There is a fine line between giving a new employee too much work and too little work. Assigning too much to them before they have a complete understanding of the company’s processes could lead to bad work. However, giving them too little work or too little oversight could give them the expectation that the job is easier than it is.

It could be beneficial to speak with other team members in similar roles about what went right and what went wrong when they were first hired. Then, you can apply that information to the new hire’s workload.

5. Biased Hiring Practices

It is important to hire new staff members based on their work experience and ability to do the job. Choosing not to offer someone a position based on an unconscious bias could be a loss for your dental practice at large.

Give New Hires a Good Start

Once you have gone through the hiring process and chosen a quality employee to add to your team, it is important to make sure they begin the new position with the best possible chance for success.

Making sure your new hire feels like a part of the team can help them succeed, so introduce them to the people they’ll be working with. This also benefits your established team members, as it gives them an idea of the new hire’s experience and how that person will impact the overall work environment.

Dental Intelligence Can Help

At Dental Intelligence, we understand the importance of setting up your new hires for success. Our state-of-the-art communication solutions can help you avoid common hiring mistakes and welcome new team members in a way that benefits them as well as your current employees. Schedule a demo to learn more.

Resources

¹ PR Newswire

When done well, a morning huddle is the most important 15 minutes of your day. That’s right — spending just 15 minutes with your team during a morning huddle can directly impact crucial Key Performance Indicators for your practice and make a great day even better. Many practices using Dental Intelligence regularly report scheduling over $1,000 of same-day treatment thanks to Morning Huddle.

Start Your Day Off Right

Get your team excited for the day with a comprehensive morning huddle. No need to show up early and run multiple reports manually — Dental Intelligence has already built a Morning Huddle for your entire team before the first person walks in the door. Our Morning Huddle takes your raw data and turns it into a path forward for your day, focused on your unique practice goals.

Working to grow your practice? With our Morning Huddle, you can discover opportunities to help increase the number of appointments on your schedule.

You can easily find patients with unscheduled family members, unscheduled treatment, and unscheduled hygiene. You can also use our suggested patients list to fill last minute holes in your schedule. Let’s break down each of these options and how to best review them during your morning huddle, so you can increase your number of appointments.

Unscheduled Family Members

One of the easiest ways to get more appointments is by scheduling your patients’ family members. There are two ways to go about this.

First, you can go over the unscheduled family members list. This will show you a list of patients on the schedule for today with family members that need to be scheduled. You could then assign a team member to reach out to them prior to their appointment and see if they could also bring in that family member during their appointment.

When your front desk is ready to call them, have them say something to the effect of: “Hi, Mrs. Dent. I see you’re scheduled to come in today. We just had a spot open in our schedule and it looks like your son, Arthur, is overdue for cleaning. Would you like to bring him in so we can take care of both of you at once?”

A better option might be to take a look at your schedule and look for open slots in green. Then see if the patient before or after that open slot has a family member that needs to be scheduled. You can prioritize these patients from the list of unscheduled family members, that way you can best fill your schedule.

Unscheduled Treatment & Unscheduled Hygiene

For patients with unscheduled treatment or unscheduled hygiene, Dental Intelligence also has a ready-to-use list. These lists show the patient’s name and the unscheduled procedures on their treatment plan or past-due hygiene.

Consider looking for holes in your schedule, then check the patients before or after the open time and see if they have unscheduled treatment or unscheduled hygiene. If they do, reach out to them immediately, and fill those empty times with patients who are already scheduled today.

Our Morning Huddle also lets you print the day’s schedule. Try printing it out and giving it to each of your providers. Then, invite them to ask any patient on their schedule that has unscheduled treatment or unscheduled hygiene about completing it during their appointment or scheduling it before they leave.

Suggested Patients

Maybe you don’t have many patients coming in today that are on any of the above lists, but you still have holes in your schedule you would like to fill. With our unique algorithm, the suggested patients list shows you the best patients to fill a last-minute opening.

Prior to providing you with these suggested patients, we analyze every unscheduled active patient in your practice management system. Our list considers patients’ show rates, AR balances, treatment acceptance percentage, and many other factors.

We don't want you to just schedule any patient. We want you to schedule the best patient. Our list will show you patients that are more likely to say yes, pay, show up, and generate more production for your practice.

Plan for a Better Tomorrow

Once you’ve gone through and prioritized your patients on the schedule for today, begin to prepare for tomorrow. Our Morning Huddle allows you to look ahead at the schedule as well as the unscheduled lists for patients on the schedule tomorrow. That way, you can fill your next day’s schedule using the same strategies.

The Most Important 15 Minutes

An effective morning huddle can take an ambiguous wish to be busier and turn it into a step-by-step plan to achieve your goals. 

Many practices have found success using the techniques above. Some practices even make it their goal to end every day with more patients on the schedule than they started with. This way, they get the most out of each day, prevent patient attrition, and save their patients’ time.

Looking for more ways to get the most out of your morning huddle? Check out our free eBook "The Battle for the Morning Huddle" to learn how you can also use your morning huddle to increase production per visit, improve collections, and more. Schedule a demo today to see the Morning Huddle and other features in action.

Answering tough dental questions with accurate information is essential for optimizing patient compliance and treatment. If your patients develop sensitive teeth or bad breath, they may ask for quick solutions to alleviate pain or embarrassment. You can enhance their in-office experience by providing effective communication during every interaction.

Tools like our 2-Way Communication can help you respond to all your patients’ concerns, but it’s important to first understand what those concerns are. Consider four of the most common dental questions your patients may ask.

How Much Money Will This Treatment Cost?

In today’s world, many patients struggle with financial anxiety. Some neglect routine examinations because they worry it may cost them too much. Hence, you may need to discuss service prices before scheduling them for an appointment.

It’s a good idea to create a transparent pricing policy for your dental practice. This way, you can refer to specific information when patients ask.

For example, suppose a patient asks how much they should expect to pay for a cavity filling. The answer may not be straightforward, depending on the fillings you offer. Silver amalgam fillings typically cost between $50 to $150, while white composites can cost up to $250. Offering your patients multiple options corresponding to their budget limitations may encourage them to commit to a treatment.

Patients without insurance may ask about financing options. In this case, it may be a good idea to provide a link to recommendations via email. This method allows your patients to review options and choose a suitable solution at their own pace.

What’s Wrong with My Teeth?

Many patients struggle to maintain adequate oral health routines. Consequently, tooth decay and gum disease can develop over time. When a patient asks what’s wrong with their teeth, you should be ready to deliver bad news.

It’s important to maintain professionalism when discussing one’s oral condition. Passing judgment can lead to unhappy patients and may hurt your business. Sometimes, this behavior may even result in negative reviews online.

Discuss their lifestyle habits and help them identify issues that may have contributed to tooth decay. Common problems typically include poor diet and improper tooth brushing techniques. 

Offer to schedule them for practical treatments as soon as possible, like cavity fillings or veneers. 

What Should I Do if My Child Has Cavities?

Parents should schedule dental examinations for their children as soon as they develop their first adult teeth. Failure to do so can result in early tooth decay.

Still, genetics can cause some children to develop cavities, despite maintaining proper oral hygiene. It might be challenging to calm down worried parents when they ask dental questions like, “Does my child need a tooth filling?” However, a confident response will encourage parents to act quickly and ensure that their child gets the care they need.

Provide a comprehensive Treatment Plan so they know what to expect during their child’s appointment. You can review anesthetic options, X-rays, and other essential information for the best results.

Also, learn how to communicate with younger patients effectively. They may not understand every detail of the procedure, but they still deserve your time and attention when they have concerns.

Why Do My Gums Hurt?

Gingivitis affects millions of Americans every year. Side effects include soreness, bleeding, and receding gums. Despite this highly treatable condition being common, it may surprise many of your patients when they receive a positive diagnosis.

Let your patients know that ignoring gingivitis for too long can result in tooth loss and painful infections. Craft an email detailing at-home treatments they can use to reverse gingivitis before it causes too much damage. For example, you could create infographics demonstrating the proper brushing and flossing techniques. 

Help Your Patients Understand Treatment with Digital Communication Tools

Taking the time to answer every dental question may feel like a drain on your office resources, depending on how many patients you serve. Deploying tools to streamline your efforts will eliminate the stress. 

At Dental Intelligence, we make delivering outstanding dental customer service easy with our digital office-management products. Integrate your over-the-phone and online outreach strategies with our 2-Way Communication solutions. These tools allow your staff to answer patient questions in real-time, reducing service delays, and improving patient satisfaction. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Modern dentistry undergoes frequent changes, including the development of new technology, remote resources, and treatment. Introducing these new services to patients can be a struggle for your staff if they already manage a busy schedule. Fortunately, certain tools and strategies can help you update patients anywhere at any time.

Investing in our Mass Communication is just one example of how you can streamline patient outreach. Explore other ways your practice can introduce new dental services and grow your leads.

What Are the Most Common Ways for a Dental Practice to Introduce New Technology or Services?

Most dental practices rely on mass email campaigns to deliver information to their patients. However, you should not expect all your patients to use this resource. Preparing alternative solutions will ensure that your audience gets the information they need to improve their oral health and schedule regular appointments.

Meet with your front and back office dental team to discuss a practical communication strategy. These discussions will help your team identify patient pain points, behavior, and preferred methods of communication, which you can use during your outreach campaign.

Once you have established a budget and directed staff toward their appropriate roles, start putting pen to paper. More specifically, create a phone script.

Phone scripts help you introduce key features of your new dental service when patients call. You can create multiple templates in case your patients have questions. For example, if you are pitching a new dental emergency service plan over the phone, you should also prepare to answer questions about insurance or pricing. 

Consider writing quarterly newsletters for your email subscribers. This method will keep your patients engaged with your practice’s developments, allowing them to seek further resources on their own time.

How Can a Combined Approach Maximize Outreach?

Physical advertisements, such as magazine ads and billboards, are also useful for communicating new information about your dental practice. These mediums can emphasize the most important details of your service and encourage actionability.

For example, suppose your dental practice just invested in a new state-of-the-art digital radiography machine. In this case, your advertisement could look something like this:

We now offer the best X-ray technology in the industry! Call us at [PHONE NUMBER] to schedule with our dental care experts today.

Notice how the language above is not too specific. Most patients know what an X-ray machine is, but the term digital radiology machine may not mean much to everyone. 

Never underestimate the power of in-person sales. Try explaining your new services to patients before or after their examinations. This method is a great way to communicate information while tying your services into the patient’s specific dental coverage plans. 

What Dental Practice Management Resources Can You Deploy for Better Results?

Preparing mass emails and advertisements can be time-consuming. For instance, it could take weeks to A/B test email headers to achieve high open rates for your service announcement. Additionally, designing graphics for a physical poster requires an artist, someone to distribute the advertisement, and more.

It may be worth hiring a dental practice coach to review your current outreach strategy. Coaches will recommend improvements to your content that will increase trust between your patients and your practice. They will also monitor your communications for several days and assess your deployment strategy to ensure that your patients receive correct information about their dental plans and preventative care.

Streamline Your Dental Practice Sales with Industry-Proven Resources

Your communication strategy may look different from other practices across town. Find the best solution by partnering with Dental Intelligence. We help hundreds of dental care providers like you manage their patient outreach strategies with convenient and intuitive tools. 

Invest in features like Team Chat, 2-Way Communication, and more. Dental Intelligence is ready to help. Schedule a demo today!

You already know how important customer service, quality of care, and patient experience are to the success of your dental practice, but what about reputation management and collecting reviews? When people need to find a local dentist, the first thing they do is visit their preferred search engine and type in “the best dentist near me” or something similar. Once those search results pop up, they’re scrolling through the top-rated dentists and reading reviews from past patients.

Make no mistake — your practice’s ratings and reputation are critical. Reviews give individuals an insight into previous patients' experiences and give them a better idea of how effective treatment will be. Studies have shown that good reviews hold more weight than finding a dentist with a close location, a top ranking in search results, affordable prices, or a good-looking website. Clearly, negative reviews have a serious impact on your dental practice and its continued success.

At Dental Intelligence, our Online Reviews make it easier than ever to receive feedback from patients. You can send automated, manual, or Swell-integrated review requests via email, text, or push notification, and we support up to five review sites. Read on to learn essential information about managing your reputation.

The Top Online Review Sites for Dentists

The biggest and most well-known online review sites are Google, Facebook, and Yelp. You should use these platforms to connect with your patients, respond to their reviews, and manage your reputation.  

The Growing Problem of Fake Reviews

The World Economic Forum estimates that around 4% of global online reviews are fake. For all dentists and healthcare professionals, fake customer reviews can have tangible consequences. While slanderous and negative feedback is harmful, misleading endorsements and false five-star reviews are just as bad, if not worse. Fortunately, the FTC has joined forces¹ with several states and filed lawsuits on behalf of consumers to fight back against the problem of fake online reviews.

If you see fake online reviews about your dental practice, take a screenshot as evidence. You can also report or flag the comment based on the particular platform’s terms of service. The best way to protect your practice against this issue is to address it as early as possible by remaining vigilant and monitoring online review sites and platforms.  

Online Review Sites for Dentists: The Final Word

The reputation of your dental practice is one of the biggest factors patients consider before they book an appointment. That’s why it’s so essential to monitor online review sites and respond promptly to patient feedback. At Dental Intelligence, we make it easy and simple to manage the reputation of your dental practice and improve patient experience without relying on gimmicks like fake customer reviews. Schedule a demo today to see our Online Reviews and other features.

Resources

¹ Pew Trusts

Online reviews are essential for the growth of your dental practice. However, without adequate staffing or resources, it can be challenging to respond to every comment on your Google profile. Creating a review response template can save you time during outreach.

Tools like our Swell Integration can streamline your reputation management strategy. This digital solution allows you to personalize and deploy responses corresponding to the feedback your practice receives. 

Crafting a well-written review response template is an excellent way to show your patients that you value their feedback. Learn how to write a professional response without stress.

Why Should Your Dental Practice Respond to Online Reviews?

Most dental patients expect their doctors to respond to online reviews within a couple of days. Taking the time to share testimonials and respond to reviews can improve your dental practice’s reputation and encourage long-term leads. 

You can also improve your SEO standing with Google by keeping up with commenters. Even replying to negative feedback can yield benefits. For example, you may be able to convince former patients to return to your practice by offering service or procedure updates in the response. 

Review sites like Yelp and Facebook are popular among those seeking dental services. Responding to reviews on these high-traffic channels could put a friendly face to your business. It may also boost your practice’s online visibility to potential patients.

How Should You Build Your Review Response Template?

Understand that your practice may need to create several review response templates for the best results. Creating one response for every review may come off as insincere to users.

For instance, suppose that you receive positive feedback from one user and negative feedback from another. Using the response, "Thank you! We are happy you took the time to give us your feedback" for both reviews may not be appropriate.

It’s also important to understand that not every comment you receive may be real. In fact, many businesses struggle with fake reviews¹. If you suspect that your dental practice received a fake review, report it to Google and avoid interaction.

How Can You Respond to Good Reviews?

Suppose you received a five-star review from a patient praising your dentists for their excellent communication skills and flexible scheduling. It’s important to thank them for their response and reinforce their positive experience with a promise. Here is an example of a great response:

Hi [Insert Username],

We are happy to hear that your experience with us was satisfactory. We strive to provide the best experience for all our patients and will continue to meet your expectations during every visit.

This response is short and to the point. 

You can use the same response for generally favorable reviews as well. For example, suppose someone left a three-star review on your website commending your front desk staff for their friendliness. However, they were disappointed about their wait time.

Consider using the same template above but personalizing your response to address their concerns. For example:

Hi [Insert Username],

Thank you for your feedback. We take your concerns seriously and strive to provide the best experience for all our patients. Our team will use this feedback to better meet your expectations in the future.

What Should You Say if Your Dental Practice Receives a Bad Review?

You may receive a negative review for several reasons, despite providing your best service. Don’t worry; you can use these reviews to your advantage by responding professionally and offering solutions.

Ask yourself how you would respond to the following review:

I would not recommend this dentist to anyone. They are slow, and my gums hurt after my examination.

It may be tempting to defend your dentists when you receive comments like this. Take a breath and reply with a cool head. Try this approach when crafting review response templates for negative feedback:

[Insert Username],

We apologize for any poor experience you had with our team. We work tirelessly to ensure that our dental practice provides ethical, communicative, and safe treatments for all our patients. Please call us at [PHONE NUMBER] to discuss any concerns you may have.

Notice how this response did not criticize the patient for leaving a negative review or dismiss their claim.

Manage Your Responses with Digital Solutions

Nobody wants to receive bad customer reviews. However, it’s vital to have a professional response ready. At Dental Intelligence, we offer practice management products like 2-Way Communication and Online Reviews to help you keep up with feedback. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Resources

¹ Pew Trusts

Everybody dreads conflict in the workplace.

Excessive conflict can decrease morale and increase inefficiency. If it’s not resolved, then people may take more days off — or leave the company altogether.

If you own a dental practice, then you need to know the causes of conflict on dental teams in order to address them. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most common causes — and how to reduce conflict in general.

What Causes Conflict at Work?

Many things can cause conflict. While conflict can spring from almost anywhere — from personality clashes to job incompatibilities — there are a few more likely sources.

Poor Communication

One of the biggest causes of conflict in the workplace is poor communication.

Say that you’re planning to roll out new scheduling software. Some people know about it, but not others. This can result in a lot of confusion and frustration as team members try to figure out what to do.

And it’s not just a management problem. If team members don’t talk to each other, then it could result in frustration building between them.

Continued poor communication can lead to conflict because of just how inefficient and frustrating it can make things. At Dental Intelligence, we can help improve dental office communication with Team Chat. This can make it easier for cross-communication between you and your team, helping to resolve workplace conflict before it starts.

Poor Management

Poor communication isn’t the only cause of workplace conflict; poor management strategies can create potential problems, too.

Sometimes, managers may have too much involvement with the team, resulting in micromanagement. Other times, managers may not have enough involvement, leaving them disconnected from their employees and their concerns.

Make sure to strike a good balance between the two, checking in with your team when needed but not hovering so much as to be overbearing.

Work Ethic

Not everyone will always pull their weight. Sometimes, team members may not do as much as they should, leaving difficult tasks to fall to their coworkers. Other times, while they might be doing enough, there are coworkers who might not perceive it that way. Either case can lead to problems, so make sure you’re keeping up with how your employees are doing and if there are any grievances.

Gossip

Gossip can be an insidious thing. It’s natural for team members to talk about their days, but problems start when they begin gossiping about coworkers. This can lead to harmful rumors, increased workplace tension, and a potentially unsafe environment.

Sometimes rumors will sort themselves out. Other times, they might lead to escalating conflicts — which means you might need to intervene.

Limited Resources

Do you not have enough tools for everyone to do their jobs properly? If so, then this could easily end up leading to conflict.

Avoid problems by making sure that everyone has what they need to do their jobs properly. Pay attention to workplace concerns and listen to your employees to ensure you’re getting the supplies you need.

How Do You Deal with Conflict Effectively?

Some sort of conflict is inevitable whenever you work with others. Knowing how to deal with it effectively can help you avoid potential problems.

If you want to reduce conflict, then consider doing the following:

• Build strong relationships with your team. If your employees feel safe and comfortable around you — and their coworkers — they’re more likely to speak to you to try and work out problems peacefully.
• Make sure roles and guidelines are clearly defined. By making sure that everyone understands their roles, you can reduce miscommunications and workplace tension.
• Consider scheduling monthly meetings. As much as you might want to keep up with everyone, it can be hard when you all have jobs to do. Scheduling regular meetings can give you a chance to hear about any concerns your employees have. This, in turn, will give you the opportunity to address them.
• Respect all individuals involved in a conflict. Sometimes, you simply can’t avoid conflict. If disputes arise, take the involved workers aside and talk to them individually. Gather all the facts and treat them with respect to try and smooth out a conflict.

Prevent Conflict with the Right Tools

There are many causes of conflict in the workplace. Identifying them can help you mitigate issues and make for a better work environment.

Check out our blog for more communication tips. At Dental Intelligence, we have tools to help improve communication amongst team members. Schedule a demo today to see our software in action.

When should a medical history form be updated? The answer is: it varies. That's probably not the hard and fast rule you hoped for, but the good news is that there are a few rules of thumb and things you can keep in the back of your mind that will help you know when to update your patients' medical history forms. 

The Importance of Updating Medical History Forms

Up-to-date medical history forms are vital for your dental practice's safety and for your patient's health. 

If you are not confident that your records are up to date, the answer to the question, "When should a medical history form be updated?" is: Right now. 

Patients can request their medical history from your practice at any time. Without up-to-date medical history forms, dangerous gaps in knowledge, such as incomplete drug histories or unreported preexisting medical conditions, can complicate dental care, jeopardize patients' oral health, and increase your risk of liability. 

No matter how you do it, the most important thing to do is gather up-to-date medical history forms.

What Kind of Records Should I Keep for My Dental Practice?

Every time a patient comes in for an appointment, whether for a cleaning or oral surgery, you should review their medical history form to ensure it's complete. The specific information relating to your type of practice or facility will dictate some of what you record, but there are common items that belong on every medical history form. Here are some things you should include on your medical history forms:

• The patient's health conditions and illnesses
• Contact information for the patient's primary care doctor and any specialists they are seeing
• The reason the patient is seeking dental care
• Space to write in any new information the patient volunteers during his or her visit. 

Gathering this information can help you craft better courses of treatment, improve your patients' experiences, and insulate you from legal risks related to malpractice. 

Gathering and Storing Medical History Forms

So, when should a medical history form be updated?

As a rule of thumb, best practice dictates that medical history forms in dentistry should be updated at least once per year. You should also update them any time there is a change in the patient's health status or a new drug is introduced to their current medication regimen.

If you want to be extra safe, you can have every patient update their medical history form at each visit or you can walk back the frequency from there if you so choose. The patient's age and health status determine the urgency to keep their medical records up to date. Generally, updating medical history forms once a year is sufficient if a patient is in good health. 

If you're looking for maximum ease of use, accuracy, and frequency, you can have your patients update their medical history via an online patient portal like the Dental Intelligence Patient Portal. This takes the hassle of filing, administering, and refiling medical history forms off your plate permanently. With a digital patient portal, every record is just a click away.

Once you've got the right information in your hands, you have to decide how your practice will process it at volume. The old method of using paper and a forest of filing cabinets in your backroom introduces unnecessary risk. Theft, unauthorized access, natural disaster, fire, and other catastrophic events can destroy or compromise your records in a heartbeat, leaving you with the headache of cleaning up the mess.

Digitizing your records reduces that risk significantly and saves floor space in your practice. Putting your records in the care of a trustworthy, decentralized third party that follows HIPAA practices for patient data storage gives you an added measure of security against the worst-case scenario.

The Bottom Line

For dental practices, keeping up-to-date medical history records for their patients is a crucial discipline with a lot of weight riding on it. 

When should a medical history form be updated? The only way to prevent the pitfalls that come from poor medical history form management is to review and follow dental documentation guidelines. Getting the right information from patients in a timely manner and filing it in a secure, easy-to-access location is the best way to make sure your protocols are setting you up for success.

If you want to know more about how Dental Intelligence can help you make medical history form management a breeze, contact us today to schedule a demo to see features like our Digital Forms and more.

Building long-lasting patient relationships ensures that you’ll continue to have patients for years to come. In addition, the more loyal a patient is, the more likely they are to recommend your practice to other people, which means that you’re more likely to get more patients.

There are many factors affecting customer loyalty for dental practices, and you need to know how best to take advantage of them to improve your relationships with patients and keep your patients happy and coming back for all their dentistry needs.

1. Your Relationship with Your Patient

Case studies have shown that there’s a positive correlation between good patient relationships and loyalty. Relationship marketing can really help your patients feel appreciated and make them more likely to return for additional services.

If you want to build strong relationships with your patients then:

• Listen carefully to their needs and address any concerns
• Take note of any details they tell you about their life and ask about them later
• Follow up with your patients after appointments
• Offer friendly service

The best case scenario is to wow your patient at their bi-annual cleaning so that they tell their family and friends about your outstanding service and even come back for more dental services, like crowns, veneers, or whatever they need.

2. Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs are excellent ways to improve customer retention long term. These programs reward patients for sticking with your practice. The longer they’re a patient, the better the rewards.

Rewards can include a range of things, such as free cleanings, discounts, or even branded merchandise. Deciding on and advertising rewards can help you attract more patients — and keep them coming back.

At Dental Intelligence, we can help you set up your Patient Loyalty Program and build your practice. Patients can build up reward points for doing various things — for example, filling out their paperwork — which they can then cash in for prizes in one convenient platform.

3. The Convenience of Your Service

Even if a patient loves your service, they might not stick around if it isn’t convenient. People already have a lot to worry about in their days; they don’t want to also be worrying about how to set up a dental appointment or schedule a payment.

The more convenient your services are, the more likely patients are to stick with your practice. Consider doing the following:

• Setting up an online payment system that’s easy to access such as Dental Intelligence Payments
• Setting up Virtual Check-In to streamline the process
• Creating an easy-to-use online scheduling system like Dental Intelligence Online Scheduling

4. The Quality of Your Dental Services

You could have a fantastic loyalty program, incredibly convenient appointment times, and a great bedside manner — but it won’t matter if you don’t have good service.

Solid patient care is probably one of the number one factors affecting customer loyalty. If your patients know that you’ll do good work and take care of their oral health, then they’re more likely to keep coming back.

Focus on providing the best dental care possible. Make sure you use up-to-date equipment, pay close attention to your work, and do what you can to alleviate anxieties.

5. Patient Engagement

Patients want to know that you hear their concerns. Engaging with patients outside of your office can be an excellent way to reassure them that you understand and will address their needs. In addition, you can use the opportunity to build a friendly rapport with them.

Using social media is one of the best ways to engage with your patients. Respond to any comments that people leave, either thanking them or letting them know that you hear their concerns. In addition, encourage engagement by creating posts that ask for them to share stories about their experiences.

Increase Customer Loyalty with Digital Solutions for Dentists

Having loyal patients means you can worry less about the state of your business. By building patient loyalty, you’ll have a much easier time attracting and retaining new patients. Make sure you offer good service, amazing loyalty rewards, and listen to your patients.

At Dental Intelligence, we have a thorough understanding of the factors affecting customer loyalty. Our goal is to help you improve patient retention and grow your practice. Schedule a demo to see our Patient Loyalty Program and other features in action.

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An HR manager can help resolve any complaints an employee might have. Choosing the right professional is helpful, but it’s best to avoid these problems to begin with. Many dental offices end up running into easily avoidable mistakes — and oftentimes, that’s just because they don’t know what to look for.

At Dental Intelligence, we’re here to help. We’ve compiled a list of five common dental office human resources mistakes and how to avoid them. In addition, our Team Chat can help with office communication for dental practices and more to help smooth conflicts before they arise.

1. Make Sure You Handle All Payments Properly

Proper payment can be a huge point of contention. If someone is putting in a lot of hours at work, then they’ll expect proper payment.

This is especially true if someone’s working overtime.

You’re required to pay an employee overtime when they work more than 40 hours a week. You’ll need to keep careful track of how much your employees work in order to both pay them on time and ensure they get any overtime pay. Otherwise, you could end up falling into unexpected pitfalls.

2. Hiring Temporary Employees Instead of Permanent Ones

You need to consider a lot during the hiring process. You won’t just need to make sure you have up-to-date job descriptions; you’ll also need to make sure you hire the right person for the job. A lot of potential employers worry about the consequences of hiring the wrong person and may take questionable measures to avoid the issue.

Sometimes, people may hire temporary employees instead of permanent ones to try and avoid employment issues. Unfortunately, this isn’t a solution. Even temporary employees are still considered employees under the law, so it’s better to search for someone you’d like to hire permanently instead.

3. Provide Regular Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are vital to a dental practice. Performance reviews look at an employee’s overall performance and can justify disciplinary action or termination. As such, it can be an issue if you don’t have records of them.

Create a schedule for performance reviews and stick to it. This will not only help your employees know when you’ll review them but also help you keep on top of things.

Keep thorough records of any reviews. This way, should problems arise, you’ll have the information to back up your decisions.

4. Encourage Employees to Take Breaks

Dental work can be stressful. Without breaks, your team members could end up overworked, unsatisfied, and unable to perform to the best of their ability.

That’s not the only reason to encourage breaks, however. All employees need to have a lunch break and short breaks during the workday, according to the law. As such, if employees don’t take advantage of this time, you could find yourself in legal trouble.

Many dental employees may decide to work through their lunch or break. Work days in a dental office can get busy, after all, and they may have a lot to do. It’s important to pay attention to who hasn’t gone on break yet and encourage them to take theirs. Try to foster an environment where no one feels pressured to skip their breaks, and you can avoid one of the most common dental office human resources mistakes.

5. Have Strong Harassment and Discrimination Policies

Workplace harassment and discrimination are serious issues. They can result in employees feeling unsafe at work — and result in potentially serious issues down the line.

Make sure that you take the time to create solid harassment and discrimination policies. Read them over thoroughly and run them by other members of your team to catch any potential issues. Once you’ve implemented them, make sure that your employees have access to them; this way, they’ll know when and how to approach the HR manager if they need to.

In addition, you won’t want to just leave the policy untouched once you create it. You’ll want to review your policies regularly and make updates as needed. This way, you can make sure that you address any employee concerns.

Avoid Common Mistakes and Create a Better Work Environment

At Dental Intelligence, we’re here to help you. Learn how to become a great leader, avoid common dental office human resources mistakes, and more on our blog. Schedule a demo today to see our Team Chat and other features in action.

Providing outstanding service can encourage people to return to your dental office to take care of their oral health. Not only that, but if your dental customers have a good experience, they’re more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.

But while customer service is important, it isn’t always easy to figure out how to improve it.

So what can you do to stand out from the crowd? At Dental Intelligence, we have three tips to help you enhance your clients’ experiences.

1. Make Things Easier for Your Clients

Nobody likes dealing with frustrating, inconvenient scheduling or payment systems.

Maybe your scheduling system isn’t up to date, which could frustrate a potential dental customer. Maybe the check-in process is too intimidating, and your clients decide they’d rather go somewhere else instead of dealing with it again. Maybe trying to make a payment has them running around in circles — until they just decide not to deal with the problem in the future.

Your clients want to be able to schedule appointments, pay bills, and check in without a hassle. As such, the more streamlined your process, the better experience your clients will have.

Try creating a simple, easy-to-use scheduling calendar with Online Scheduling. Dental Intelligence Payments can also help streamline your payments process. You could even potentially set up a help system if they’re struggling with an insurance claim from Delta Dental, Guardian, or another company. Virtual Check-In can make things much easier for your clients, encouraging them to come back time and time again.

2. Build a Relationship with Your Clients

If you want to improve your dental customer service, then one of the best things you can do is build a relationship with your clients.

Your clients want to feel like their dental team cares about them. Taking the time to listen to them, explain things, and remember their concerns can build trust.

Consider doing the following:

• Listen carefully to your clients’ concerns. Patients want to feel like you’re hearing and addressing their worries. Listen carefully and do what you can to address any concerns they have.
• Be open and friendly. A friendly, cheerful demeanor can put your clients’ minds at ease and enhance their overall experience.
• Explain any procedures. People like to stay informed, and your clients are no different. Explaining what you’re doing and why can go a long way to improving a client’s experience.
• Remember details about their lives. Did your clients share a story about their kid’s graduation or a new dog they got? Try to remember those stories and ask about them when your client comes back. Remembering these details can prove to the client that you really care.
• Make sure to follow up. Calling clients to follow up on procedures, check how they’re doing, and make any additional appointments can really help enhance their faith in you.

3. Make Sure You Have a Clean, Comfortable Office Space

Imagine this: you walk into a dental office and notice old, damaged chairs, smudges of dirt on the tables, and a dark, dreary atmosphere. You’re unlikely to enjoy the experience, especially if the rest of the building is also in disarray.

Ensuring your office space is hygienic and comfortable can help improve a potential client’s opinion.

Make sure that you:

• Clean your office regularly to get rid of any dirt and grime

• Have comfortable chairs — and make sure you fix any rips or damage in a timely fashion
• Keep the office space bright and welcoming
• Include a television or music in the waiting room to give patients something to do

In addition, including a range of amenities can go a long way in helping you stand out. For example, consider having warm blankets, stress balls, and sunglasses ready to make your clients more comfortable. Having free Wi-Fi or streaming services can also make an office visit more enjoyable.

Create a Fantastic Experience for Your Dental Clients

Having outstanding dental customer service is key to getting repeat customers. By being friendly, providing outstanding services, and improving your office space, you can enhance your clients’ experiences.

Dental patient convenience is one of the best ways to improve dental customer service and encourage repeat clients. At Dental Intelligence, we’re ready to provide you with the dental assistance you need to improve your practice. Schedule a demo today to see our software in action.

All health care providers benefit from word-of-mouth advertising. Whether someone needs to set up a specialist visit or is looking for a primary care provider, they want to know that the professional they’re choosing is trustworthy. If they get a recommendation from someone they trust, they’ll be more likely to choose that practice.

Setting up a patient referral program can be a great way to encourage this. Referral programs generally offer a reward as encouragement to refer patients. If someone sets up an appointment and says who they were referred by, then the individual who referred them will get the reward.

Your dental practice can really benefit from an effective referral program. At Dental Intelligence, we can help you set up a Patient Loyalty Program and grow your practice. Explore these tips and get started creating your program!

1. Create Solid Rewards

Before you actually set up your program, you want to think about what sort of rewards you’ll offer. You need something that will actually incentivize patients to talk to their friends and family. Simply offering a new toothbrush or a tube of toothpaste likely won’t cut it.

Some excellent choices for rewards include:

• Gift cards, whether to places like Amazon or to local businesses
• Discounts, such as 10% off your next visit or even something like a free cleaning
• Unique branded items, like hoodies or water bottles

You can even expand on the reward system by creating a new patient special. Offering discounts, free consultations, or other incentives are great ways to encourage people to actually take advantage of referrals. Plus, people are more likely to recommend something that offers their loved ones immediate benefits.

2. Make Sure Your Patients Know About Your Program

A patient referral program is only effective if your patients actually know about it. You’ll need to make sure to spread the word and encourage patients to reach out.

Consider doing the following:

• Create Referral Cards: Referral cards are just what the name implies: cards that talk about your referral program. Create them and give them to your receptionists to hand out when a patient leaves. This can be an easy way to spread the word. Plus, they act as physical reminders about the program.
• ‍Use Social Media: Social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Requesting referrals through it can be an excellent way to attract attention. Leave a message in an easy-to-spot place and make regular posts to encourage your patients.
• ‍Send Out Emails: If you have an email list, then consider using it to ask about referrals! Advertise your referral program and encourage others to tell their friends and family.

3. Thank Your Patients

People generally like to feel appreciated for what they do. A “thank you” can go a long way to encouraging people to repeat an action.

Thanking anyone who offers referrals can be a great way to encourage them to continue reaching out to others. Sending a thank you note is probably the most perennially popular option. Take note of anyone who says they’re a referral. Ask who referred them, then send the individual a personalized thank you note.

Thank you notes aren’t the only way to thank your clients, however. You could also send them a text, put personal thank you messages on a board in your office and more! Think about what would work best for your practice and get it set up.

4. Make Your Program Easy to Take Advantage Of

A referral program isn’t very useful if it isn’t easy for your patients to take advantage of. The easier a program is to use, the more likely it is to be successful.

Keep these tips in mind:

• Make sure that information about your referral program is easy to find. Giving out cards and leaving information on social media is good, but don’t stop there. Put information on your website — likely on the homepage or the menu bar.
• ‍Offer helpful information. Not everyone feels comfortable giving referrals. Offering information on how best to do it — and what the incentives are — can make things easier.
• ‍Make it easy to sign up for. When you get a new client, give them the option to mention if they’re a referral — and who referred them. This way, you can make sure any rewards get to the right people.

Set Up Your Referral Program

A patient referral program can help you build your practice. Optimizing your program has never been easier with help from Dental Intelligence! Schedule a demo today to see our Patient Loyalty Program and more in action.

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If you’ve received a patient refund request, you’re probably wondering why it happened and what you can do to prevent more refund requests in the future. Dental Intelligence Payments can help you manage refunds and outstanding balances, but if you don’t yet have such a system, here’s what to do.

The Dangers of Patient Refund Requests

Issuing timely refund requests is important to patient satisfaction, but your practice needs to tread carefully. Your professional liability insurance has provisions that prevent you from taking actions that could hurt your defense if someone were to sue you, including giving refunds without taking proper precautions.

If you offer a refund without taking steps to protect yourself, it could look like an admission of liability that you’ve done something wrong. This may prevent your practice from drawing on your policy if a patient tries to take you to court.

Thankfully, you can avoid these problems by asking all patients to sign general release refund request forms before your practice issues a refund. Your form should:

• Identify the patient by name and address
• State that the refund isn’t an admission of liability

Reasons for Dental Practice Patient Refund Requests

Despite your best efforts, your practice will probably receive refund requests from patients occasionally. But why do refund requests happen, and what can your practice do about them? Two main factors behind refund requests include patient dissatisfaction and problems with the patient’s insurance.

The Patient Wasn’t Happy with Your Services

Your patients may seem pleased after a cleaning, teeth whitening, or other dental procedure. But later on, patients might realize that they weren’t so satisfied after all.

Why might a patient request a refund? Possible reasons include:

• The patient developed pain or discomfort following a procedure
• Your practice didn’t clearly communicate post-procedure care instructions
• Your practice failed to explain potential complications
• The patient believes you should have used a different or cheaper treatment

Refunds eat into your practice’s profits, so you probably want to avoid issuing one whenever possible. Before you agree to a patient refund request, consider:

• Are you confident that your practice performed high-quality work?
• How long has the person been a patient of your practice?
• Is the patient reasonable and easy to work with?
• Would the patient be satisfied with a sincere apology or a discount on future dental work instead?

If you see the patient regularly and they don’t make a habit of complaining, you may want to issue a refund to keep them from leaving for another practice. But if the patient has been demanding, aggressive, or non-compliant, you might refuse the refund request.

Insurance Company Refund Requests

Sometimes, refund requests have nothing to do with patient satisfaction at all. Many patients have employer-sponsored dental insurance that pays for the work you do. But if the employee loses or leaves their job, their insurance company might come after your practice for payment instead.

This can happen due to errors in timing with insurance companies and dates of employment. For example, a patient may lose their job and come to your practice for treatment shortly after that. The insurance company thinks they’re still employed, so they approve the claim.

Later, the insurance company processes the change in employment and realizes it paid a claim on a person no longer covered. The insurance company then sends your practice a refund request.¹

How can you avoid this situation from happening to you? The best solution is to collect payment from your patient up front. Your practice can then send the claim to the patient’s insurance company, but make sure to mark “Assignment of Benefits” so the check goes to the patient and not you. If the insurance company wants a refund, it will contact the patient or their employer’s human resources department instead of you.

Stay on Top of Patient Refund Requests With Dental Intelligence Payments

Is your dental practice struggling to keep up with patient payments and refund requests? Improve your collections with Payments from Dental Intelligence! Our system makes it easy to keep track of outstanding balances, issue a patient refund request, and reduce the workload for your front office staff. Schedule a demo today to find out more.

Resources

¹ ADA

Many people have dentophobia¹ — that is, fear of the dentist. It’s an understandable fear; dental procedures can be intimidating, and a bad experience can leave someone with lingering fears.

Unfortunately, dental anxiety can cause problems for both the patient and the dentist. In the office, it can make them more irritable, have more severe pain reactions, and even stress out the dental team. You need to know how to deal with anxious dental patients if you want to make sure they get the care they deserve.

At Dental Intelligence, we understand how difficult it can be to figure out how to help anxious patients. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of tips. In addition, we offer resources like Virtual Check-In to help make things easier for anxious patients.

1. Explain What You’re Going to Do

A lot of dental anxiety can come from not knowing what’s going to happen. If you’re wondering how to deal with anxious dental patients, then one way to help is to explain what’s going to happen.

Break things down for your patients by:

• Talking about what will happen during the procedure
• Explaining why you’re doing each step
• Showing your patient your tools and explaining what they do

Fear of the unknown can make anxiety skyrocket. Having a little bit of extra knowledge can sometimes be enough to soothe nerves.

2. Be Empathetic

Patients respond well to dental professionals who care about them. Take the time to listen to your patient’s concerns and respond with empathy. Discuss their fears and take them seriously. Knowing that you’re willing to put their comfort first can help make patients more confident in your care.

3. Let the Patient Have Control

Sometimes, anxiety comes from a loss of control. The patient isn’t able to brace themselves for the start of the procedure — or ask for you to stop if it gets to be too much.

Giving control back to the patient can be an excellent way to help them relax. Let them know that they can ask to pause the procedure at any point and let them decide when it actually starts. This way, they can feel more confident about moving forward.

4. Offer a Distraction

Keeping your patient distracted from what’s going on can go a long way to soothing anxiety. If they have something to focus on besides the dental procedure, then it can help make them less nervous.

Sometimes, a distraction can be as simple as talking to the patient. Your patient can’t respond during the procedure, however, so it’s good to have other methods to distract them too.

Installing a television and turning it to the channel of the patient’s choice can be a great option. Particularly anxious patients may benefit from headphones that could play music or podcasts.

5. Make Sure the Room Is Comfortable

Relaxing isn’t easy if the room is too cold or you’re lying on a stiff, painful chair. Discomfort can enhance anxiety — and, conversely, making the room more comfortable can help lessen it.

You can’t always get brand-new equipment, of course, but there are things you can do to make the room more comfortable overall.

Consider doing the following:

• Check to make sure the room’s at a comfortable temperature before you start.
• Offer the patient a blanket if they’d like one.
• Mask typical dental office smells with a pleasant air purifier.

6. Consider Sedation

Sometimes, you can do everything in your power, and the patient simply can’t relax. In cases like these, you might want to consider using nitrous oxide to sedate them.

Just a little bit of sedation will likely work well for people with mild to moderate anxiety. Patients with severe anxiety, however, may need to be fully sedated to get through the procedure. If your patient is anxious about the procedure, then discuss this option with them and see what they’d like to do.

Manage Dental Anxiety with the Right Tools

Dealing with difficult patients isn’t easy. Anxious patients can make life stressful — both for themselves and for your team. Figuring out how to deal with anxious dental patients is key to making sure that everyone involved has a positive experience.

At Dental Intelligence, we can provide you with a variety of resources to help you help your patients. Schedule a demo to learn more about what we can do.

Resources

¹ Cleveland Clinic

Do you want to start using Instagram? First, you’ll want to target the right audience. Follow these tips to learn more about your Instagram target audience and get started making content they’re sure to love.

Who Are Your Ideal Patients?

Before determining your target audience, you must decide who your ideal patients are and develop a buyer persona for them. To do this, make a list of patient demographic traits that could include:

• Age
• Occupation and income
• Location
• Gender
• Education level
• Hobbies and interests

Next, think about where your patients get their information. Who does your ideal target audience trust? Which other companies do they follow on social media?¹ These factors influence buying decisions, so they’re important to consider.

Information sources may include:

• Websites and blogs
• Books and magazines
• Influencers
• Social media channels

Finally, think about your ideal patients’ challenges and pain points. This will help you create targeted content on Instagram that speaks to users’ wants and needs. Challenges you might list include:

• Eliminating tooth pain
• Whitening teeth for a better smile
• Fixing teeth that are crooked or have wide gaps

Use this information to determine which problems you can help your patients solve. Once you know that, you can create content that resonates on a genuine level with your target audience.

Track Instagram Audience Insights

Instagram provides detailed metrics that tell you whether your content strategy is working or not. Seeing drops in your metrics could mean you have failed to tailor your content for the right audience.

Audience insights to keep an eye on include:

• Audience growth: This metric shows how many followers you have gained or lost since the previous week. A spike indicates you’ve likely found your target audience, while a drop may mean you need to rethink your content strategy.
• Gender: Are you primarily reaching out to male or female patients? You may think you’re targeting both equally, but your metrics could surprise you.
• Age range: You can see the age groups of patients who interact with your content the most.
• Follower activity: This metric tells you the most popular time of day for followers to engage with your content. For instance, if users mostly comment and respond to content in the morning, you can use this information to shift your publishing strategy accordingly.

Check Out Your Competitors

If you don’t know who your Instagram target audience is, try checking out your competitors’ social media channels. This can yield valuable data for your Instagram content strategy, such as:

• Who is engaging with your competitors on social media
• What type of content your ideal audience interacts with the most
• Their tagged posts
• Their challenges, pain points, hobbies, and interests
• Their demographic information

Watching your competitors’ social media feeds is time-consuming, however. Fortunately, you can use analytic tools to harvest this information for you.

Use Hashtags to Find New Audiences

Instagram allows you to search for industry keywords, so take advantage of this feature to help your dental practice discover new audiences to target. Try searching for terms related to services your practice offers, such as teeth whitening or crown repair. You can find more accurate results by including your geographic location with search terms.

Create the Right Content

Now that you’ve learned the type of content your audience prefers, your dental practice is ready to start making Instagram posts. Content that may resonate with your audience could include:

• Photos of patients (always make sure your practice gets their consent before posting)
• Images of your staff at work
• Instagram Stories and Reels
• Funny images and memes
• Contests and giveaways
• Special events
• Limited time offers

Remember that on Instagram, your practice isn’t limited to still images. Most users will find videos more engaging than basic photos, so try using a mix of both to improve audience engagement levels.

Get Started on Your Instagram Strategy Today

With Dental Intelligence, we offer dental marketing tools to get you started. Our content library includes templates ready for you to use. You can also engage with your prospective patients. Schedule a demo today to see our solution in action.

Resources

¹ BU College of Communication

Approximately 55% of patients across all age groups prefer text messaging as a communication channel over phone calls. Dental practice text messaging services, such as Dental Intelligence 2-Way Communication, offer a convenient way to boost your revenue while staying in touch with your valuable customers.

Reduce No-shows

Your dental practice regularly calls patients to remind them of upcoming appointments. But if your calls keep going to voicemail, patients may forget about their appointment completely, which means lost revenue for you.

If your practice struggles with no-shows, try switching to text messaging as your primary form of communication. Patients are more likely to notice and respond to text-based appointment reminders — all it takes is a few seconds for them to text back "YES" to let your practice know they’re coming. This will automatically update to confirm their appointment in your practice management system.

Book More Appointments

Your patients lead busy lives, so it’s not surprising when they forget to book an appointment for their next teeth cleaning, annual exam, or other dental services. Don’t wait around hoping patients remember to make an appointment — use text messaging to remind them instead. Allow them to easily book an appointment through a link using Online Scheduling. You can even send Digital Forms through text messages to save time when patients arrive at your practice.

Unlike phone and email-based reminders, patients are more likely to see and respond to text message communications. In fact, 85% of people read text messages within the first five minutes of receiving them, whereas phone calls often go unanswered. Additionally, patients only open one out of every four emails they receive.

Improve Your Availability

Text messaging allows patients to connect with your office more easily when they have questions or concerns. Your practice is likely busy all day long, making it difficult for patients to reach a team member over the phone — and that’s if they can find time in their schedule to call you during regular business hours.

Thanks to text messaging services, patients can send and receive messages when it’s convenient for them. Plus, text messages don’t disappear, which makes it easy for patients to refer to your advice whenever they need to.

Increase Revenue Through Text Advertisements

Phone calls aren’t the only thing your patients ignore. Many people receive piles of mail to sift through every day, so it’s not surprising if your postal advertisements get lost in the shuffle. Mail-based advertisements are expensive to produce and send too.

Text message ads are cheaper and far more effective than traditional advertising. Try sending promotions featuring a discount on teeth whitening and other cosmetic dental services before summer vacations, during the holidays, or throughout the wedding season to boost your practice’s revenue all year.

Educate Your Patients

Your patients interact with your practice just a few times a year, so they’ll likely forget about you between visits. To keep your practice in their thoughts, try sending helpful advice and educational information through regular patient text messaging. For instance, you can remind patients of the importance of flossing or give tips on recognizing cavities or gum disease.

A Word About Patient Privacy

While texting your patients is convenient, keeping HIPAA laws in mind is vital, especially if your texts contain Protected Health Information (PHI). For secure text messaging, HIPAA requires your practice to send texts through an encrypted communication channel. Patients must also give consent to receive text messages from you.

Patients are allowed to send your practice unencrypted texts if they wish. But remember that you always need to gain their consent before responding to ensure you don’t violate HIPAA.

How To Get Started with Dental Patient Text Messaging

If you have goals to book more appointments and reduce no-shows, then switch to 2-Way Communication. Our innovative system offers automated patient reminders, a real-time patient chat feature, and seamless syncing with your practice’s patient management system. Schedule a demo today!

You want to prove that you have a solid dental practice. You’ve created a solid website, and you provide outstanding care, but it just isn’t enough. Satisfied patients will often leave reviews. Turning those reviews into full-blown patient success stories can take your marketing to the next level.

Why Are Patient Success Stories So Important?

Highlighting patient success stories on your website or social media comes with several benefits:

• They encourage people to seek dental care. People may believe their tooth problem isn’t a major concern. While they might worry, they might not find enough evidence when they go looking — which means they might not get treatment at all. Patient success stories encourage them to seek medical care and explore treatment options.
• ‍They can prove that you’re the right dentist for the job. People want to choose a dentist they can trust. Testimonials boost faith in your medical team — and patient success stories can do even more than that. In fact, having solid success stories can be significantly more effective¹ than a standard marketing strategy.
• ‍You can use them to expand the scope of your practice. While patient success stories might focus on one major issue, that isn’t the only thing they do. You can use these stories to show that you provide dedicated care, create custom treatment plans, and touch on the other services you offer.

Tips for Creating Patient Success Stories

Deciding on what stories to use isn’t always easy. There may be countless options, and you need to know how to choose the right ones.

1. Carefully Consider Your Goals

You don’t want to choose stories at random; you want them to support your specific goals. Consider what you’re trying to achieve by telling these patient success stories. Do you want to show how you offer comprehensive medical care? Would you like to highlight your expertise in a certain area? Would you like to emphasize your empathetic service?

Sit down and create a list of your primary goals. Then, sort through stories and find ones that work for your needs.

2. Know Where to Look for Stories

Deciding on your goals is only half the battle; you’ll also need to know where to find stories. There are a couple of places where you can start:

• Talk to your clinical team. Your dental staff members are the ones interacting with patients on a day-to-day basis. Because of this, they likely have countless stories to tell. Ask them if they can think of anything memorable.
• ‍Look at social media. Social media can be a fantastic resource for all sorts of stories. Pay attention to comments left on your practice’s social media and search for any mentions of your practice; if you see something interesting, consider reaching out to the patient.
• ‍Check Google reviews. Social media isn’t the only place that has testimonials. Searching through your Google reviews is an excellent way to find high-quality stories.

Still need some help? With Dental Intelligence Online Reviews, you make it easy for patients to leave and read reviews, and you can easily track down the right stories.

3. Make Sure You’re Staying Compliant with HIPAA

While you might identify stories you’d like to use, you can’t use them unless you follow HIPAA requirements. You want to make sure you follow all procedures correctly to avoid ethical or legal trouble. You’ll need to ask permission and get a signed agreement from the patient before sharing their story.

How to Write Effective Patient Success Stories

After identifying the stories you want to use, it’s time to create them. You need to make sure these patient success stories are effective, or they won’t work as intended.

Start with interviews. You’ll want to interview the patient and the staff members who helped them, but you may also want to consider interviewing family members. Speak with empathy and treat anyone you’re interviewing with respect. Once the interview is complete, thank them for their time.

Once you’ve collected the information you need, you can start writing. To create effective stories, you should:

• Focus on the important details and bring them to the forefront
• Make sure the content is concise and engaging
• Start with the most interesting details and go from there
• Consider including patient quotes to highlight important parts

Digital Solutions for Your Practice

At Dental Intelligence, we can help you get more online reviews to build strong patient success stories. Reach out to us today to schedule a demo and learn more about our digital tools and services for dental practices.

Resources

¹ Forbes

You’ve created fantastic blog posts for your dental practice. You’ve done all the necessary keyword research, included relevant anchor text for links, and written compelling content. Now you just have to publish the blog and wait for it to rank.

Once you publish the page, however, you notice a problem: your page isn’t ranking like it should. This could be for a number of reasons — and keyword cannibalization could be one of them. Keyword cannibalization can be a serious issue.

What Are Keywords?

You want to improve your site’s ranking¹on search engines. Solid keywords are a key part of doing this.

Keywords are words or phrases that search engines look for to determine what pages should show up when people search for certain terms. Including them in the text of a webpage or blog post tells search engines that your page is relevant to a particular search. This, in turn, means your page will show up in the search results.

You’ll need to do keyword research to identify the right words to use for your area. This can be difficult and time-consuming on your own.

What Is Keyword Cannibalization?

Using the most popular keywords can help your pages rank. However, you can’t use the same keyword every time.

Say you use a specific keyword for two blog posts. Search engines will take note of that. Because of this, you’ll have two pages competing in the rankings — which can negatively affect how many visitors you get to your site.

Alternatively, say you use different keywords, but have pages that are too similar to one another. Search engines can’t always distinguish between the two and may try to rank them against each other.

When pages with similar keywords compete against each other, it’s known as keyword cannibalization. Since this can cause issues with attracting visitors to the right pages, you’ll need to make sure this problem’s addressed effectively.

How Do You Know if You Have a Keyword Cannibalization Problem?

It’s relatively simple to figure out if you have a problem. Pay close attention to your pages’ rankings. If you notice some aren’t ranking well, plug “(your domain name) + (keyword)” into a search engine, replacing the information in the parenthesis with your domain name and the keyword you’re looking for, respectively. This will show you what pages are ranking for what keywords. If you notice several pages competing against each other, you have a cannibalization issue.

Ways to Fix Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization is obviously a problem that you need to address. Thankfully, you have several options to fix the issue:

• Do new keyword research. Sometimes, pages cannibalize each other because they use the same exact keyword. You can address the problem by doing new keyword research for one or multiple pages. This way, you can use newer, more unique keywords that won’t hurt your ranking.
• Merge similar pages. You don’t necessarily need a lot of pages with similar content. If you notice you have a few pages that have very similar content, you might be able to merge the information, saving you the hassle of doing new keyword research.
• Delete unwanted pages. You might’ve created new pages on old topics to provide clients with updated information. Obviously, you don’t necessarily need the old pages anymore — but if they’re still on your site, they could show up in search results. Deleting old pages can help you avoid this issue.
• ‍Change internal linking. Internal linking can help certain search engines determine which pages are important. If you want one page to rank higher, include anchor text and internal links that lead to it. This way, your page will have a better chance at ranking — even if there are other, similar pages.

Improve Your SEO Strategy

Keyword cannibalization can be a serious issue. It can have a huge impact on how important pages rank — but thankfully, you can fix the issue. Do additional keyword research, merge pages, and make sure you have proper internal linking to help your pages rank.

Learn more about SEO metrics to track for your dental practice on our blog. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Resources

¹ Michigan Tech

Your dental practice likely knows the importance of having a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but what about Instagram? If you haven’t tried Instagram, your practice could miss opportunities to engage with patients and draw in new clients. The following tips on Instagram marketing for dentists will set your business up for success on this popular social media platform.

Instagram Dos for Dental Practices

Follow these Instagram pointers to connect with patients, improve loyalty, and attract new customers to your dental practice.

Do Feature Your Patients

Many Instagram users love to see themselves featured on social media¹, so update your feed with pictures of real patients regularly. Try posting photos of smiling patients in the dentist’s chair or customers interacting with your team. Instagram users will receive a notification when you post, allowing them to interact with you through likes and comments. Just remember to obtain permission before posting.

Do Show Off Your Staff

When posting to Instagram, don’t forget about your staff. Share photos of your team working around the office to give users a behind-the-scenes look at their daily lives. Include interesting details about each team member, such as their pets, hobbies, favorite foods, and more. Patients will enjoy interacting with your staff and getting to know them better.

Do Use Instagram Stories and Reels

Instagram Stories and Reels provide a fast and fun way to connect with your users. Stories are temporary, meaning they’ll disappear from feeds within 24 hours unless users save them in their highlights. Your practice can leverage these to invite quick reactions and ask interesting questions to prompt user engagement. Reels are videos that can be very engaging with your users.

Do Run Exciting Contests

Everyone loves a contest, and that includes your dental practice patients. An Instagram contest will attract potential patients and improve engagement with your current ones. Need contest ideas? Try giving away a prize to Instagram users who:

• Refer new customers to your practice
• Record themselves completing a challenge
• Share the best photo
• Write the best caption for your image
• Answer a trivia question

Do Promote Upcoming Events

If your dental practice hosts exciting events or celebrates fun holidays, try using Instagram marketing for dentists to promote them. Your events will garner more attention and lead to better turnouts, translating into potential business for your practice.

Do Follow Other Local Practices

Following other dental practices and local businesses is a smart way to stay in touch with your community. You’ll gain insights into challenges, conversations, and events that can give you more ideas for your marketing strategy.

Instagram Don’ts for Dental Practices

For the best chance of success on Instagram, you can’t simply start posting and hope for the best. Below, learn what not to do when managing Instagram for your dental office.

Don’t Post Images of Your Patients Without Permission

Posting photos of patients without permission violates HIPAA rules, which could spell big trouble for your dental practice. Not only could you end up with hefty fines, but you’ll also lose your patients’ trust. Neither should you post a patient’s phone number, email address, or any other personally identifiable information (PII). Before posting any content featuring patients, remember to ask first. Patients can give permission by filling out a simple HIPAA consent form.

Don’t Post Too Often

Many dental practices are tempted to go overboard with Instagram, but posting too much only annoys users and can cause them to stop following your business. That’s why you should post just once or twice per day.

Don’t Focus Solely on Dental Services

Don’t limit yourself to posting photos of your practice and dental services. Users prefer variety, so too many posts on one topic can turn them off. Plus, they’ll feel like you’re constantly advertising, which can scare off potential customers too. Post a solid mix of other content alongside your dental service offerings to strike the best balance.

Don’t Rely on Filters

Instagram offers fun filters that make your photos stand out, but they can bother patients if you use them too frequently. Stick to simple, high-quality images without flashy effects to limit distraction and prevent user annoyance.

Follow These Best Practices for Instagram Success

Does your practice need a helping hand with Instagram marketing for dentists? At Dental Intelligence we offer marketing tools to help you with your social media needs. Schedule a demo to learn more about our services today.

Resources

¹ STU Online

How are your staff members’ phone answering skills? Whether you’re confident in your team’s skills and are looking to grow or you know they need help, the right tools and training can help get you where you want to go. Learn how to help your practice excel at answering patient phone calls.

Stick to the Script

Without standards for answering patients’ calls, you’re leaving a lot to chance. Your staff members may be great communicators, but they can still make costly mistakes when fielding phone calls. A script is a good way to avoid these pitfalls. Here is an example of a great phone call flow.

First, educate your staff on telephone etiquette. Answer all inbound calls with a warm greeting and a thank you for calling your practice. From there, they should take down the caller’s name and ask how they can help the caller. For a jumpstart on a great patient experience, staff should speak clearly in an upbeat tone and use the caller’s name naturally throughout the conversation.

Next, make sure your team is well-versed in your services. Many patients need help figuring out what they need. This is where your team can explain your services and present your practice as helpful and professional.

From here, your staff can close the deal and schedule the patient’s appointment or procedure. After the appointment is on the calendar, have the staff ask the patient if he or she has any outstanding questions they can help answer. Once your staff has answered all questions and confirmed the appointment time with the patient, have them thank the patient by name for choosing your practice.

Keep HIPAA Protocol in Mind on the Phone

From accidental HIPAA violations during phone calls¹ to missed opportunities to offer services, mistakes are inevitable when your staff makes it up as they go on the phone. 

One of the quickest ways to lose a patient is to commit a HIPAA violation. For instance, if an adult patient’s family members call about their care, your staff needs to know what they can and cannot say and what the patient has given consent to share. Make sure your staff knows proper HIPAA protocol.

Answer Promptly

Missed phone calls, long holds, and waiting for someone to answer the phone are major turn-offs for your patients. Without ever having the chance to talk to them, you could lose new patients just because you didn’t have protocols in place to ensure a seamless, convenient experience.

Your phone line is the first point of contact patients have with your practice. Many people simply avoid dentist offices, and most are looking for any excuse not to schedule an appointment. Any fumble in the over-the-phone experience can give them that excuse. 

Make sure your team is answering patient phone calls as quickly as possible and confident in their ability to efficiently and knowledgeably navigate these calls. Try calling your front office with a random phone number to test your practice’s over-the-phone experience. This can give you a great idea of your potential patients’ first impressions and where your team needs improvement.

Get the Tools You Need

Maintaining a smooth patient experience on your phone line can be hard to do if you are receiving more calls than you can take or have a long list of patients to call with appointment reminders. 

Fortunately, you can streamline this process and allow your front office to focus on taking care of patients with communication tools, like our Voicemail Drops and 2-Way Communication. You can prerecord messages like appointment reminders and deliver ringless voice messages to patients’ voicemail boxes. This has two major benefits: 

1. Convenience. Patients can listen to the message at their leisure, and there’s no risk of disturbing their daily routine.

2. Efficiency. Your staff members can make or answer more calls. Taking back those valuable minutes can save you time and money.

Take Control of Your Patient Experience

Dental Intelligence has the tools and expertise to help you intelligently shape the future of your practice, avoid missed phone calls, and improve communication. Let us help your practice put its best foot forward by answering patient phone calls and showing patients you care. Schedule a demo today!

Resources

¹ The HIPAA Guide

You’ve heard that dental staff training can help you improve your practice. You’d like to finally implement it, but you don’t really know where to start.

Train your staff and increase dental production with Dental Intelligence! We can offer tips and tricks on how best to improve your practice.

Why Is Ongoing Training Important?

You have skilled staff. They provide outstanding patient care — so why do they need additional dental staff training?

To start with: continued teaching can improve staff satisfaction. Most professionals want to learn more and get better at their jobs. Regular education can help your team members learn new skills and improve. This, in turn, means they’ll be more likely to stick with your practice rather than leave for what they consider better opportunities.

But training doesn’t just improve staff satisfaction; it can improve customer care, too. The more your staff knows the better care they can provide. This can boost client satisfaction and bring more patients to your dental office.

How to Effectively Train Your Staff

Understanding that continued instruction is important is one thing; understanding how to handle it is another¹. You’ll need to consider what’s most important for your employees, your practice, and your clients.

Thankfully, there are a few simple places you can start.

Pay for Continuing Education

The dental world changes constantly. New techniques and equipment come out regularly — and your team should know about them.

That’s not all, of course. You may have a skilled team, but there’s always more to learn. Certain staff members may not be familiar with different procedures, even if they want to learn about them.

Continuing education can help your staff members learn new skills and offer better patient care. Further education, however, is expensive. As such, it can be beneficial for dental offices to cover the costs of additional education. This way, you’ll get more effective team members, and your staff won’t have to worry about expensive bills.

Review Standard Operating Procedures

Most employers believe that only new staff members need to go over Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). While you do need to teach new staff, they aren’t the only ones that can benefit from an overview.

Reviewing SOPs with older staff members can:

• Give them a chance to brush up on their skills
• Allow them to identify flaws in an SOP
• Give you a chance to make sure everyone’s following SOPs correctly

To avoid making these sessions feel redundant, ask staff members to submit ideas for what they’d like reviewed. This will give you a better idea of what you actually need to address and make training more effective.

Train Your Office Staff Too

Your assistants and hygienists aren’t the only staff members you’ll want to train. If you want to run an effective practice, offer office training too.

Your office staff are key team members. Providing them with education opportunities can make things run more smoothly, increase both patient and staff satisfaction, and provide other benefits.

Some types of office training include:

• Teaching office staff about any new software
• Going over HIPAA compliance
• Making sure your staff knows how to input insurance information
• Teaching your staff about different dental forms

Consider Cross-Training

Most team members will likely only be familiar with their areas of expertise. This means that they may be relatively clueless about what their coworkers’ jobs are like.

Cross-training can be an excellent idea if you really want to improve your employees’ skills. It can:

• Help employees learn skills they wouldn’t have otherwise
• Reduce miscommunications in the workplace
• Allow employees to assist with other needs should someone need help

Cross-training can be especially helpful for smaller practices since they likely won’t have extra staff to spare. That said, bigger practices can benefit from it, too — and your employees will likely thank you in the long run. Learning new skills, after all, can make them much more effective in the workplace.

Help Your Staff Stay Up to Date

Proper dental staff training can help you improve patient care, increase staff satisfaction, and more. By using the right methods, you can provide effective guidance to your team, attract more clients, and otherwise elevate your dental practice.

At Dental Intelligence, we can help you lead an effective Morning Huddle. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Resources

¹ HealthIT

You want to make sure that your dental practice avoids committing dental HIPAA violations. A violation could result in serious consequences, from fines to losing patients.

But if you want to avoid violations, you first have to understand what they are. Below are some common dental HIPAA violations and how to avoid them.

What Is HIPAA?

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — or HIPAA — protects patients’ health information. Overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, a human services office, it puts in place stipulations for:

• When and how to share health information
• Protecting patients’ confidential information
• Alerting patients when their information is compromised
• Penalties for HIPAA violations

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights has resolved countless cases and works diligently to protect patients’ rights¹. If you're a healthcare professional of any sort, then you need to make sure you're following their guidelines.

As a dental professional, you have a responsibility to protect patients’ rights and information. Failure to do so can result in serious penalties and a breach of trust.

Common HIPAA Violations

Most offices work diligently to avoid dental HIPAA violations. That said, violations can still occur, even if unintentional. It’s important to stay vigilant and do what you can to avoid a problem.

Filming Patients Without Permission

Filming videos of your dental work may seem like an exciting new trend. You’d probably think that taking pictures or videos of people on the job can help inform others and boost social media engagement.

Filming patients, however, can be a HIPAA violation.

You need to make sure that your patients consent to filming. Without verbal and written consent, you’re violating their privacy — and can end up in serious trouble as a result.

Improperly Sharing Patient Health Information

HIPAA’s primary purpose is to protect people’s healthcare information. Naturally, sharing it improperly is a violation.

Sometimes, giving out health information incorrectly is a simple example of human error. For example, if someone sent healthcare information to the wrong patient, that’s a HIPAA violation, even if they did it accidentally. Other times, however, people may share the information intentionally — in response to negative reviews, for example.

It’s important not to share any healthcare information without consent. If a mistake happens, you need to take action to notify the patient accordingly.

Poor Security

Data leaks can happen. People may manage to hack into your system and steal data. While this can happen to even the best-prepared practices, having poor security can make a breach even more likely.

Improperly Disposing of Medical Records

You won’t always have patients for their entire lives. If you need to get rid of medical records, it’s important to do so properly. Otherwise, healthcare information could end up in the wrong hands.

Make sure you shred any paper records and that you completely wipe electronic ones. This way, you can avoid potential problems.

How Can Your Dental Practice Avoid HIPAA Violations?

So, what is the biggest way to avoid HIPAA violations?

There’s a simple answer: make sure you’re asking for patient consent anytime you might need to share healthcare information. In addition, you can take several other steps to protect yourself and your patients:

• Provide Employee Training: Employee error is a major cause of dental HIPAA violations. Sometimes, your staff just don’t know what to avoid. Providing thorough training — and offering refresher courses — can help mitigate this problem.
• Have Proper Security: You need to protect any virtual or paper documents containing confidential healthcare information. Make sure that you lock away any files, have solid virtual security systems in place, and that everyone knows the proper procedures for disposing of old medical records.
• Create a Corrective Action Plan: No matter how hard you try to avoid them, HIPAA violations may happen, anyway. As such, it’s a good idea to have a plan in place. Create a thorough plan outlining what to do if violations happen. Make sure your employees all understand this plan so you can take action when you need to.

Get Help with Your Practice

Dental HIPAA violations can cause huge problems. With the right procedures in place, however, you can potentially avoid them — or, at the very least, know how to proceed should they happen.

As the only end-to-end practice performance solution, Dental Intelligence can help you increase your production, number of visits and more. Schedule a demo today to learn more about what we have to offer.

Resources

¹ U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

As a dentist, you love your work and take pride in serving your community. But running a successful practice involves more than your skill as a dentist. You handle insurance, staffing, payroll, a building lease, accounting, and much more. 

In addition to all of this, you're responsible for managing patient relationships.

This can be exhausting and confusing. Small talks with dental patients can feel forced. Patients bring all sorts of hangups into their appointment, and it can feel like pulling teeth just to get them in the chair, let alone get them to come back.

With these four tips to transform how you communicate with patients, you can take the guesswork out of your patient relationships and help you build patient loyalty.

1. Introduce Yourself

This is the conversation starter of conversation starters. Whether you feel it or not, your dental patients may feel uneasy before you even walk into the room. People tend to feel anxious and uncomfortable at dentist offices and often project feelings of superiority onto their relationships with medical professionals. You are just a person, and you can build trust by illustrating that. 

When you walk into the room, smile, greet your patient, and introduce yourself. This alone can make big improvements in your small talk with dental patients.

2. Assess the Situation

Before you enter the room, talk to your dental hygienists to get a sense of how the patient is feeling. Are they at ease or anxious? After that, introduce yourself and sit next to the patient. 

As you do this, pay attention to the patient’s body language. Are they fidgeting? Is their voice quavering? Are they relaxed? Whether you feel it or not, you are in the position of power here. You have an immense influence on their experience. Ask them how they are feeling that day and if they have any questions or concerns before you begin working.

This lets them know that you care about their experience. Once you give them permission to participate in the experience with you, you might be surprised at how the atmosphere changes from anxious to relaxed, just like that. 

If they seem open to it, ask some low-pressure questions about their lives like what they do for fun, if they have pets or children, etc. They may choose not to engage but showing that you are willing is often enough to create a lasting good impression.

Also, this should go without saying, but steer clear of politics, religion, and money when choosing small talk topics.

3. Narrate What You're Doing for Your Patients

Many patients hold deep-seated fears of dentists and dental offices. While you may think this is silly, these fears often stem from bad childhood experiences with dentist visits. This is your chance to alleviate those fears and change their perception. Once you do that, you might make a patient for life.

One way you can reduce anxiety is to tell patients exactly what you are doing and what it will feel like. This is a good technique to use when the patient is awake but cannot speak to you during a procedure. When patients know what to expect, they feel more in control and more relaxed. 

4. Communicate After the Appointment

Once you’ve concluded the examination and treatment, there’s one more step to creating a great patient experience. Use the exit period to show patients what makes your practice special. Maybe you offer a Patient Loyalty Program that can help them save on future appointments. Gift bags are great, but top-of-the-line service and support are what earn your patients’ loyalty.

Once your patient is out the door, you can still stay in touch. With Dental Intelligence 2-Way Communication, you can text or email your patients to let them know about upcoming appointments or let them chat with your team when they need to.

Tools to Streamline Your Practice's Patient Communication

When you avoid dental patient communication mistakes and you have the tools for great small talk with dental patients, you’re well on your way to patient loyalty because your practice is the whole package. You’re not just good at what you do; your patients know they come first and that you'll take great care of them.

Dental Intelligence is here to help your practice thrive. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you improve communication and patient care.

Getting positive reviews isn’t always easy. Sometimes you just can’t get people to leave a comment. Other times, you’re getting reviews, but they focus on the negative. Either can be detrimental, so some people may try a different method: buying fake customer reviews.

Buying fake online reviews may seem good in theory, but they can cause all sorts of problems. At Dental Intelligence, we’re here to help you understand how fake reviews can hurt your dental practice—and give you strategies to build reviews organically.

What is a Fake Review?

As the name implies, this is where a fake customer leaves a review of a product or service. A company will pay the person in question to write a positive review. In theory, this positive review will drown out negative reviews and help your site rank better on search engines.

How Fake Online Reviews Hurt You

Fake customer reviews might be relatively effective in the short term, but they can cause a lot of damage in the long run¹. It’s relatively easy for clients to pinpoint red flags, like a fake profile picture or template text. If and when someone discovers them, you could find yourself dealing with far worse consequences than just a lack of reviews.

They Destroy Credibility

Think about this from the perspective of a client. You want to make sure that you can trust the dental practice that you’re visiting. You do as much research as you can and find one that has a lot of positive reviews. You think that you’ve found the right place, so you book an appointment.

Then you discover that those reviews were fake.

If the practice’s owners are buying fake reviews to boost their ratings, then how good are their services really? How do you know what the review said was accurate? And how can you trust them to give you good service?

Fake customer reviews can potentially drive clients away — meaning you’ll be worse off than you were to begin with.

They’re Illegal

Of course, losing clients isn’t the only problem with fake reviews; they’re also illegal.

Fake reviews are incredibly misleading; because the people writing them haven’t gotten service from you, these reviews aren’t always going to present factual information. This can result in clients visiting your clinic for fraudulent reasons. According to the FTC, this is illegal, and it can net you thousands of dollars in fines.

They’ll Get Deleted Anyways

You’ve spent tons of money on fake customer reviews. You’re hoping that they’ll draw in clients, but when you look, the reviews have disappeared.

This isn’t necessarily because the person you paid took advantage of you. It could very likely be because the review site figured out the reviews were fake.

Potential clients aren’t the only ones who notice red flags. If a review site detects fake reviews, then they’ll delete them — which means you could spend an excessive amount of money for no results at all.

What Can You Do Instead?

Fake customer reviews are obviously a poor choice. However, knowing that won’t actually solve your problems. You still need ways to try and build positive reviews.

Thankfully, you can do so organically.

One of the best ways to start building more reviews is to interact with people on social media. Respond to comments and reviews, acknowledge and address concerns, and otherwise try to build a community.

Sending out messages to encourage reviews can also be incredibly beneficial. Sometimes, people just need a little prodding; with some encouragement, your clients may be more than willing to provide you with reviews.

Finally, have a strong website and solid dental practice. People are always more willing to provide reviews if the service is outstanding — and if the website is easy to navigate.

Get more Online Reviews with Dental Intelligence! We offer services to help you obtain online reviews organically. We can create an automated review system, help you focus on certain review sites, and much more. Our goal is to help you get positive reviews the right way.

Build Online Reviews Organically

Fake customer reviews can be incredibly detrimental to your practice. At Dental Intelligence, we can help you receive real online reviews. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Resources

¹ Harvard Business Review

So you've decided to use dental electronic forms at your practice, or maybe you're still on the fence because you fear you'll create undue stress for your elderly patients. 

This is a common problem for many dental practices. From bad tech to HIPAA compliance issues, there are many barriers to making the switch to dental electronic forms. Luckily, you're not alone, and there are tools available to make this transition as easy and effective as possible.

Knowing the reasons some practices are hesitant to use electronic forms and how to make the transition seamless and easy is crucial to modernize your practice and improve patient care. 

Four Common Pitfalls of Switching to Dental Electronic Forms and How to Solve Them

While transitioning from paper dental forms to electronic forms, practices run into a few common pitfalls, but these challenges are avoidable. 

Lack of Support for Elderly Patients

Older patients may find it hard to switch to digital forms. Many have difficulty operating computers or don't have access to a smartphone. Your practice can mitigate these concerns by setting up Kiosks with your digital forms on hand. Train your staff to be able to support your elderly patients and troubleshoot for them as they learn the new system.

Poor Patient Intake and Form Completion Technology

Let's face it: Not all digital forms were created equal. Many are difficult to read for people with perfect eyesight or are so buggy that they're barely operational. If you're going to collect digital forms, you need the right tools. To set your practice and patients up for success, Dental Intelligences provides a Patient Portal that is as user-friendly as possible. Test it out yourself to see how accessing and filling in forms can be easy for even the least tech-savvy patients.

Patients Worry About Security

Post signage near or on your tablets assuring patients that their records are secure and your practice is HIPAA compliant. Today, the US government requires dental electronic health records for patient data to use the same level of security as the banking industry. Inform your elderly patients of this to reassure them that sharing their personal information on your dental portal from their home or the tablets in your office is safe. 

Patients Don't Realize the Benefits of Electronic Health Records

Everyone loves convenience. Dental electronic forms are far more efficient and secure than paper forms, but convincing your elderly patients of that can be challenging. Emphasize the convenience of being able to skip the wait at the dentist's office by filling out their forms from the comfort of their home. 

Tell them about the exciting treatment improvements and how dental electronic health records improve patient care¹. Focusing on measurable, practical benefits can help assuage elderly patients' worries and get them excited to jump on board with electronic health records.

Tips to Encourage Elderly Patients to Use Dental Electronic Forms

While the tips above cover a lot of what you need to make your transition to dental electronic forms a smooth one, there are other helpful things you can mix and match into the process as you see fit:

• For your patients with smartphones, have QR codes leading to your app or forms. This is a great way to do patient intake and can help increase your front office efficiency by eliminating informational bottlenecks.
• Post step-by-step instructional signage with easy-to-read instructions on how to use your platform.
• Make a video demonstrating how to use your platform and play it on a loop somewhere easy to see at eye level.
• Designate someone to help fill out forms and troubleshoot tech issues in the patient intake area.

Use your imagination! If there is something you think will make your transition to dental electronic forms more user-friendly, try it out. Only you know your patients' needs, and your insight could be the difference maker in making this a smooth transition for all.

Take Control of Your Dental Electronic Form-Gathering Today

Now that you have some ideas of how to make switching to dental electronic health records easier for your elderly patients, you can take control of the dental electronic form-gathering process. There are great tools out there to make your patient intake, digital form completion, and HIPAA compliance a breeze. 

If you want to know more about how Dental Intelligence can help your practice thrive, schedule a demo today. On top of Digital Forms, we also provide convenient Payments, and 2-Way Communication.

Resources

¹ Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Some people have innate traits that make them great leaders. Even if you aren’t confident in your leadership skills yet, you can still learn how to become a great leader at your dental practice. With several key leadership qualities, you can set an example at your practice for other staff to follow and even improve patient care.

7 Qualities of Effective Leaders

With practice and active listening, any dentist or office manager can improve their leadership style, take on more important tasks, and show others the way forward.

Here are some key leadership qualities you can learn to help your dental practice:

1. Take the initiative. Great leaders don’t hesitate; they’re constantly moving forward. New systems, processes, and programs are constantly appearing. Do the research and look for the best check-in, scheduling, and billing systems. If you want to acquire new patients, review your marketing efforts and focus on the areas that work best.

2. Set a good example. Great leaders inspire others with their drive, attitude, and behavior. Stay positive in the toughest situations and treat coworkers with respect. In many instances, the way you behave shows your employees how they should work through certain situations.

3. Try daily or weekly huddles. Getting everyone together for a quick chat to discuss goals is a good way to stress what is important. It’s also a great time to let employees know what they should be striving to achieve that day or week. Keep these meetings positive and upbeat! Our Morning Huddle has all the information you need and ready to go to run a meeting efficiently.

4. Prioritize ongoing education. Inspire yourself and coworkers to develop professionally with continuing education. There’s a plethora of available information online, at trade organizations, and through in-person courses. Feel free to check out our CE Webinars.

5. Start or join a peer group. Dentists, dental hygienists, billing professionals, and others can learn a great deal from each other. By getting together, you can learn how to deal with difficult situations, discuss trends, and develop leadership skills.

6. Create a process for communication. It’s important to clearly communicate with coworkers when it comes to your intentions and work goals. When issuing tasks, be concise with easy-to-follow steps. You might have some great policies in place, but if they’re hard to understand, your staff may not follow them.  

7. Set up for success with the right communications tools. Staying up to date on the latest communication technology will also show your drive and desire to help the office run smoothly. Dental Intelligence can help you to communicate better with our easy-to-use Team Chat.

Organizational Goals Are Crucial

If you want to learn how to become a great leader at your dental practice, it’s important to consider organizational goals. Defining your organizational goals can help you grow your practice and acquire new patients. 

These goals are general targets you set for your office around objectives you want to achieve during a specific time period, like filling more appointment slots or increasing revenue by a certain amount. Metrics & Reporting can help you manage and track these goals and more.

Organizational goals also:

• Define employee output
• Guide operations and expected office outcomes
• Determine workflow

Take Action When Problems Arise

A chaotic dental practice could run into several problems. If employees aren’t doing their jobs properly, productivity and customer service could suffer. When that happens, you could start losing patients.

Take control of the situation by having meetings to discuss any workplace issues. If someone is cutting corners or not pulling their weight, speak to them privately and provide constructive feedback to help them improve their behavior.

Get straight to the point, and let the person know what they’re doing wrong, then offer positive feedback to help them improve. This is also where setting a good example can immensely help. 

Stay open-minded and think about how you handled problems earlier in your career. Maybe you tweaked something that you can tell your coworker about to help solve their problem. Keep in mind that the way you behave shows your employees they should work through certain problems.

Being a Great Leader Starts with the Right Digital Solutions for Your Practice

Still wondering about how to become a great leader at your dental practice? From welcoming a new team member to handling billing and patient care, your leadership skills set your practice up for success. Dental Intelligence provides more onboarding and leadership tips on our blog, so check it out today! Schedule a demo to see how our digital tools can streamline day-to-day operations and free you up to focus on leadership. 

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Dental records outline diagnoses, treatment plans, informed consent, and other data you obtain from patients during their appointments. These documents are fundamental to the ongoing care of your patients, so they must include detailed information.

Creating templates for comprehensive dental records may seem like a tedious task to complete. However, investing time now to gather all the information to include in dental records will help you understand your patients’ clinical conditions and protect you from legal problems down the road. 

What Should a Patient’s Dental Record Include?

Your clinical records should have a section for basic patient information, including name, date of birth, occupation, and currently prescribed medication. It’s also a good idea to add a medical history section to ensure that your recommended treatments do not interfere with your patients’ pre-existing conditions.

Add any interactions you or your staff have with your patients on their dental charts. Make sure to include which doctor examines and recommends treatment to your patients. 

Always document — in detail — your conversations with your patients about the risks, benefits, and expectations of any treatment you recommend. These treatment notes should also include your discussions over the phone or via email.

Before you provide dental care, you must record evidence of informed consent on your dental records. You can obtain this evidence from signed waivers or HIPAA forms.

Add images, radiographs, and other forms of documentation showing the progress of your patients before, during, and after treatments. 

What Should You Not Include in a Patient’s Dental Record?

Keep the financial records of your patients separate from any clinical documentation you collect. Typically, this information is unnecessary for treatment, and your front desk staff should organize and file it separately.

Treatment notes are important but avoid including any negative comments or judgments. A prosecutor could request these records during a malpractice suit and use them against you. 

Don’t try to erase any information on a patient’s dental records if you need to make amendments. Your patients could view this behavior as unethical and accuse you of manipulating their documents. If changes are necessary, you can cross out information while keeping the original notes visible.

What Happens If Your Patient Asks for Records?

Your patients have a right to view their dental records at any time. Make several copies if you need to provide them to a patient or an authorized third party. 

However, don’t give out original documents, even if you need to provide information to other healthcare providers. Per dental documentation guidelines, original documents issued by you or your staff belong to your practice. 

Investing in dental chart software is a convenient way to let your patients submit and view their records whenever they please. For example, Patient Portal allows your patients to complete Digital Forms. This tool also makes it easy for you to draft and send easy-to-navigate forms over email, so your patients can complete them before their appointments.

What Other Information Should a Dentist Know About Recordkeeping?

Ensure that your entire staff understands your dental practice’s policies around recordkeeping. Maintaining consistent documents throughout the office will help you stay organized and prevent confusion among employees. Your office should also have one designated location to secure hard copies that will reduce the risk of damage or theft.

HIPAA record retention standards require you to keep and maintain dental office records for six years. However, you should store clinical documents for ten years or longer. If you create a patient chart for someone under 18, you must hold those records for no less than ten years after their 18th birthday.

Keeping records safe protects your practice from accusations of unethical care. These records will act as a primary source of evidence and provide just cause for your treatments. 

Digital Resources That Help You Manage Your Dental Practice Documents

Many dental practices do not take the time to meticulously curate their records, resulting in legal problems and reduced service quality. Avoid making the same mistake when managing your office.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer tools that help simplify accurate dental recordkeeping for dentists like you. Schedule a demo to see how our suite of digital tools can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

For dentists, factors like training, education, and advanced technology only go so far. Unless you can offer a personalized patient experience at your practice, you’ll have difficulty building and retaining a loyal patient base. As many people experience dental anxiety, or fear going to the dentist, finding ways to create positive patient journeys and a personalized care experience are essential.

How Can You Personalize the Patient Experience at Your Dental Office?

Your patients' experience with your dental practice starts from the phone call to book their first appointment and lasts for as long as they're your patient. The following best practices go a long way to ensuring your patients stay happy and loyal to your practice.

1. Start a Patient Reward Program

One unique and fun way to offer a more personalized patient experience at your dental practice is with a reward program. Patients can earn loyalty points by completing tasks like paying their balances on time and referring new patients. Once they accrue enough loyalty points, they can redeem them for rewards. Patients will look forward to their appointments because you’ll have created a friendlier, more personal atmosphere at your dental office.

You don't have to create a high-quality reward program from scratch and implement it on your own. With the Patient Loyalty Program, we do all the work!  You choose the rewards, giving you an opportunity to increase the ROI (return on your investment) with incentives like 10% off a cosmetic dental procedure.

2. Create a Comfortable, Relaxing Waiting Room

Nobody wants to show up at their appointment and spend time waiting in a stark, bare waiting room. Instead, upgrade your waiting room and invest in comfortable seating, modern interior design, and extra perks like free Wi-Fi, a TV, or even a coffee bar. Making your waiting room more inviting and relaxing prevents patients from feeling tense or anxious.

3. Use Social Media to Engage with Patients

In today’s digital age, using technology like social media to interact with patients is an excellent way to create a more personalized experience. If you’re too busy to post or update your pages, hire a social media intern or content creator to handle it. With our Dental Marketing tools, you can have access to an entire library of content ready to be used in your social media campaigns. When you engage with patients online, you create a stronger sense of familiarity that will cross over into the dental chair.

4. Get to Know Your Patients

Some days, you may not feel like engaging in small talk with patients while you’re trying to discuss their treatment plans or upcoming appointment. However, listening to your patients and making friendly conversation is very important.

By learning more about your patients and their lives, you show how much you genuinely care about them. You can have your front desk staff make small notes in each patient file, which you can use as a quick refresher before their appointments. In addition, you can make small gestures like sending them a card on their birthday or around the holidays, which is a nice touch and adds to a more personalized patient experience. Using our patient communication tools, you can also send them a friendly message over text or email.

5. Ask for Post-Appointment Feedback

Asking for feedback is an excellent way to show your patients that you genuinely care about their opinion and value what they have to say. In fact, this is important for all types of healthcare organizations, from dental practices to doctors' offices. Furthermore, asking for feedback allows you to address potential issues and fix them or improve the quality of care you provide.

Online Reviews lets you send every patient an automatic feedback request after their appointment. You can send emails, texts, or push notifications, asking patients to “tell you how you can improve.” Their reviews can be posted to popular sites such as Google and Yelp. By asking for feedback, you ensure patients can air grievances, share their positive health outcomes, and feel as though they’re an important and valuable part of your dental practice.

Connect with Your Patients and Personalize Their Experience at Your Dental Office

Taking action to create a personalized patient experience and positive dental office environment is more important than ever before. At Dental Intelligence, we offer a wide range of solutions to streamline your business, improve quality of care, and increase patient satisfaction.

Schedule a demo today and learn more about how we can help your dental practice succeed.

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Running a dental practice can be challenging. Days can get hectic fast, and patients need care. If an employee makes a mistake, no matter how big or small, berating that person isn’t the best way to help them correct the mistake and improve.

Knowing how to give constructive feedback to your employees ensures that people learn and improve at their jobs. Effective feedback will also help to make your dental practice run smoothly and be a pleasant experience for everyone, patients included.

What Is Constructive Feedback?

Positivity is a central tenet of constructive feedback. Make sure to be clear, honest, and calm when you’re reviewing an employee’s work or discussing a task. Then provide actionable advice so your employees can make improvements to their work and behavior.

Highlight what people are doing properly instead of focusing on what they’re doing wrong. Then see if you can take a benefit from what they did the right way and use it to fix other problems they’re having.

How to Give Constructive Feedback

Providing positive feedback can help your dental practice in several ways. Still stuck on how to give constructive feedback? Here are a few tips on offering actionable advice:

1. Don’t be negative: It’s counterproductive and doesn’t inspire your employees.

2. Focus on inspiring and motivating your employees.

3. Don’t just focus on the problem; provide positive ideas for solutions.

4. Show the issue in a calm, positive, and professional manner: “You did x, and y happened. You were on the right track, but here’s a way to do it better.”

Keep in mind that constructive criticism is all about building up someone, not beating or breaking them down.

Try the Sandwich Technique for Constructive Feedback

This method of giving feedback “sandwiches” the problem or criticism between two compliments. Let’s say you notice one of your dental hygienists is using too much floss, increasing your expenses.

You could say something like, “Your patients love and request you, but I noticed you’re going through a lot of floss. It adds up, so please try to use just what’s necessary. Besides that, you’re doing a great job.”

When offering praise, be honest, specific, and genuine. Don’t patronize or offer unnecessary flattery.

How Does Constructive Feedback Help Your Practice?

Some of the benefits of providing constructive feedback include:

• Employees will learn and contribute to a better working environment.
• Performance, professional development, and working relationships will improve.
• Positive feedback is inspiring, and negativity doesn’t help anyone or any workplace.

With Team Chat, your staff can easily chat and share information with each other, and you can seamlessly provide constructive feedback as needed. 

Avoid Toxicity and Negative Feedback

If you’re negative or unprofessional with your staff, it could have a detrimental effect on your practice.

Employees won’t enjoy coming to work if they know they’ll be disciplined for every little mistake. This could lead to resignations and turnover, and then you’ll have to go through the process of finding new dental assistants, hygienists, and receptionists.

You might also experience bad reviews online, develop a poor reputation, and lose patients, which is bad for revenue.

Other problems with negative feedback include:

• Employees could get frustrated, and their performance might get worse.
• Colleagues will be unenthusiastic about performance reviews and might get angry or resentful.
• Constant negativity doesn’t help any situation and only makes the issue worse.
• Employees won’t be inspired to take the initiative on new projects, processes, etc.

The last thing you want to do is create a situation where the mistake is less harmful than the negative feedback delivered to your employee. Besides people losing the desire to take on new initiatives, you could also be destroying their confidence.

Positive Feedback Is Effective Feedback

When it’s time to critique your employees, don’t be negative. Stay positive and provide actionable advice they can use to learn from and improve performance. This will not only improve employee morale and build a team mentality at your practice, but it can also create a more productive and profitable working environment.

Still wondering how to give constructive feedback? Dental Intelligence is dedicated to improving dental team performance and helping your practice grow. Schedule a demo to see how you can boost productivity and streamline patient care in your practice.

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As a reputable dental care provider, you have a legal and moral obligation to treat your patients ethically. Without their consent, you cannot perform any procedure, including x-rays, restorations, cleanings, etc.

A written consent form is the primary document you will use to verify their approval. Understanding these documents will help you create a form that protects you and your staff from malpractice liabilities.

What Is a Dental Consent Form for Patients?

A signed consent form and verbal verification from your patient permit you to administer a dental treatment, procedure, or examination. These documents ensure that the patient understands the risks and benefits of the service, their rights to medical records, and other practice-specific policies. 

Consent forms show that you are performing legitimate medical care and not imposing treatment on a patient that they did not agree to. Most state laws require patients to sign a written document, while others may only require verbal consent. 

Exceptions to consent only apply during medical emergencies. In this case, you may act within reason to protect your patient’s life.

Your consent forms for dental treatment may differ from another practice’s. However, the ethical principles and responsibilities embedded in these documents will likely be the same.

How Should Your Dental Practice Use Consent Forms?

Some states provide templates or preexisting consent forms for you to use. However, if you decide to create your own from scratch, let a reputable lawyer review the form’s contents. They will ensure that the language you use does not put you at risk of medical malpractice.

Your form must verify three types of patient consent: voluntary, informed, and sane. 

Voluntary consent implies that your patient is signing the document without coercion from you or someone else. Informed consent confirms that you provided the necessary details about treatment recommendations and risks. Sane consent means your patient is lucid and sober when signing the document.

Federal law states that minors cannot consent to any treatment steps or procedures you offer. If your patient is under the age of 18, they should have a parent or guardian sign for them.  

You can have your patient sign a consent form in person using a Kiosk or online before appointments with tools like Dental Intelligence Consents. After your patient signs your consent forms for dental treatment, store them in a secure location. Remember that if your patient’s condition changes and you need to alter their treatment plan, you must have them re-sign an amended consent form.

What Should a Dental Practice Include in a Consent Form?

When writing or reviewing your dental consent form, ensure that the form covers the following information:

• Treatment options: Your consent form must outline all available options for treatment and why you believe your recommendation is the best choice.
• Consequences: the form must also transparently state the consequences and potential complications from treatment.
• Length of treatment: Your document must discuss how long your recommended treatment may take to administer.
• ‍Informed consent: Your consent forms for dental treatment must include evidence of consent. Signatures are the most practical and legally acceptable forms of evidence.

Consent is ongoing, meaning your patient’s signature is only evidence of consent and not consent by and of itself. Your patient has the right to verbally refuse permission at any time before or during treatment, regardless of a signature.

What Happens if a Patient Refuses to Sign a Dental Consent Form?

Though refusals will not happen often, you should expect a patient at some point to do so. 

When a patient refuses to sign your consent forms for dental treatment, document the refusal immediately. You can ask them to sign a refusal form to verify that they do not accept the treatment. If they do not sign the refusal, reiterate the potential problems that may arise without treatment.

At this point, you can refer them to a different practice or provide viable, alternative treatment options if they are available.

Dental Strategies That Help You Create an Informed Consent Document

Your top priority is to provide safe and ethical treatment for your patients. Consent is a vital aspect to consider before any treatment, and well-written, clear consent forms are the best way to ensure you ethically receive the patient’s consent.

You can learn more from our blog like what to include in new patient dental forms to prevent unnecessary lawsuits. 

Schedule a demo today for more information about our Digital Forms and Consents.

For dental practice owners, providing superior care and creating a positive office environment for patients have always been paramount. However, those aren’t the only important factors. Now, patient convenience and ease of access to services are critical to the continued success of your practice.

Below, we discuss why value-based care is crucial for dentists, including ways to enhance patient experiences, ease of access, and convenience.

The Importance of Patient Convenience and Easy Access to Services 

Patients have always valued a high level of convenience and easy access to services for their dentists and other healthcare providers, but the pandemic spurred this expectation to greater heights. Now that telehealth appointments and virtual services have become commonplace, patients place more importance on qualities like convenience than ever before.

Consider NRC Health’s 2019 Market Insights report¹, which surveyed over 220,000 healthcare consumers. Over half (51%) of the respondents agreed that access to care and convenience are the two most important factors they care about when searching for healthcare providers. That study was pre-pandemic, and the importance of accessibility and convenience for patients has only increased over time.

How Your Dental Practice Can Enhance Patient Convenience

So, what are some ways your dental practice can improve the accessibility and level of convenience for patients? Read on for expert advice and tips you can use to create a patient-centric environment that focuses on superior service.

Start a Patient Loyalty Program

With our Patient Loyalty Program, you can build genuine relationships and a more personal connection with your patients.

Here’s how it works: your patients earn loyalty points for completing certain actions and tasks, like making on-time payments or referring family and friends. Then, they can redeem their loyalty points on rewards. Even better, you get to choose which rewards they can earn that will incentivize efficiency and still offer a good ROI, like offering a discount on teeth whitening services.

It’s a great way to generate patient enthusiasm while fostering strong relationships!

Offer Teledentistry Services

Nowadays, patients expect their dentists and other healthcare providers to offer virtual services. Of course, virtual appointments won’t work for dental procedures like teeth cleaning or root canals. However, you can offer virtual consultations, opening your practice up to a wider patient base and making your services more accessible and convenient.  

Use Online Scheduling

One effective way to increase patient convenience at your dental practice is by offering online scheduling. Our Online Scheduling allows your patients to book their own appointments directly into your calendar, 24/7. By eliminating the hassle of patients dealing with voicemail, call center services, waiting on hold, you’re making it faster and easier for them to schedule appointments during a time that works best for them.  

Simplify Payments and Billing

Instead of making awkward and uncomfortable collection calls or spending time emailing patients with past-due balances, invest in payment management software. For example, Dental Intelligence Payments allows your patients to pay their bills anytime, from anywhere, with paperless statements. By simplifying the payment process and making it more convenient for patients, you improve their experience and receive payment faster too.

Offer Same-Day Appointments and Extended Office Hours

Another way you can improve patient convenience at your dental practice is by leaving some time slots open for same-day or next-day appointments. That way, you can accommodate patients with a dental emergency and increase the ease of access to your services.

In addition, consider extending your office hours one or two days per week or offering weekend hours. The extra availability will show your patients how much you care and want to ensure they can receive dental care when it’s most convenient for them.

Build a Strong, Successful Future for Your Dental Practice

As a dental practice owner, offering value-based care and maximizing patient convenience are integral to your continued success. Patients want scheduling, appointments, and payments to be easy, fast, and convenient.

At Dental Intelligence, we provide advanced software solutions that help dental professionals make their practice more efficient, productive, and successful. Schedule a demo of our solution and see how it can help your dental practice boost its quality of care.

Resources

¹ NRC Health

Your dental office invests in numerous resources, such as equipment and staffing, to treat patients. Maintaining a ledger for these expenses can be challenging if you don’t have an in-house accounting department or recordkeeping policy.

Dental practice financial statements allow you to track your spending and adjust budgets when needed. Knowing how to interpret these documents is essential for the success of your practice.

Why Are Dental Practice Financial Statements So Important?

Your dental practice offers high-demand services with a relatively low failure rate compared to other industries. Still, without proper financial recordkeeping, you can easily misallocate money and suffer from high overhead costs.

Dental practice financial statements help you visualize your daily, monthly, and annual expenses, providing justification for policy changes. In fact, your accounting department can use raw data from these documents to identify financial problems well before your office becomes too expensive to manage.

As a practice owner, you depend on a knowledgeable bookkeeper and accounts receivable department to communicate discrepancies as they arise. However, you should also take the time to educate yourself on how to read dental practice financial statements for better in-office decision-making and transparency. These skills will help you accommodate your practice’s financial situation and decide where to cut costs.

Which Financial Statements Should Your Accounting Department Monitor?

A balance sheet is a document that provides crucial information on your practice’s tangible assets, taxes, stocks, and retained earnings. In other words, it summarizes your practice’s financial health from year to year. You can use these sheets to see your practice’s total liabilities and any changes that impacted your bottom line the previous year.

An income statement is the second financial report you should monitor. These documents outline costs—building leases, office materials, electric bills, etc.—that contribute to your earned revenue. Income statements track revenue annually, biannually, or monthly, depending on the reporting period. 

Cash flow statements show the movement of money going into and out of your practice. Statements typically categorize cash flow into operational, investment, and financing activities. These documents detail how fast your practice collects or spends money and who receives it.

How Should You Manage Your Financial Reports?

First, you must separate costs into three categories: 

• Fixed expenses include expected costs, such as employee salaries, insurance, withheld taxes, and delinquency accounts from patients that don’t pay their bills. Generally, these expenses will not change and are relatively simple to keep track of in a spreadsheet.
• Direct expenses include tools and equipment you may need to purchase for individual treatments, such as veneers or anesthetics. These orders vary from week to week and month to month, necessitating the need for accurate financial reporting. Always take inventory of your direct expenses down to the smallest purchase.
• Discretionary expenses, such as desk supplies, marketing costs, fuel, and food, can cut into your revenue if you aren’t careful. It’s a good idea to set a strict annual budget to avoid overspending on these things. You can adjust the annual budget corresponding to what you spent the previous year.

How Does Keeping Track of Statements Help When Selling a Practice?

Years of accurately reported financial statements are significantly beneficial if you decide to sell your practice. Prospective buyers can use these reports to determine the profitability of your practice and whether it has room to grow. Well-managed finances will lead to better offers.

Dental Practice Management Resources to Track Your Finances

Knowing how to keep and read your dental practice financial statements is the key to managing a well-rounded budget. Unfortunately, many practices neglect these responsibilities and waste thousands of dollars on overhead costs. You can avoid the same mistake by investing in dental practice management tools to streamline the accounting process.

Check out our blog to learn about factors affecting your dental billing statement. Schedule a demo to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

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It’s important for your dental practice to keep the average wait time between appointments at a minimum. Waits exceeding 15 or 20 minutes can leave your patients feeling frustrated and forgotten. 

Scheduling conflicts, low staffing, and emergencies can cause your employees to fall behind on their responsibilities in less than an hour. Knowing how to communicate with patients and prevent overlapping appointments helps you protect your practice’s reputation and provide outstanding care. 

What Causes Long Wait Time in the Office?

Long wait times in your office may occur for several reasons. 

For example, suppose a patient needs extra attention from one of your dentists, causing their appointment to run over. In this case, other patients behind them must wait longer for service. Unexpected scheduling errors like these can push back the appointments of every person in your queue. 

Some other causes of long wait times for patients include:

• Overbooked appointments
• Not enough front desk or back office staffing to keep up with your patients
• Sudden disasters, such as power failures, medical emergencies, and severe weather that affect your practice’s ability to see patients

How Do Long Wait Times Interfere with Dental Practice Operations?

You may not be able to grow your practice if your office already struggles to keep up with appointments. Unfortunately, this issue prevents you from providing quality dental care and meeting revenue goals. 

From your patients’ perspectives, long wait times can feel frustrating and cause them to find a different dentist.

Long wait times can also harm staff morale. Delays may require your staff to spend valuable time rearranging schedules or dealing with upset patients. Your health care professionals may also feel pressure to complete tasks quickly, resulting in underperformance.

What Do Patients Think About Long Wait Times?

Patient satisfaction should be your foremost concern as a medical professional. Sticking to a schedule without sacrificing the quality of your service is a practical way to build a positive relationship with your patients.

The waiting room experience significantly impacts your patients’ first impressions. Studies show that long wait times can cause someone to mistrust a dental practice, regardless of how well the rest of their appointment goes. 

In some cases, long wait times can result in negative reviews about your practice online, disrupting your reputation and deterring new patients.

What Can You Do To Prevent Long Waits?

Managing your schedule is the key to reducing wait times in the lobby. Use a shared calendar among staff so they have access to the same schedule when they book appointments.

Other tips to prevent wait times throughout your patient’s appointment include:

• Answer phones promptly so that patients don’t have to wait to speak to a staff member when they call
• Avoid leaving the patient alone in the treatment room
• Extend your office hours, allowing more space between appointments throughout the day to accommodate appointments running over

What to Do During Unavoidable Delays

Some delays are unavoidable, so plan ahead by creating a clear waiting room policy for your dental practice. Always communicate delays to your patients with as much notice as possible, typically over the phone or by email so they know what to expect. Keep plenty of chairs in the waiting room to prevent overcrowding during delays.

Station an employee at the front desk and allow them to communicate and apologize for any issues that arise. This method keeps your patients from feeling ignored and eliminates confusion about their wait.

Sometimes, patients themselves are late, causing delays in appointment times. It may be necessary to create an office policy that forces a cancellation or reschedule for patients more than 15-30 minutes late to their appointments. This acceptability of service time allows your staff to keep up with other appointments and encourages patients to be on time.

Dental Practice Management Strategies To Simplify Your Day

Respecting your patients’ time is essential for maintaining a positive image and delivering outstanding service. At Dental Intelligence, we ensure that you have the tools to streamline your practice.

Schedule a demo to see how our digital solutions can help you prevent and manage long wait times.

Social media plays a vital role in how you promote your dental practice online. Regular engagement helps your practice score higher in Google’s algorithm, which means more patients can find you when they search for local dentists. 

Knowing which social media strategies to use is crucial for your community outreach. 

Why Are So Many Dental Practices Active on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok?

Facebook and Instagram have over 2.5 billion users on their platforms. Your practice can tap into this massive user base of potential patients by creating a professional account and posting to it regularly. These channels allow you to respond directly to individual users or prospective patients who leave comments and questions about your content.

• Facebook lets you share detailed information about your office, post pictures of featured employees, and invite local people to community fundraisers and events. This social media platform also lets you share updates directly with a “timeline” feature that displays at the top of your followers’ feeds. 
• Instagram uses “live sharing” to stream video in real-time to your audience — a practical tool if you want to walk users through your office or run an open Q&A session through your dental social media account.
• TikTok is another popular social media channel among Millennials and Generation Z. This platform encourages short-form content, such as skits, dances, or fast-fact informational videos, which attract a younger demographic.

If you want to shift your dental social media marketing efforts toward a younger target audience, TikTok and Instagram are the best choices. However, you will need to spend time researching the latest online trends to keep your content fresh and engaging.

How Should Your Dental Practice Engage with Users Online?

The quickest way to engage with potential patients online is through comment interaction. If users post feedback on your content, always respond professionally and respectfully.

Suppose you post a link on Facebook to a blog about dental veneers. Some users may have questions about information not included in the blog. You can reply to their comment publicly or send a private message discussing their options and encouraging them to schedule an appointment at your dental office.

You can also share positive patient reviews and testimonials to boost the credibility of your practice online. Some users may not submit reviews over Google, but they might leave short testimonials on your social media profiles, which you can share with others.

Running a contest on social media is a fun way to drive engagement on your profile. For example, you could give away free merchandise or rewards to the first 500 users to like and share your posts. You could also run a random prize lottery for anyone who writes a sentence or two about their oral health routine.

These methods can increase clicks on your profile and encourage more views.

What Are the Benefits of Posting to Your Account Regularly?

Active dental social media profiles receive more impressions and overall engagement than inactive accounts. You can keep your practice’s content toward the top of your followers’ feeds by posting once or twice a day, if not more.

Posting regularly also encourages users to start following your profile. The more followers you have, the better your pay-per-click ads may do on channels like Facebook.

Our Dental Marketing materials provide templates and ideas to help you optimize and target your posts.

What Are Social Media Analytics?

Social media analytics show you how well individual posts perform on your account. You can track the demographics of who views your content and determine if changes are necessary to drive traffic toward your practice. 

These metrics also allow you to view the best time to post content during the day. For instance, your followers may be inactive during regular work hours or late at night, so post during lunch or around dinner for the highest views.

Digital Marketing Solutions That Elevate Your Dental Practice Online

Running your social media profile doesn’t need to distract you from providing outstanding patient care.

At Dental Intelligence, we make it easy to manage social media for dentists like you with modern marketing materials. Schedule a demo of our digital tools for dental practices and learn more about dental social media.

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Communicating with your current and prospective patients via email is essential. However, deciding which type of email to send, when to send it, and how you should structure the content can be challenging without context.

Tracking email marketing metrics can help you optimize your approach and increase conversion rates among recipients.

What Are Email KPIs for Dental Practices, and Why Are They Important?

A key performance indicator (KPI) is data that helps you track how well your dental marketing strategy performs. With these metrics, your practice can expand its reach to potential patients and drive users toward other resources like your website. 

Email campaign KPIs specifically monitor how recipients interact with your outbound emails. This data is important to consider because over 4.3 billion email users are active around the globe. You can use KPIs to determine what makes your particular target market respond positively and encourage them to subscribe for more content.

Our Dental Marketing tools give you access to a library of ready-to-use content that can help you acquire new patients and keep returning patients coming back. With this resource, you can eliminate time-consuming guesswork when drafting and testing new emails.

Which KPIs Are Worth Tracking for Dental Practices?

So what KPIs should you track to determine the effectiveness of your email campaigns?

Open rate: Getting patients to look at your emails is the first step. Open rate KPIs help determine how many people open your emails, corresponding to the total number sent. The best ways to maximize your open rates include:

• Creating enticing subject headers (relevant to the content)
• Adding recipient names to subjects
• Sending emails in the morning when most people check their computers

Generated leads: Once your recipients open your emails, you should look for generated leads. These are recipients who are ready to book an appointment or explore further resources. You can generate leads by creating concise, informative email content that encourages users to keep investigating your dental practice.

Cost per lead: Using a strong call-to-action and leveraging paid ads can also help you increase your leads. Cost per lead shows how much money you spend converting an email recipient into a patient. You can calculate this metric by dividing how much you spend on your email marketing campaign by the total leads you generate.

Bounce rate: If your campaigns aren’t generating leads, you should review your bounce rates. Sometimes, your emails go to recipients’ spam boxes if they contain typos or repetitive sentences. You may also have several addresses in your email list that are invalid or broken, blocking messages from getting to recipients.

Recipients will not see your bounced emails if they do not arrive in their primary inboxes. If you have low bounce rates but high unsubscribe rates, your emails may reach users, but the content may be ineffective. Change your text, call to action, or reduce the number of emails you send weekly to discourage recipients from unsubscribing.

How Long Does It Take To Gather Effective Data From Your KPI Metrics?

It can take time to collect sufficient data from your email campaign KPIs. For example, you might spend several days A/B testing emails with a small percentage of their patients before sending mass emails. This method allows you to test which subject lines, content, or images get the best response.

Depending on how many recipients you send your emails to, it could take weeks to determine how well your email campaigns perform. 

Production and collection strategies help you track email data accurately if you use other forms of digital marketing — such as social media, pay-per-click advertisement, or a newsletter. Your front desk can ask new patients how they heard about your practice and recommend subscribing to receive email updates. This strategy helps you allocate resources toward the most effective channels to maximize reach.

What Happens After a Successful Email Campaign?

You can deploy tracking codes on your emails that let you monitor your subscribers’ activities through Google Analytics. Some of the most valuable information you utilize includes:

• The number of page views your website receives through email clicks
• How long users spend viewing your website
• Which links achieve the highest click-through rates

Email Campaign Solutions That Benefit Your Dental Practice Marketing Strategy

Interpreting email campaign KPIs correctly can help you understand your target audience and simplify marketing efforts in the future.

Check out more of our email marketing tips and schedule a demo of our all-in-one solution today!

Even with insurance, your patients may not be able to afford some of the dental procedures and examinations your practice offers. Instead of turning them away, consider offering payment plans to keep money flowing into your accounts. 

Flexible payment options allow you to stay afloat in an ever-competitive healthcare market. Knowing which policies to implement will help you optimize service quality and profit.

How Flexible Should Your Dental Practice Be with Payments?

Many of your prospective patients may hesitate to make appointments because they worry about how much treatment will cost. Promoting flexible payment options can encourage them to schedule regular visits and invest in quality dental care. However, it’s important not to offer more than your practice can afford.

You should consider several factors before creating a payment policy. For example, determine a reasonable period of time you are willing to wait before you receive payment in full. 

Some practices offer one or two-year repayment plans for patients. This method is ideal for expensive dental procedures that could take months to pay down.

In most cases, it’s better to offer short-term plans to ensure payments come in quickly. For example, small-percentage discounts on upfront fees or low-cost down payments could be practical solutions instead of long-term financing plans.

What Are the Benefits of Offering Flexible Payment Options?

First and foremost, flexible payment options increase your dental practice’s revenue. Patients who feel they aren’t spending a fortune on dental care will likely stick with your services. This strategy may not earn you the most money upfront, but it supplies you with a steady stream of income from dozens of patients over time.

Offering these financial solutions also helps with lead generation and attracting new patients. Flexible repayments will appeal to many of your patients because they give them more freedom to budget. Promoting a flexible payment policy could even increase your conversion rates by up to 30%, depending on your location and policies.

Flexible payment options also boost your practice’s reputation. Being receptive to your patients’ financial needs will earn you positive feedback. Your patients may even praise these policies in online testimonials and reviews, encouraging others to explore your services.

Which Financing Options Should Your Dental Practice Offer?

In-house financing is a popular choice among many dental practices. These policies allow patients to send payments directly to your accounts receivable department without insurance companies or third-party services getting in your way. However, in-house financing may only be feasible for balances under $1,500, depending on your practice’s budget.

In-house membership programs let you establish subscriptions where patients receive special benefits on basic services, like preventive care. You can include additional benefits for long-term loyalty members, encouraging other patients to sign up and stick with the program.

Set up electronic billing online and allow automatic charges to credit cards or any other preferred method of payment. Make sure you send reminders to patients so they know when bills are coming.

How Can Staff Make the Repayment Process Easier for Patients?

Your staff should ensure that patients fully understand your practice’s financial policies. List these options on your website and have patients sign them using Digital Forms. This method prevents accidental delinquencies or surprise charges that may cause your patients to lose trust in your practice. 

Modern technology makes it easier for your staff to collect payments and monitor transactions. Using data-monitoring tools like Payments helps you track the progress of repayments and identify who is late with payments. These dental management programs also allow your staff to collect payment, communicate information to out-of-office patients, and more.

You can also offer our Patient Financing options that are simple for your patients to apply for and allow you to get paid quicker.

Don’t forget to train your staff on any new policies you adopt. This practice ensures that you receive payments on time and that your employees allocate money to the correct channels. 

Optimizing Your Dental Practice with Proven Payment Solutions

Flexible payment options incentivize your patients to return for examinations and procedures. However, it can be challenging to keep up with collections without help.

At Dental Intelligence, we help your practice manage payments with flexible online payment options. Our resources will enable you to build and monitor your financing policies and reduce the risk of patients who refuse to pay their dental bills. Schedule a demo to learn more about how our flexible payment options can help your practice succeed.

Does your dental practice have a late arrival policy for patients? Every dentist has them — the patients who are always late for their appointments or sometimes even don’t show up at all. It’s a problem that costs your practice time and money and often cuts into appointment times of the patients who aren’t late.

Below, we discuss how dentists can tackle tardiness head-on and how to prevent late patients and no-shows.

No-Show and Late Patient Policies for Dentists: Best Practices and Tips

Developing a late arrival policy for patients at your dental practice can be challenging if you don’t know where to start. Below are three ideas for late policies that are fairly common in the dental industry:

• Late Charge Policies: One of the most effective ways to prevent patients from showing up late to their scheduled appointments is with a fee-based policy. When patients come in after a 15-minute grace period or cancel less than 24 hours before their appointment, you charge them a late fee to their private insurance company, Medicare, or out-of-pocket.
• Fee Removal Policies: Another option is charging patients an initial scheduling fee, which you remove from their final balance if they are on time for their appointment. Or, you can charge every no-show patient a fee, then retract it if they reschedule and arrive on time.  
• Patient Reward Policies: Another option is to reward patients who show up at their scheduled appointment time, like with loyalty points, a gift card drawing, discounts, or other incentives. You can even use our Patient Loyalty Program.

Dealing with Habitual Offenders

Most dental practices have a few patients who are habitual offenders and are either chronically late or don’t show up without canceling or rescheduling their appointment. You may want to implement a different late arrival policy for patients who are frequently late.

For example, will you ask them to show up ten minutes early? Or will you have a zero-tolerance policy that requires them to find another provider after three late appointments or a no-show? You may even want to tell those patients who are consistently late that their appointment time is 30 minutes before the actual time in your calendar.

In addition, you should avoid immediate rescheduling for no-show patients. If they believe they can get another appointment within a week, they’re more likely to cancel at the last minute or not show up at all. Instead, reschedule their appointments for four or six weeks in the future.

Regardless of what method you choose, determining your policies ahead of time can help you reduce stress and provide excellent customer service to every type of patient, even if they’re chronically late.

Preventing No-Shows and Late Patients

Although your dental practice should consistently enforce its late arrival policy, you can take certain steps to help prevent this issue from occurring in the first place.

Use Automated Appointment Reminders

You can reduce the number of late or no-show patients and increase dental production with Dental Intelligence. Our advanced practice management software includes features like Online Scheduling and Appointment Reminders, making it easy to confirm or reschedule patients when necessary. For example, our software updates each patient’s appointment status in real time and sends automated reminders via text or email, reducing the time your staff has to spend making phone call confirmations.

Have Every New Patient Review and Sign a Late Policy

Patients may try to claim ignorance regarding your late policy after being late or not showing up at all. To prevent this, have every new patient review and sign your late arrival policy. You can make this process fast and easy by using Digital Forms.

With our Patient Portal, your patients can access their paperwork and forms either online or through the app anytime they want. Furthermore, you should implement a “refresher” every six months by having current patients review and consent to your late arrival policy.

Decrease No-Shows with Dental Intelligence

Developing a fair and effective late arrival policy for patients can be challenging, but it’s critical for protecting your dental practice from this common issue. Of course, some patients will have legitimate reasons to cancel dentist appointments at the last minute, and sometimes you’ll have to make exceptions. However, with the various solutions available at Dental Intelligence, you can manage late arrivals and boost office efficiency. To learn more, schedule a demo of our product.

In today’s digital age, running a successful dental practice requires more than just getting a proper education and your DDS or DMD. Dentists must now also leverage tactics like search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing to drive growth for their practice. One of the most important aspects of your website’s SEO strategy comes from local backlinks.

While the process of acquiring quality backlinks can be difficult, the rewards are worth the effort. Below, we explain local backlinks and provide some expert advice on the best ways to utilize this effective SEO technique to boost visibility and drive growth.

What Are Local Backlinks?

A backlink is a hyperlink that leads from one website to another. For example, if a website posts a link that leads back to your practice’s website, you’ve received a backlink.

Google’s search engine algorithm uses over 200 factors to evaluate, categorize, and index websites. However, it’s the quality of the backlinks that is most important. Acquiring backlinks from reputable, trustworthy sites can establish credibility for your website and boost its place in the search rankings.

Specifically, local backlinks come from local sources in your geographical area or target market. You can gain backlinks in three ways: through outreach, self-creation, or naturally.

Six Local Link-Building Tactics for Dental Practices

1. Invest in SEO and Marketing Services

Many dental practice owners lack the free time and experience to develop, implement, and maintain an SEO strategy. Instead, consider investing in professional SEO and marketing services. It’s an excellent way to get your business out in the local market and reach more potential customers.

2. Use Local Business Citations

Another way to gain more local backlinks is by claiming local business citations on websites like Yelp, Google My Business, and more. These websites provide current information about your dental practice and other local businesses, like its name, address, hours, phone number, and patient reviews. In addition, they often include a link to your website.

However, claiming citations is not enough on its own; you’ll need more link-building tactics to start seeing noticeable results.

3. Reach Out to Your Professional Network

You can also utilize your professional and personal network as a way to gain more backlinks. For example, you could reach out to your college alums, attend local dental conferences, or speak with other local business owners in your area. Furthermore, if you’re a member of local organizations, you can ask them to include a link to your practice’s website.  

4. Publish Press Releases

One tried-and-true method of building backlinks is publishing press releases, which provide local coverage and increase visibility. Consider writing a press release about your practice’s participation in local events or charity work. For example, you could provide pro bono dental work to a member of your local community.

Most experts recommend publishing one press release per quarter.

5. Ask Patients for Online Reviews

Asking patients for online reviews about their experience with your dental office is an effective way to build more local backlinks. Of course, not every patient will leave you a review. However, you can offer an incentive (like a discount or a gift card to a local business) that will improve the chances of receiving patient feedback.

In addition, our solution includes an Online Reviews feature, which automatically sends feedback requests to every patient after their appointment. It’s an excellent way to build credibility and brand awareness in your local community.

6. Thought Leadership

As a dental professional, you have valuable knowledge and experience that you can leverage to improve your SEO and backlink-building strategies. One way to do this is with thought leadership or writing online for dental magazines, digital publications, or blogs. Target websites with high domain authority to increase the value and quality of your backlinks.  

Bolster Your SEO Techniques with Local Backlinks

One of the most common SEO mistakes for dental practices is failing to invest time and effort into building local backlinks. You can publish press releases, contact your professional business connections, ask patients to leave reviews, and submit your dental practice’s information to local business directories.

Do you want to learn more about the advanced software solutions we offer for dental professionals? Schedule a demo today of our product and see how we can help drive growth for your dental practice.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can help drive growth and success for your dental practice. However, building a successful SEO strategy involves leveraging several different factors. In this post, we answer the question "What is crawling in SEO?" and explain how it affects your dental practice's website and marketing strategy.

Crawling for SEO: What is it?

So what is crawling in SEO?

Google and other search engines use bots to evaluate and categorize the content of websites. Since these search engine crawlers are bots and don't have eyes to see and read like humans, they "crawl" pages to determine the type, value, and quality of content they contain.

These bots crawl pages, following new links for updated information, and then use that to index web pages and rank them in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Crawling falls under the category of technical SEO.

So, why is crawling important? By incorporating SEO techniques that make it easier for bots to crawl and index your website, you have a better chance of increasing visibility, boosting your ranking in the SERPs, and driving more traffic.

However, as a service-based business, dentists need to capture local leads that will convert into new patients and more profit. Nationwide traffic won't provide the same results as web traffic from your local community.  

Using Local SEO Techniques to Improve Crawlability

Several techniques can help improve the crawlability of your website while complementing your local dental SEO strategy. At Dental Intelligence, our dental practice software features important tools like Online Reviews, which help you manage your reputation and establish credibility and authority.

Here are more SEO tips to help crawler bots categorize and index your dental practice's website faster and more accurately.

1. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices

One crucial SEO tactic that can help your dental practice website with crawlers is mobile optimization. Google uses a mobile-first index when crawling web pages, which means it evaluates the mobile version. As such, optimizing your website for mobile devices, like making sure it's responsive and will adapt to smaller screen sizes, is paramount and supports easier crawling and indexing.  

2. Utilize Local Backlinks

Internal links, external links, and backlinks are essentially votes of confidence for your dental website and establish trust, authority, and credibility. When you have multiple high-quality local backlinks for your website, it creates domain authority and shows the crawler bots that your website contains relevant, useful, and informative content.

However, be sure that your backlinks are from authority websites related to the dental industry. Otherwise, it could negatively affect your crawlability and index score.

3. Focus on Quality Content

Search engine crawlers evaluate the content of your website as a vital ranking factor. Focus on using content for your dental website that is high-quality, helpful, relevant, and provides value to your patient base and target market.

For example, you want to avoid red flags like duplicate content, stolen content, keyword stuffing, and spamming backlinks. Content is king in SEO, and if you use unethical SEO tactics like the ones we just listed, the crawlers will not rank your website very highly, reducing its performance and visibility.

4. Use Structured Data

Another way to improve the crawlability of your dental practice's website is with structured data. Structured data for SEO allows search engine crawlers to add rich snippets from your content to the SERPs, which gives your website a distinct edge over the competition.

Structured data can include schemas like a sitemap, logo, reviews, or a local business markup, the right-hand box on the SERPs containing your dental office's name, address, phone number, and other critical business details. It supports your local SEO strategy and provides easily accessible information to crawler bots when they need to evaluate your page.

Intelligently Shape the Future of Practice

So, what is crawling in SEO? Here's the main takeaway: search engines use crawler bots to "read," categorize, and index your website, affecting its visibility, local traffic, and page ranking in the SERPs.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer a range of cutting-edge software for dental professionals to streamline practice management, increase productivity, and drive growth among their target market. Schedule a demo of our product and learn more about how we can build success for your dental practice.

Even missing one employee can throw your entire schedule off, resulting in overworked staff, longer wait times, and a poor patient experience.

Currently, the dental field is having trouble filling various positions, including dental assistants, hygienists, and even receptionists. Below, we discuss the current labor shortage and tips for helping dentists with understaffed teams keep their practices running smoothly.

Why the Dental Industry Is Facing Unprecedented Labor Shortages

After the pandemic, healthcare professions were among the highest-risk occupations for American workers, and dentists were at the top of the list. Almost overnight, practices closed up shop.

As the shutdown continued, patients put off routine and elective care appointments for months. Once restrictions eased up, the rapid increase in patient volume created an inevitable bottleneck.

According to Marko Vujicic¹, the vice president and chief economist of the Health Policy Institute at the American Dental Association, around 40% of dental practices in America were actively searching for knowledgeable employees to fill open positions in August of 2022.

Furthermore, 90% of those practices found it “extremely difficult” to find suitable candidates. Nationwide, dental practices are dealing with overworked staff, months-long scheduling backups, and loss of productivity.

Five Ways to Deal with Shortage of Staff at Your Dental Practice

1. Start Every Morning with a Daily Game Plan

If your dental practice is short on staff, getting through the workday without any bumps or obstacles can be a challenge. In addition, your team has to pick up the slack and handle the extra work until you hire a suitable candidate. With our Morning Huddle and other software solutions, you can increase dental production and start the day with clear communication between your staff for a more efficient workflow.  

2. Streamline Scheduling and Patient Care Systems

When you’re down a staff member and facing a busy day and full appointment schedule, every minute counts. Investing in Online Scheduling and systems for patient care and practice management can help you streamline your workday, increase efficiency, and create a more convenient and positive experience for your patients.

However, using two or more systems can be cumbersome. Instead, look for a single, centralized system that makes it fast and easy to switch between tasks and facilitate all your essential workday tasks at once. Dentists with more than one practice location will particularly benefit from this time-saving solution.   

3. Go Paperless with Cloud-Based Platforms

When learning how to deal with a shortage of staff, one of the best things to do is go paperless.

Dental practices generate a lot of paperwork, from patient treatment plans to consent forms, medical records, billing, and more. Dealing with all this paperwork makes it harder to manage proper care for your patients and can put extra stress on staff, not to mention the security risk it poses. However, you can eliminate that issue and save time by going paperless with a cloud-based platform that offers features like Digital Forms and Consents, flexible payment options, Virtual Check-In, and more.

4. Be Proactive Against Burnout

Dental professionals working in an understaffed practice are at a high risk of suffering from burnout. Being proactive in fighting against this issue is important, as employee morale significantly impacts the quality of care your practice provides.

For example, you can take steps to pinpoint the triggers that affect your staff the most through an anonymous survey. Some factors might include excess overtime hours, lack of support, and working through breaks. Then, you can determine which problems are the most pressing and how to solve them, ensuring your current staff remains happy, productive, and engaged.

5. Cast a Wide Net When Hiring

Dental staff recruitment can be a challenging and time-consuming process. When searching for suitable candidates, use every resource available to you. For example, you can look on LinkedIn, post jobs on your Facebook page or website, use online job boards, or post openings at nearby dental schools.

Put time and effort into creating job postings to entice qualified candidates to apply. Casting a wide net can help you fill job openings faster and reduce the time and money spent recruiting.

Advanced Software Solutions for Dental Professionals: Dental Intelligence

Knowing how to deal with a shortage of staff at your dental practice is critical to its continued success. With our cutting-edge solutions at Dental Intelligence, you can drive growth, streamline your workflow, and keep your practice thriving even when understaffed. Schedule a demo today!

Resources

¹ WBUR article

Dealing with insurance sucks — for patients and as a practice.

From the patient standpoint, it’s difficult to figure out which procedures are or aren’t covered as well as at what rates and how often. It can be even more disappointing when they don’t get the amount of coverage they were expecting.

As a practice, insurance companies probably aren’t your best friend either. Working with insurance companies is becoming more complicated and time-consuming for practices. 

First, it’s a challenge to verify a patient’s insurance benefits. You either have to call the insurance company or look up the patient’s information online — that is if the insurance company provides this information online. And when you call in, you probably wait on hold longer than you have time for. Some insurance companies even limit how many codes you can provide per phone call.

Then, to get reimbursed, you're required to provide nothing short of a book report with in-depth explanations and detailed images for each procedure for each patient.

Even worse, reimbursement rates aren’t going up. Insurance companies also like to play the “stall as long as you can” game when it comes to paying you. They also like to find even the smallest mistake they can to deny a claim.

It’s a lot of work for a potentially small payout. And it doesn’t appear that the archaic ways of the dental insurance industry are changing anytime soon.

So how can you collect insurance payments more efficiently when it seems like the odds aren’t in your favor?

Enter: Dental Intelligence Insurance.

Dental Intelligence Insurance makes it less time consuming for you to collect insurance payment and easier to keep track of claims all in one place. This brand new module includes Eligibility Verification and Claims Processing and works hand in hand with Dental Intelligence Analytics and Engagement. So let’s break down each of these new features this module has to offer.

Eligibility Verification

With real-time eligibility verification, you can quickly verify any patients’ insurance benefits. No need to have multiple windows or tabs open. 

Reduce your office wait times by verifying patients’ insurance within moments — or better yet, before they even come into the office. If you’re using Dental Intelligence Digital Forms, you can gather insurance information from patients before the appointment and verify their insurance eligibility well in advance.

Spend more time with patients and focus on other important tasks instead of spending hours a day on the phone or online verifying insurance.

Claims Processing

Submitting claims isn’t only time-consuming, but can also be costly. Most insurance companies charge per attachment and even limit the number of claims that can be submitted each month. With Dental Intelligence Insurance, you can submit an unlimited amount of claims as well as the attachments associated with them, all for the same low cost.

We also use standard X12 formatting for faster, more precise processing, greatly reducing the risk of human error. If something is entered incorrectly, Dental Intelligence Insurance will flag the claim and let you know what is missing or invalid before they’re processed to insurance.

Process, track and manage all your claims in one spot. Our real-time view allows you to see status updates, rejection reasons, and other smart notifications. Increase your approval rate and accelerate insurance reimbursements with Claims Processing.

Additional Features

In the rare case that an insurance company doesn’t accept electronic submissions, Dental Intelligence Insurance will automatically print claims and mail them for you at no extra cost. That way, you don’t have to remember which insurance companies accept electronic submissions and which don’t.

Easily sync bank deposits with ERA. Plus, get paid all in the same place with the combined power of Dental Intelligence Insurance and Payments.

If you’re part of a DSO, our centralized view allows you to see claims across all locations so you can stay on top of insurance reimbursements throughout your organization.

Save time and get paid faster with Dental Intelligence 

Let Dental Intelligence help you manage insurance all in one place, so you can get back to focusing on patient care. Schedule a free demo today and begin collecting insurance payment more efficiently.

Some patient encounters can place you and your dental staff in awkward situations. Still, you must learn to resolve these issues calmly to avoid hurting your reputation with other patients. Effective communication can be challenging to master, but it is essential for the success of your business.

Understanding the types of concerns patients may have and how to read verbal and nonverbal communication is a good place to start to navigate difficult conversations with patients.

What Types of Patients Are Common in Dental Practices?

You should not expect all of your patients to be happy and enthusiastic during their visits. Dental problems can cause irritability, stress, and anxiety for many people who come through your door. In extreme cases, these issues could result in loud patient outbursts in your office.

Suppose you have a patient who has a fear of dental offices. They may cry or scream during treatment. Patients may also become angry with your staff after learning their insurance won’t cover a specific treatment.

Knowing how to handle these difficult situations will keep you from receiving poor reviews or upsetting other patients in the office.

How Can Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Help You Navigate Difficult Patient Interactions?

Reading body language is essential when communicating with your patients. Even if a patient does not cry or yell, you may be able to read their emotions by observing some key signals.

For example, an anxious patient may shake or display a “thousand-yard-stare” — two coping mechanisms some people use to manage fear. Unhappy patients may cross their arms, scowl, or clench their teeth. Monitor these cues to determine your next action.

Take a deep breath before you approach your patient. A cool-headed response will always de-escalate a problem over a rash, heated exchange. Allow the conversation to be a two-way discussion by politely asking your patient to explain the problem they are experiencing.

Do your best to understand their perspective and respond accordingly. If a patient is late to their appointment and upset about the cancellation, acknowledge that this problem happens occasionally and offer to reschedule them for the next opening. Politely educate the patient by explaining why the cancellation is necessary to ensure that other patients in line remain on schedule.

Dealing with difficult patients can be an ongoing process for your dental practice. It may be a good idea to accommodate regularly problematic patients with extra resources and follow-ups.

Tips and Communication Strategies to De-Escalate Conversations with Difficult Patients

By following these best practices, you can deal with difficult patients, acknowledge their concerns, and provide quality care:

• Use tools like 2-Way Communication to streamline patient communication online and over the phone to prevent confusion during visits. You may be able to prevent problems before they start by managing your patients’ expectations ahead of time. 
• Explain Treatment Plans in detail so your patients can prepare for examinations or dental procedures without stress.
• Create a warm and welcoming dental office for your patients to help anxious patients relax. If they still show signs of anxiety or discomfort (remember to watch their body language), ask them if they would feel safer if you added extra layers of personal protection equipment.
• Always put the patient first when speaking and provide practical solutions: “What would you like from us to help resolve this issue?” or “I understand that X problem is causing you discomfort. Would Y solution help?”

If a difficult patient tries arguing with your front desk staff or back office healthcare professionals, lead them into a private, one-on-one conversation. Removing them from a group setting makes the situation feel less confrontational.

How to Prepare Your Dental Office for Difficult Patients

Train your staff on how to communicate with patients professionally. You can schedule regular team meetings to discuss policies and strategies. Make sure that your team can balance phone calls, emails, and appointments to prevent delays that may upset patients.

Keep an eye on the morale of your employees. A happy staff will provide better, level-headed communication during difficult situations.

Communication Skills That Help You Maintain a Positive Reputation

Effective communication is an important aspect of dental care. With the right information, you can nurture a positive patient experience.

At Dental Intelligence, we can help you avoid dental patient communication mistakes. Contact us to discuss our state-of-the-art solutions for dealing with difficult patients and schedule a demo to see it in action.

Answering every phone call your office receives can be challenging if your staff manages a busy schedule. Setting up a professional voicemail greeting is a convenient way to communicate your services to potential customers and provide quality service even when you can’t answer the phone.

Knowing what to include in your message is essential for keeping your patients happy and promoting customer retention.

How Can an Effective Dental Office Voicemail Improve Patient Relationships?

Prospective patients expect you to pick up the phone when they call. Busy or unanswered phone calls discourage them from reaching out a second time.

Your dental office voicemail greeting should assure your callers that you care about their concerns and will get back to them at your earliest convenience. It should also encourage them to leave a message with contact information and the reason for their call.

Offering these basic courtesies ensures that your patients don’t feel ignored and helps your practice retain a professional image. Sometimes, a friendly voicemail greeting could mean the difference between a good and bad review on your practice’s Google listing.

Outbound voicemail messages could also be useful for your patient outreach strategy. Voicemail Drops enable you to leave messages for patients with appointment reminders or follow-ups without their phones ringing. This convenient tool prevents disruptions during their day and lets them listen whenever they please.

What Should You Consider When Building a Voicemail Script?

Creating your own voicemail greeting provides a touch of authenticity, but there are some common mistakes to avoid. Write your greeting on paper and rehearse it several times out loud before recording. This method helps you avoid wordiness or awkward pauses that may confuse your caller.

Record your greeting in a room with minimal background noise. Interference from crowds, indoor appliances, or electronics can make it hard for patients to hear your message.

You can avoid the hassle of creating a DIY greeting by investing in professional recordings from a reliable third-party service. This strategy may be practical if you have a sizable multilingual clientele. Professional voice actors can record the same greeting in another language, promoting a more inclusive experience for your patients. 

What Are Some Examples of Dental Office Voicemails Your Practice Could Use?

Explore some of the most common dental office voicemail greeting examples:

“Hello, thank you for calling the dental office of X. Due to a high call volume, we cannot answer the phone at this time. After the beep, please leave a message with your name, number, and email address. We will call you back at our earliest convenience. Thank you.”

The above message is straightforward, giving your patients clear instructions on what to do next.

“Hi, thanks for calling the dental office of X. We are assisting other patients at this time and cannot pick up the phone. Leave a message with your name and number. Our staff will return your call as soon as possible.”

A casual greeting may improve patient relationships if you own a small practice.

“You have reached the dental office of X. We operate between the hours of Y and Z. We value your call but are unable to respond at this time. Please leave a message after the tone or use the keypad for more options: If you have questions about your billing, press one. If you would like to schedule an appointment, press two. Para español oprima tres.”

Formal greetings with a phone tree feature and multiple language options are best if you manage a larger practice.

How Can a Dental Practice Optimize Its Voicemail Features?

Managed dental office communication technology — such as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) — lets you set custom voicemails, redirect callers to relevant digital extensions, and store incoming messages. 

Consider rewriting your script if you notice patients aren’t leaving messages. It may also be worth asking a non-employee to test your voicemail and give feedback. This method offers you an outside perspective.

Dental Office Phone Solutions That Benefit You

Communication is key to your dental practice’s success. A professional dental office voicemail greeting demonstrates to your patients that you care about their time and encourages them to stay in touch.

Check out our blog to learn more about why your practice should be using Voicemail Drops. Schedule a demo today to learn about our suite of digital tools that improve phone communication and patient care at your practice.

Poor ranking is a serious issue; if your site isn’t ranking on search engines, it can be harder to attract attention to your site. But what is a dead link, and why can it be such a problem? Read on to find out.

First: What Is a Dead Link?

A dead link — also known as a broken link — is a link that leads to nowhere. The site might be permanently unavailable on the world wide web, or it might just be down for maintenance — but whatever the reason, wherever the link initially led to isn’t there now.

This can be a bigger issue in certain situations than in others. If a page is just down temporarily, the dead link won’t likely cause too many problems. If the page is gone permanently, however, you could be looking at serious consequences.

How Does a Dead Link Hurt Your SEO?

Consider this scenario: you’re browsing a webpage and see a useful-looking link. You click on the link, expecting it to take you to a new page. Instead, you get an error message.

Now you’re feeling a little wary. If the site you’re on doesn’t have links that work, how do you know that you can trust it? You might decide that it’s better to find a more reliable site and head back to the search results.

You don’t want people doing this to your site. People leaving causes problems for several reasons:

1. Search engines take note of your bounce rate. The bounce rate is, essentially, how long people stay on your page. If people notice dead links, they’re more likely to leave the page. Search engines will see this, assume your site isn’t trustworthy, and lower your ranking.

2. People will be less likely to look at the services you have to offer. If people aren’t staying on your site because of broken links, they won’t see much about your services, either. This, in turn, means you’re less likely to get clients.

3. You might not effectively be taking advantage of internal linking. Internal linking is a great way to encourage people to explore more of your site. If you have broken internal links, clients can’t get to the pages you want them to.

In addition to the above, search engines pay attention to the links themselves, too. Having working links can increase your ranking; conversely, having broken links can decrease it.

So How Do You Fix Broken Links?

If you have dead links on your site, there’s a simple solution: replace them with working links.

That can be easier said than done. If you have a site with many different pages, it can take a while to check every link. In addition, it’s harder to keep track of external links than internal ones. You’d have to be extra vigilant to make sure that no external links are breaking — which isn’t always time you have.

Using a link-checking tool — or hiring a team to handle the task for you — can be a great way to determine if you happen to have any dead links on your site. This way, you won’t waste time searching page by page for broken links.

Once you’ve identified any broken links, the first thing to do is check that everything’s spelled correctly. Sometimes, the issue isn’t that the page is gone; the link just wasn’t put in correctly! Addressing spelling issues can be a simple way to fix a broken link.

If you’ve confirmed the site’s really not there, it’s time to replace the link. Take out the broken link, then find a relevant replacement and add it to the site.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to start with the highest-priority pages first. These are the ones you really want to rank, after all; you can worry about other pages if you have time.

Practice Smarter^TM

Preventing dead links is important.¹ It’s not enough to answer the question, “what is a dead link” — you need to make sure that they aren’t on your site, too. At Dental Intelligence, we can help you add our Patient Portal to your website and provide you with dental marketing tools. Schedule a demo today to see our practice performance solution in action.

Resources

¹ Northern Kentucky University

Marketing your dental practice to a wider audience can be challenging without positive patient reviews. Over three-quarters of potential patients use reviews to decide which practices are worth visiting, so positive reviews are a powerful tool to grow your practice.

Many of your patients may not leave reviews after their appointments, which means you miss the opportunity for their positive word-of-mouth marketing to entice other patients to your dental practice. Understanding when and how to ask for reviews from your patients can help your practice solve many of the reasons patients don't leave reviews.

1. You Are Not Driving Patients Toward Reviews

Patients who don’t know where or how to leave reviews for your dental practice will simply not post them. Optimizing your business operations and encouraging patients to post their experiences is the first step to getting more engagement.

For example, you could post links to your website, Google, Facebook, and Yelp on posters around your office. These could read, “We Care About Your Opinion. Rate Your Experience With Our Staff!”

2. You Are Waiting Too Long to Request a Review

Waiting too long after appointments to email your patients with links to reviews can be a mistake. It’s best to reach out within 24 hours while their experience remains fresh.

3. You Don’t Automate Your Reviews

Your staff may not have the time to solicit reviews from every patient who comes through the door. Automating the process frees up time and resources and means you never forget to ask for a review. 

You can set up emails or an automated calling system to contact your patients shortly after their visits. Dental Intelligence Online Reviews allows you to easily request reviews from patients.

4. You Are Pressuring Patients to Leave Reviews

Avoid using direct confrontation that pressures your patients into leaving reviews. Being too forceful can land you in an ethical gray area. This mistake discourages patients from taking time out of their day to leave positive feedback and could even drive your patients to another dentist.

5. You Respond Inappropriately to Negative Reviews

As your practice grows, you may receive a few negative reviews from hot-tempered patients. However, responding professionally to negative feedback helps you maintain a trustworthy public image and shows that you are receptive to patient concerns. People may be more willing to leave reviews when they see your staff respond appropriately to online comments.

6. Your Office Has Long Wait Times

Keep your dental practice running smoothly to avoid disappointed patients who aren't motivated to leave reviews. Poor service could even result in negative reviews.

Reduce wait times in your office with effective schedule management strategies, initiate follow-up calls, and keep patient records organized and accessible when they request them.

7. You Don’t Call Patients Back

Establish and optimize an office-wide phone system that allows your front desk staff to keep up with calls. Answering your patients’ calls and questions will encourage them to leave positive reviews about your practice.

You can also use your phones to contact patients on a waitlist if another patient cancels their appointment. Fitting them into the schedule sooner than they expected is a good look for your practice and may earn you a review.

8. Your Staff Behaves Unprofessionally

Unprofessional behavior from your staff will prevent you from getting the positive reviews you need. Train your staff to manage stressful work situations productively to ensure 100% professionalism during every patient interaction.

9. You Rush Your Patients Out the Door

Your practice may treat over a hundred patients every week. Still, it’s important not to make them feel rushed in and out of the office during appointments. Allowing them to process the customer service experience and make informed decisions about your practice significantly increases their chance of leaving reviews. 

Dental Solutions That Help You Earn Positive Reviews

Many dental practices ignore the importance of earning positive reviews, but yours shouldn’t. The benefits of investing time to accommodate patients and resolve their concerns will help you boost outreach and fill your appointment slots.

At Dental Intelligence, we know how to get more online reviews for practices like yours. Schedule a demo today and see how reviews can help your practice grow. 

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In order to grow, you have to be willing to adapt. The world around us is constantly changing, and dentistry is no exception — how we do dentistry is always changing through new technologies and processes.

Growth isn’t easy, and it doesn’t happen overnight. But with a constant, concerted effort, you can implement scalable changes to help your DSO thrive.

We had the opportunity to sit down with Brandi Williams of Catalyst Dental Allies, a DSO based out of Edmond, Oklahoma. She has almost thirty years of experience helping practices grow in various roles, from dental assistant to insurance coordinator to office manager, and now, VP of Growth.

“This is the perfect time to rewrite the rules of dentistry,” Brandi said. “It's time to think outside of the box and kind of pioneer the new frontier of dentistry. I think there are endless possibilities right now.”

When Brandi walks into one of her offices, she always finds an opportunity for growth. She uses data to find growth opportunities and then implements new processes to achieve the desired outcome.

Here are three key takeaways from Brandi that have helped her grow practices successfully.

1. Implement New Processes Effectively

It’s challenging to create a new process and then get an entire team to adopt it. Some might say if it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But if you can make it better, why not try?

To get new processes to stick, Brandi finds accountability is key.

“I've discovered the best way to get buy-in is setting the expectation and getting a commitment from each person on the team, and then holding them accountable by following up.”

Previously, Brandi would quickly check in with team members to see how they were doing with applying new systems. However, she found she wasn’t getting the traction she needed from her team. Recently, she’s started to refocus how she spends her time by scheduling time to meet and follow up with team members.

“Now I understand the importance of having these meetings and spending a little more time on the why behind the process,” Brandi said. “I don't always have to spend as much time retraining and explaining if I put the time in the front end.”

Brandi also started applying weekly scorecards with measurements every team is responsible for completing. That way, they have ownership of their practice.

Communication is key to implementing new processes effectively. Each team member must clearly understand your expectations of doing their part to improve the practice.

2. Discover Opportunities with Data

Data helps you see where you are and where you are projected to go, but without knowing the story or the “why” behind the numbers, you won’t be able to know how to improve.

With Dental Intelligence, we help you see the story your data is telling so you can intelligently shape the future of your practice.

“Dental Intelligence allows us to dive deeper,” Brandi said. “The metrics from Dental Intelligence give us a great landscape of how the practice is doing, but then we're able to take that to the next step.”

Brandi uses Dental Intelligence to make important decisions with her practices, so they know where they need to focus their efforts. Once Brandi and her team determine what needs to be changed, automation from DI helps implement those changes smoothly. For example, if she discovers a practice has room for improvement with their accounts receivable, her team will then use Dental Intelligence Payments to collect payment through the automated text-to-pay features.

Dental Intelligence not only allows Catalyst Dental Allies to automate their processes, but also saves valuable time.

“The last thing we want is for anyone to spend hours and hours on reporting, just for the sake of reporting,” Brandi said. “It's more beneficial for them to be able to know where to find the number and understand where the number is coming from and why.”

3. Fill Chairs with Online Scheduling

Keeping chairs filled is a problem practices often face. Calling patients to schedule is time-consuming and exhausting. You say the same thing repeatedly and get rejected…a lot.

In the past, Brandi’s practices had an appointment request option on their website, but that didn’t prove very effective either.

“Patients would get lost in a sea of emails and it just wasn't very patient interactive,” Brandi said.

A process that only allows for appointment requests and not fully booked appointments creates more work for the practice. Brandi discovered most appointment requests came in after hours when patients were available to schedule. Usually, by the time someone followed up the next day, they would be busy, and phone tag ensued.

When Brandi first heard about Dental Intelligence Online Scheduling, she was skeptical of the power it could provide for her practices. However, that all changed when Brandi had firsthand experience using it in her practices.

One day while filling in at one of their practices, Brandi faced a dilemma. She had a new provider starting soon and knew that meant many new openings in her schedule, but didn’t want to spend hours calling patients. That’s when she decided to experiment with Online Scheduling.

“I'm just clicking a button — it's the craziest thing,” Brandi said. “Nobody told me ‘no,’ and it took me 20 seconds.”

She started sending bulk scheduling messages from a premade list of patients due for hygiene. During that month, that practice had nearly 50 appointments booked online. When comparing that number to the number of phone calls she would have had to make, it was clearly a game changer.

“It's so rewarding to see that I did this and now look at how many patients are scheduled.”

Boost Your Practice’s Performance Today

Stay ahead of the dental industry by implementing automated tools into your practice. Find powerful insights with Metrics and Reporting and make impactful decisions. No matter how big or small your DSO is, DI will help you boost your practice’s performance and find opportunities for growth. Schedule a free demo today to see how Dental Intelligence can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice(s).

You run a top-notch dental practice but don’t get a lot of new patients and struggle to get existing patients to reschedule. Does that sound familiar? If so, you might not be using social media to market your dental practice effectively. 

With dental marketing by Dental Intelligence, you can learn the importance of social media for dentists and tips for marketing on popular social platforms. 

The Many Benefits of Social Media for Dentists

While social media marketing might seem outside the realm of providing excellent dental care, investing resources into it can benefit your practice and enhance the patient experience. Here are several ways social media marketing helps your dental clinic:

Reach More Patients

Most of your current and potential dental patients use social media, such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. When you post on social media, you’re reaching a huge audience of people, including those looking for a local dental clinic. Therefore, improving your social media presence can lead to acquiring more new patients.

Cost-Effective Marketing

Compared to paid ads on local TV and radio stations, social media marketing is a more affordable way to spread the word about your dental clinic. 

Creating a social media profile, making posts, and sharing pictures and videos are marketing strategies that don’t cost money. Even paid ads on social media are typically more cost-effective than ads on other channels.

Higher Patient Engagement

By going to where your patients spend time online, you have a lot more opportunities to engage with them outside of the dental clinic. Posting interesting content, such as dentistry-related memes or educational videos, leads to likes and comments from your target audience. 

Engaged patients are more likely to schedule appointments or refer your practice to friends and family.

Increased Brand Awareness

Higher brand awareness leads to more referrals, more new patients, and increased patient loyalty. Social media marketing is one of the best ways to increase your dental clinic’s brand awareness. When you post unique, eye-catching content on your profile, you can begin to gather a more significant following online.

It’s essential to showcase how your practice stands out from the competition, influencing potential patients to choose your dental clinic over other practices in the area.

More Website Traffic

Increased website traffic helps your business in several ways. When you share links to your site on social media, users can easily find out more about your clinic and schedule an appointment. Higher traffic also leads to improved rankings on search engines like Google, helping you get more clicks and attract new patients.

Social Media Platforms Dentists Should Be Using

When choosing which social media platforms to use for your dental practice, you should consider the types of content and users that visit each channel. To help you make the best choice for your clinic, we’ll provide details on a few of the most popular social media for dentists.

Facebook

In July 2022¹, Facebook had 2.9 billion active users worldwide, so it’s no surprise that the site is one of the most popular platforms for advertising local businesses. 

Facebook works best for:

• Patient testimonials
• News and announcements
• Educational posts
• Product promotions

Instagram

Instagram has higher engagement from younger audiences and is primarily a platform for pictures and videos. Dental practices often use Instagram to promote visual content, such as before and after photos.

As such, this social media site works best for:

• Funny or educational video content
• Posts about office culture 
• Product promotions
• Highlights from webinars, podcasts, etc.

YouTube

Many dental clinics have joined YouTube to share interesting, educational content related to dental care. With long-from videos, you have the opportunity to teach users about various dental procedures, which can ease the anxiety many people have about going to the dentist.

This works best for:

• Educational videos
• Office tours
• Patient testimonials
• Interviews with the dental team

TikTok

TikTok has a massive young audience and showcases short videos that users can view in seconds. It’s important to create concise and eye-catching content to stop people from scrolling past.

TikTok works best for:

• Before and after videos
• Entertaining content
• Quick educational videos
• Office culture videos

Attract More Patients with Simple Dental Marketing Tools

At Dental Intelligence, we help dental practices create lasting relationships with patients, leading to enhanced business growth and overall better dental care. You can use our software to streamline your office’s procedures, including scheduling, reminders, and payments. 

Find out how Dental Intelligence can take your practice to the next level. Schedule a demo today!

Resources

¹ Datareportal

With so many dental practices reaching out to the same pool of clients, attracting and retaining loyal patients can be challenging. However, there is a simple, cost-effective solution: email marketing. Email marketing for dentistry can help your clinic stand out and boost your business — you just need to follow a few practical tips.

Benefits of an Effective Email Marketing Strategy

A well-thought-out email marketing strategy comes with many benefits. Some are intangible, while others have concrete numbers and data to back them up. You can boil down the numerous benefits to two general categories:

1. Increased engagement

2. Decreased cancelations

Email marketing campaigns enable you to engage with your clients like never before. You can maintain the conversation with current patients, keeping them in the loop and looking forward to their next appointment. You can also effectively reach out to prospective patients, providing information about your dental clinic and prompting them to book an appointment.

The other primary benefit of email marketing for dentistry is decreased cancelations. No one likes crossing names off the appointment list. With effective emailing, you can minimize no-shows and maximize revenue.

Five Tips for Your Practice's Email Marketing Campaign

If you are new to the world of dental marketing, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. Learning about A/B testing, bounce rates, conversions, CTRs, and other technical terms might leave you confused and stressed out. Below, we lay out some straightforward tips to help you create a killer email marketing strategy.

1. Choose a Top-notch Email Marketing Platform

Developing an effective email marketing campaign starts with choosing the right platform. An unprofessional, poorly designed email will turn potential patients away in a heartbeat. On the flip side, software for world-class marketers might be more than what you need.

As you find the best email marketing platforms for your needs, consider asking the following questions:

• Does the platform offer a wide selection of beautiful templates or a start-from-scratch option?
• Does the platform offer automated email campaigns?
• Does the platform have mobile-friendly email designs?
• Does the platform allow you to import contacts easily?

2. Set Clear Goals for Email Campaigns

Clear goals are a must for any business-related endeavor, and that includes email marketing. You should identify specific goals before launching any campaign. Some of the most common marketing objectives for dentists include the following:

• Attracting more patients
• Increasing revenue
• Building relationships with current patients
• Preventing appointment cancelations

Keep in mind that different types of emails have different purposes. For example, welcome emails introduce the recipient to your clinic and start the conversation. Promotional emails, on the other hand, showcase a product or service. Determine your campaign goal, then choose the appropriate type of email.

3. Focus on Important Dates 

When it comes to email marketing for dentistry, you must consider important dates at your clinic. For example, this could be the best time of year to get veneers or teeth cleaning. Important dates could also be timeframes when your clinic offers discounts.

You can start planning your email marketing campaigns around these points in the year. It will help keep your message relevant, increase open rates, and encourage engagement.

4. Expand Your Mailing List

Emailing is still one of the top communication methods, despite the latest technological advancements and countless social media platforms. In lieu of this, collecting email addresses should be a high priority. You want to do everything you can to expand your mailing list. 

An easy way to add patients to your mailing list is with pop-up forms on your clinic's website. You can also have a physical sign-up sheet in the waiting room. Many practices include a link on their Twitter or Instagram bios, sending users to a landing page.

5. Keep Track of Analytics

Creating successful email marketing campaigns is an ongoing process. Pressing "send" deserves a celebration, but that is only the beginning. The analytics and insights you gain from previous campaigns will help you develop more effective strategies down the road. 

Analytics are critical in knowing what works and what doesn't with regard to marketing. By keeping track of the numbers, you can:

• Know the ideal time to send emails based on when recipients typically check their inbox

• Determine what to include in the emails based on what people click on the most

Email Marketing Solutions for Your Dental Clinic

Email marketing for dentistry does not have to be complicated. At Dental Intelligence, we know the most effective digital marketing strategies for dentists to help you grow your practice. Schedule a demo today to get started!

Everyone likes healthy, beautiful-looking teeth, but not everyone enjoys paying the associated costs. If payments are a pain point for your dental practice, consider using an upfront payment policy. Dental Intelligence Payments can help your clinic avoid common issues like late payments and overdue dental bills.

Payment policies are a subject few dental clinicians like to discuss. However, you will want to consider upfront payments for several essential reasons.

What Are the Benefits of Requiring Upfront Payment?

With upfront payments, your patients will pay the entire bill before receiving treatment. This may not seem like a big deal at first, but requiring clients to pay the cost upfront offers several short-term and long-term benefits for your dental practice.

1. Satisfying Clients

Customer satisfaction is one of the highest priorities in dentistry. The best clinics provide outstanding dental care that focuses on the patient's needs and preferences. Such preferences and needs extend to paying bills.

Routine cleanings might not be expensive, and a patient's insurance will likely cover them, but what about root canals or veneers? Potential clients do not want hefty bills hanging over their heads while in the dental chair.

Requiring upfront payments is an excellent way to keep your clients happy. It offers them peace of mind, reassuring them that they will not receive a bill after the appointment. It also helps build trust and establish long-standing relationships.

2. Reducing No-shows

Many dental practices struggle with no-shows and cancelations. Patients may schedule an appointment, forget about it or balk at the potential bill, and fail to show up. Some will cancel or postpone their appointments due to concerns about debt.

Upfront payments help minimize such problems by enforcing commitments. If a patient has to pay the entire payment upfront, you can bet they will arrive on appointment day. In addition, you will not need to worry about labor costs and compensation for your office staff.

3. Increasing Revenue

Good dental clinics maintain a client-first mentality. At the end of the day, though, your practice is a business. You cannot survive very long in the healthcare industry (or any industry, for that matter) if your total revenue does not exceed your expenses.

Another significant benefit of requiring upfront payment is increased revenue. Upfront payment policies lead to higher client satisfaction, which results in more clients coming to you for dental care. More clients equal more revenue.

Additionally, patients might not pay the entire bill for weeks if you send it in the mail after a procedure. Delayed payments can mean cash flow backups and financial uncertainty for your clinic. You can avoid these issues by implementing an upfront payment policy.

How Do You Avoid Problems with Upfront Payment?

Upfront payment is one of the best solutions to satisfying clients, reducing no-shows and cancelations, and increasing overall revenue. However, this does not mean conflicts will not arise. Here are three practical ways to prepare for these conflicts and avoid potential problems in the future:

• Provide accurate estimates: The trouble often comes when a clinic requires upfront payment but provides an inaccurate estimate. If the estimate is too low, the patient will pay more than expected and might never come back. You can preserve your reputation and prevent this fiasco by providing accurate cost estimates.
• Train your office staff: Discussing medical bills and required payments can be touchy. With adequate training, your dental staff can handle the subject sensitively and knowledgeably. You can have necessary conversations without annoying your patients or offering misguided financial advice.

• Offer various payment methods: Some dental patients prefer to write a check, while others exclusively use credit or debit cards. As such, you should offer multiple payment methods with your upfront payment policy. This ensures the payment process is convenient and easy, with as little hassle for the client as possible.

Get Dental Solutions for Your Clinic Today

While many dental practices use post-care billing methods, an upfront payment might be a better way to go. This method requires patients to cover treatment costs before sitting in the dental chair — no bills or payment reminders sent to them in the mail. It is an excellent way for your clinic to maintain long-standing relationships and steady income.

At Dental Intelligence, we have the tools and know-how to boost your dental practice. We can improve your collections with payments and help you achieve your clinic's goals. Schedule a free demo with us today to see what we can do for you!

Providing top-quality care for patients and staff should be your dental practice's highest priority. However, you cannot ignore the fact that your clinic is a business. By embracing payment technologies, you can better balance your healthcare priorities and business goals. 

Why Should Your Practice Use Payment Technologies?

Upgrading payment processing technology like Dental Intelligence Payments might seem overwhelming and unnecessary at first, but it will help your business stand out from the crowd now and in the future. At Dental Intelligence, we have the resources to help you embrace these technologies.

Faster Transactions

Paying for dental care should be as fast and hassle-free as possible. However, filling out lengthy forms, waiting in line, and writing a check can be frustrating after getting a tooth pulled. The more hoops a patient has to jump through, the less likely they will be to even start. 

Payment technologies make the payment process quick and painless. You can collect bills on time and let patients move on with their merry lives. A fast, convenient payment process means more money for you and more satisfaction for your clients.

More Flexibility

Most people carry very little cash and hardly use their checkbooks, preferring to make payments online with credit or debit cards. However, many healthcare facilities still require paper payments. It creates a significant issue for some patients — younger generations, particularly.

One of the biggest reasons your dental practice should invest in payment technologies is the flexibility factor. Contactless payments come in various options to suit everyone's preferences and needs, so your patients can pay using the method that works best for them.

Recurring Payments

Recurring billing is another reason to upgrade your dental clinic's payment technology. This type of billing is essential for any industry where customers make regular, frequent purchases. It keeps you from requesting the same credit card information over and over again.

Patients may want to use recurring payments for regular treatments, such as teeth cleaning. Online and mobile payments make it possible. Clients can set the amount and frequency of each payment, ensuring that they pay the bills promptly and correctly.

Increased Security

Have you ever entered your personal and credit card information online and worried about security? Unfortunately, many patients feel the same way when paying medical or dental bills. Transaction security is a must to protect your clients and business reputation.

Modern payment technologies come with PCI-DSS and HIPAA-compliant features to keep every transaction safe and secure. No more nervous customers using digital currencies. No more checks getting lost in the mail. 

Security is critical to building trust with your patients. It is the first step toward your dental practice establishing long-lasting, valuable relationships.

Reasonable Costs

Some healthcare clinics hesitate to purchase new technology due to pricing concerns. It does not cost a penny to pass a check from hand to hand. However, online transactions might include a substantial processing fee.

If additional fees and costs are your primary concern, you can rest easy. Mobile payments typically cost no more than other payment methods. That said, you should speak with your bank or credit card provider to learn about potential charges.

Integrated Solutions

Paper payments require paper statements and physical places to store these records. With payment technologies, you can integrate the process with other powerful tools that turn time-consuming manual tasks into efficient, automated ones. For example, your clients can access paperless statements anytime from anywhere in the world.  

In addition to efficiency, integrated payment solutions help your clinic keep in step with advancing technology. The next big thing in payment technologies will inevitably build on what is available currently. Upgrading today will ensure you stay ready for tomorrow.

Dental Payment Solutions That Benefit Your Practice and Patients

If you are looking for ways to upgrade your dental practice, consider investing in payment technologies. Contactless payments offer flexibility and convenience, making the payment process go as smoothly as possible. They also keep transactions secure and your clinic on the road to success.

Want to learn more about HIPAA-compliant payment processes for dental practices? At Dental Intelligence, our team has you covered! Schedule a demo today and see how we can help.

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The meta title and description of your web page play an essential role in your site’s search engine optimization (SEO). By using SEO best practices, your dental clinic can climb the search rankings to appear at the top of the results when someone searches for local dental practices.

Below, we give a rundown of the best practices for creating optimized meta titles and descriptions, also known as meta tags.

How Do the Meta Title and Description Help with SEO?

Your meta title and description describe the content of your web page, providing a short summary for individuals using Google or other search engines to find dental practices.

Meta tags have two important functions:

• Letting search engines know what your content is about
• Influencing users to click your link instead of the competition’s

Optimizing your meta title and description for each page is the key to increasing your website’s click-through rate, leading to more new patients for your dental clinic.

Why You Should Optimize Meta Title Tags for Dental SEO

The title tag represents the title of your web page, allowing users to quickly identify what the blog post or service page is about. It should be unique and eye-catching, leading to more clicks from potential dental patients. 

Follow Title Tag Best Practices

SEO experts have determined the best practices for creating title tags for Google and other search engines. When deciding the right title tag for your dental web page, you should follow these guidelines for best results:

• Keep titles under 60 characters
• Use action words to answer what, how, why, and where
• Avoid using duplicate title tags

Use Target Keywords

Target keywords are a vital part of SEO, so you should include them in your title tags. The keywords you use depend on the page content, but they should be words or phrases that users commonly search for to find the dental service you’re offering.

Examples of these include:

• “Dentist near me”
• “Dental implants”
• “Teeth whitening cost”

Write with a Unique Voice

If you’re competing with other dental practices, it’s crucial to make your title tags stand out from the competition. Potential dental patients are more likely to click on a link with an interesting title that matches their search intent. Use descriptive words to highlight the unique selling points of your dental practice, such as “Affordable Dental Implants in New York.”

Optimizing Meta Descriptions for Dental SEO

While meta descriptions don’t directly influence search engines to improve your ranking, they can indirectly help your dental practices reach the top of search results by improving your click-through rate.

Use the Right Character Limit

You should keep your description under 155 characters. If the description is longer than 155 characters, Google will cut off the text, making it less likely for users to click on your web page.

Add a Strong CTA

One of the most important aspects of a meta description is the call-to-action (CTA), which prompts the user to take a specific action that leads to the solution they’re searching for.

For example, a CTA can be:

• Learn more
• Call us now
• Schedule an appointment today

Include Target Keywords

It’s crucial to include your target keyword and other related keywords in your meta description. It does two things to help optimize your web page’s performance. It influences Google to use your meta description in the results and attracts more users by matching their search query.

Use Actionable Language

A description with an active voice can draw more potential dental patients in by addressing their problem and describing the solution your web page provides. A clear, actionable description is much more attractive to users than one that gives a dull summary of the content.

Make it Unique but Relevant

Your description should be unique and compelling, but it should always relate to the content on the page. Search engines will know if you use a description that isn’t relevant to the content on your page, hurting your ranking in the search results.

Optimize Your Dental Practice with Dental Intelligence

With Dental Intelligence, you can discover the most important details about the state of your dental clinic using our innovative software that connects with your existing systems. With the information we give you access to, you can streamline your office operations and save hundreds of hours monthly.

Schedule a demo today and see how Dental Intelligence can help intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing practice that helps your website reach the first page of Google. When you use structured data for SEO purposes, you can significantly enhance the appearance and functionality of your dental practice’s web page links in the search results pages of Google and other search engines.

Read on to learn the purpose and benefits of structured data, including tips for how to get started adding structured data markups to your dental clinic’s website.

What Is Structured Data for SEO?

Structured data is a tool for helping search engines like Google understand how to interpret and display the content on your web page. While languages like the one you’re reading now are a great way for humans to communicate, they’re too ambiguous for search engines. 

By using structured data for SEO, you’re speaking the language of the search engines, explicitly labeling specific content on your web pages with information that Google, Bing, or Yahoo can use to create a rich version of your page’s search result.

You can create structured data using supported markup vocabulary, such as Schema. Using Schema’s website¹, you can find standardized markups for whatever data type you want to tag on your site.

Some Examples of Structured Data

You can find hundreds of schema markup types, which typically fall into the following categories:

Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are enhancements for your web page in search engine results pages (SERPs), displaying information like reviews, images, and location data. Rather than simply having the title and description, your web page result shows users helpful information to enrich the search experience and increase organic traffic to your site.

Rich Cards

Rich cards are the mobile version of rich snippets. When someone types their search query into a mobile device, rich cards will be at the top of the page. Considering how many people use smartphones to find information, rich cards are highly beneficial to boost the visibility of your dental website.

Knowledge Panels

In Google search results, a knowledge panel appears to the right of the results and includes key information from the web page’s content. The typical content in a knowledge panel about a local business includes:

• Images
• Address 
• Opening hours 
• Phone number
• Reviews

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs replace URLs above the title of search results pages, indicating the relationship of the web page to the rest of the website. Breadcrumbs help users understand the hierarchy of your site’s web pages and could lead them to click other links on your website.

Articles

You can add structured data to your blog post or news article to help Google understand the page’s content and display improved title text, images, and dates in search results. Using this strategy helps your articles become features at the top of search results for specific topics.

Q&A

People looking for information about a business often turn to the questions and answers (Q&A) section of Google search results. With structured data for SEO, you can help potential or existing dental patients find answers to their questions about your dental practice.

How You Can Use Structured Data for Your Dental Practice SEO

You can find many tools and plug-ins to help you add structured data to your site. Below, we give an example of how you can implement structured data using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper:

1. Open Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper

2. Choose the type of content data you want to add (i.e., Articles, Local Businesses)

3. Click “Start Tagging”

4. Highlight components of your web page to assign data tags

5. After adding tags, click “Create HTML”

6. Download the structured data markup

7. Add HTML markup to web page source code

8. Test the markup with Google’s Rich Results Test and fix errors

Get More Clicks for Your Dental Clinic Website with SEO

Our Dental Intelligence software provides your dental practice with tools for analyzing your clinic’s performance, addressing office inefficiencies, and improving communication with patients and team members. We help you dig up the data needed to identify problems in your practice and offer solutions for the issues you find. 

With our Analytics and Engagement modules, you can save your dental team tons of time, allowing you to focus on patient experience. We can also help improve your dental marketing strategies, so your business can continue to grow.

Ready to practice smarter? Try our demo today!

Resources

¹ Schema

Professional business-to-client communication is essential when managing your dental practice. However, surprise scheduling conflicts can make it challenging to keep up with appointments, phone calls, and quality customer service. Your staff can avoid these problems with practical training and time management tools. 

What Are Some Common Scheduling Conflicts Your Staff May Encounter?

Without a practical scheduling policy, your staff may regularly book overlapping appointments. Overbooking can reduce your staff’s quality of service and discourage clients from booking with your practice in the future. These common schedule conflicts create long waiting room times for patients and force your employees to work harder to keep up with demands.

Scheduling conflicts could also force you to make a difficult decision for your business when a patient needs emergency attention. 

For instance, you could gain a loyal customer by accepting them as an emergency patient. However, doing so will delay everyone else’s appointments. On the other hand, denying an emergency patient can make your practice appear unreliable or unethical to other clients. 

How Does Scheduling Software Keep Patients Happy During Scheduling Conflicts?

Not all scheduling conflicts are avoidable, but it is essential to contact your clients well in advance if you need to make changes to their appointments.

Dental Intelligence Online Scheduling helps your front-office assistants avoid time-consuming phone calls when they need to greet clients by allowing patients to book on their own time. 2-Way Communication is allows your assistants to answer patients’ questions via email and text.  

How Can Automated Waitlists Prevent Lost Time in the Office?

If you schedule appointments with clients months in advance, they could forget about them as the date approaches. Set up automated reminders over the phone to alert patients at least one week before their appointment. Reminders keep patients on time and prevent wasteful gaps in your schedule that other patients could fill.

Creating a waitlist policy can also help your practice save time during last-minute cancellations. This convenience gives your patients the option to see their dentist sooner than expected, improving your customer-business relationship.      

Will Allocating Resources Prevent Scheduling Conflicts?

You can avoid creating your own scheduling conflicts with adequate staff training and attention to resource allocation. Ensure all your dental assistants have access to the same scheduling software and calendars. This way, employees on opposite shifts don't accidentally double-book appointments.

Scanners, fax machines, phones, and computers also help your front office staff save time when printing documents and organizing patient information. Keep an eye on computer updates and schedule them for the end of the day to prevent surprise delays during peak hours. 

Keeping a record of patient data can give your staff an idea of what to expect when scheduling individual clients. Some patients regularly need more attention from their dentists than others during their appointments. Reserving a longer block of time for these patients may help your staff avoid overbooking.

What Should New Staff Consider as They Start Booking?

Newer front office hires may not be aware that the back office staff needs several minutes to wash up, put away equipment, and sanitize their spaces before seeing another patient. Train your staff to allow 10 to 15 minutes between appointments to prevent double booking.

Your new hires should also have the information they need to identify emergency requests and prioritize them accordingly in the schedule. For example, an emergency appointment may be necessary if a patient calls complaining about pain or swelling. However, suppose a patient calls about a chipped tooth. In that case, it may be practical to prioritize their treatment within a few days — reserving unavailable time slots for those with serious health concerns.

Streamlining Your Dental Practice Operations for Patients and Staff

Managing your time more efficiently and communicating with patients during scheduling conflicts will help your practice maintain a positive reputation. Develop your scheduling policy as soon as possible to free up your workforce and accommodate more patients.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer modern software programs to simplify your communications. Our products include Online Scheduling, Virtual Check-In, and more. 

Don’t let scheduling conflicts prevent you from delivering world-class patient care. Schedule a demo today!

Your dental front desk employees are the first line of communication between patients and your back office staff. Without the proper training and technology, communication breakdowns can result in scheduling errors and dissatisfied patients. You can avoid these problems by adhering to five simple practices to streamline communication between your dental front desk and back office.

1. Ensure That Your Employees Share a Common Purpose

Dental professionals work better as a team when they share a common purpose. For example, most practitioners dedicate themselves to serving their patients with outstanding care and ethical treatments. It’s important to ensure that all your employees know which values your dental practice promotes to avoid conflicts of interest.

Encourage a friendly and productive environment, giving staff a reason to come to work and stay engaged throughout the day. One way to accomplish this is by greeting your front and back office employees each morning as a group. Alternatively, you could host company events that give your staff time to socialize and connect outside regular office hours.

2. Establish Accessible Pathways for Communication

Depending on the size of your dental practice, communication between staff can be challenging without an internal phone system or a shared computer network. Team Chat allows your dental front desk team to send instant messages to the back office when patients arrive or have questions.

3. Coordinate Employee Responsibilities Clearly

Coordinating employee responsibilities is vital for your dental practice management. Each of your employees should understand their individual roles in the office and how they contribute to the team.

You should invest time in quality training for dental front desk new hires. This way, they are confident in their ability to greet patients and correctly communicate information to the back office.

Set clear expectations to prevent back office employees from demanding more from dental receptionists than their job requires, or vice versa. Adding extra responsibilities to their role can slow down daily operations and lead to miscommunication. 

Hosting a weekly meeting is an excellent way to coordinate responsibilities between your employees, discuss expectations, and let your staff offer recommendations to improve workflow.

Alternatively, you could arrange short huddles in the morning between your front desk and back office employees. Our Morning Huddle feature makes it easy to run through your schedule and make plans for the day.

4. Designate a Space for Employee Concerns

Many dental offices do not offer a way for employees to communicate concerns to staff openly or anonymously. This problem can create resentment, hindering communication between the front and back offices. Create a safe space for your team to communicate problems, and provide non-judgemental solutions.

Try to discourage staff from airing their grievances during routine morning huddles. Instead, set aside time or an anonymous suggestion box for employees to discuss group cohesion and problems they may be experiencing.

5. Always Work Toward Better Solutions

One or two meetings will not be enough to establish strong communication in your dental practice. You and your staff must continue to work toward better solutions to improve the efficiency and performance of the front and back offices.

Your dental practice may need to readjust when inactive patients return or your team grows with new employees. In these scenarios, it’s always a good idea to regroup with your team and discuss effective ways to move forward.

You can determine what works by reviewing communication strategies that failed in the past. This way, you don’t repeat the same mistakes. Remind your dental teams that they have shared values, and continue to acknowledge their hard work to build trust.

Dental Practice Solutions That Improve Communication In Your Workplace

Facilitating productive communication between your dental front desk and back office is essential for your practice’s success. With these communication tips for improving dental team performance, you can explore new ways to manage your staff without stress and deliver incredible customer service to your patients.

At Dental Intelligence, we help you build your strategy from the ground up with convenient tools like Digital Forms, Payments, and more. 

Schedule a demo today and learn more about we can help you improve communication.

Finding the time to complete all your daily tasks can be challenging when managing a dental practice. Still, you need to make time for routine dental staff meetings to address office concerns and keep the wheels of your business turning. Without proper planning, your next team meeting could result in a waste of productive work hours. Get the most out of your meetings by following these five helpful tips. 

1. Set an Agenda with a Purpose

You should always create a meaningful agenda before meeting with your staff. Many dental practices only call meetings during emergencies or when disgruntled employees need to air their grievances. However, on-the-fly meetings rarely yield solutions and can distract the entire staff from their responsibilities.

Plan your meetings to address one or more goals you want your staff to accomplish within a specific time frame. Making an agenda beforehand lets you present action items quickly, so you aren’t wasting time trying to remember points during the meeting.

A good agenda may include updates on company policies, group training, or a briefing on what to expect during the upcoming week. 

If you don’t have substantive information to share with the group, it may not be worth calling a meeting in the first place. The last thing your employees want to do before finishing their coffee is to sit through a tiring morning huddle with information that could have fit in an email.

2. Find an Appropriate Time to Call Your Meeting

Some employees can not afford to attend a dental staff meeting during the middle of the day.

For some practices, it's best to hold morning sessions before patients arrive. Others prefer to hold end-of-week meetings after the office closes. 

It may also be practical to ask your employees what time works best for them. This method is not always the most efficient for you as a planner. However, it can optimize workflow efficiency during the week and gives your employees more flexibility. 

3. Support Your Meetings with Technology

Always prepare for your meetings with reports, PowerPoint presentations, or other relevant documents. These resources keep employees engaged with the orders of business and provide helpful visuals. 

For example, you can increase dental production with Dental Intelligence Morning Huddle. These analytic tools allow you to review practice goals and present patient data with easy-to-read charts.

You can also upload your meeting itinerary or presentation to your practice’s shared network before everyone gathers. This method allows employees to review action items ahead of time and come prepared with questions or comments.

4. Focus on the Items at Hand

It can be easy for individuals to derail staff meetings with complaints, gossip, or other disturbances. However, these gatherings are not the place for this kind of behavior. Dental staff meetings are only suitable for discussing concerns that impact the workflow and performance of the entire team.

Encourage your employees to focus on the items at hand and engage professionally and respectfully at all times.

Some of your employees may have valid concerns about behavior or actions taking place in the office. In this case, it’s best to plan a separate meeting with relevant parties or direct them to Human Resources.

5. Remember to Acknowledge Your Employees’ Time

Whether your meeting lasts ten minutes or two hours, you should acknowledge that your employees are taking time out of their day to attend. Remind them that they provide an important service to their community and that their hard work is evident in their accomplishments.

The end of your meeting may also be an appropriate time to recognize individual employees for the value they bring to your dental team. These small moments can give your office staff the motivation they need to get through the rest of the day.

Resource Management Tools That Improve Your Productivity

Many dental practices waste hours of their week on unproductive meetings that could be time spent with patients. When you plan your next meeting, remember to include material that will help your staff optimize their workflow or better understand their responsibilities as dental professionals.

If you need to come up with new dental staff meeting ideas, explore how our team at Dental Intelligence can help. We provide unmatched tools to help your practice stay up-to-date with Metrics & Reporting. 

Schedule a demo today to learn more about how your dental practice can accomplish its goals.

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In the not-so-distant past, keeping clinical records often involved file cabinets full of folders containing patient paperwork, which made maintaining accurate, up-to-date information somewhat challenging. These days, most dental professionals have transitioned into the digital world, using electronic records instead of physical ones to streamline the process of documenting patient histories. 

Electronic patient records have simplified the recordkeeping process by introducing an unprecedented level of convenience when filing and storing sensitive data. This technology allows dental professionals to organize files with ease while ensuring accuracy and confidentiality. You can keep patient intake forms, treatment overviews, and digital images in the same place. 

With the Dental Intelligence Patient Portal and Digital Forms, you can easily collect patient information. These tools allow individuals to update their records anytime, securing the latest and most accurate information for your practice and empowering your patients to participate in their care.

Ensure a Higher Standard of Care

While accurate dental recordkeeping can benefit your practice in several ways, it can also ensure a higher standard of care for your patients. By including relevant and detailed information about a patient’s visits, past procedures, and current concerns, you, as a dentist, can make more informed decisions about their care.

Likewise, if a patient were to move and find a new dentist, you could easily send their electronic health record to a practice of their choosing. Sharing that updated information with the new provider ensures proper care and mitigates any possibility of confusion about past procedures.

For best practices, remember that the dental professional responsible for a patient’s treatment must be the one to document it and digitally sign or initial the record. Additionally, regardless of which team member provided care, you, as the dentist, are ultimately responsible for ensuring that all the entered information is accurate and current.

Generally, an electronic health record may include the following:

• The patient's name and date of birth
• Contact information, such as a mobile number and the patient’s address
• Place of employment
• Treatment records 
• Discussions of care, including those held over the phone
• List of medications
• Radiographs
• Referral letters

How Accurate Records Can Protect Your Practice

Integrity is essential for all healthcare professionals, and you must take accountability for mistakes. However, it’s also important for you to have a protocol in place in the event of a lawsuit or legal complication. Accurate dental recordkeeping can serve as security for your practice.

As the dentist or leading physician, you have the legal responsibility to ensure accuracy and privacy regarding patient records. Still, it’s critical for the sake of your business that all team members receive adequate recordkeeping training. This process should involve learning your practice’s documentation structure and federal and state regulations regarding patient health files.

Should your practice face a lawsuit for malpractice or otherwise, the accuracy of your dental records may influence the course of the case. You and your team must ensure detailed, up-to-date information to protect your business. Poorly kept records containing inconsistencies, incomplete documentation, or notes irrelevant to treatment may not be useful in addressing claims.

Also, understand that if a patient files a lawsuit, you will be legally obligated to share any information in their files. With this in mind, remember to keep all notes relevant to the treatment and avoid including personal comments that may compromise your credibility in the future. Keep it strictly professional.

The Importance of Performing Regular Audits

Regularly auditing your patient files is a simple way to prevent miscommunication and confusion. While your dental recordkeeping practices should prioritize inputting accurate information in the first place, you can avoid complications by routinely checking patient records.

If you plan to make any changes to recordkeeping, arrange a meeting to address those changes with staff. Consider providing a write-up of your changes so each team member can reference the new format moving forward.

Keep Better Records With Dental Intelligence

Dental Intelligence strives to help dental professionals take the guesswork out of dental recordkeeping and ensure quality patient care. Check out our informative blog to learn about improving patient experience and how to avoid dental HIPAA violations. Dental Intelligence is here to help you intelligently shape the future of your practice. Schedule a demo today!

Many healthcare practices have adopted the use of electronic patient forms, but dental providers seem to be a bit behind when it comes to digital health record adoption rates. A lack of digital recordkeeping might’ve been acceptable a few years ago, but these days, paperless filing has become the new standard, and patients may expect or prefer this method of documentation.

If your practice hasn’t begun using dental electronic health records yet, now is the time to integrate them into your recordkeeping process. At Dental Intelligence, we designed our Patient Portal to help dental practitioners streamline the patient intake process by allowing patients to use our Digital Forms and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date information. 

With such high-quality management software, you can improve the patient experience and increase efficiency for your team.

The Benefits of Dental Electronic Health Records

Using dental electronic health records can help you achieve a higher patient care standard and improve how your practice runs to ensure optimal care. At Dental Intelligence, we can help you make the transition to digital recordkeeping without the hassle and bring you one step closer to enjoying the following array of benefits.

Improved Organization and Efficiency

Physical paperwork slows the intake process considerably. Patients must fill the forms out by hand, and if any issues arise, such as missed questions or illegible handwriting, the patient will have to make corrections before your staff can file their answers. 

Manually getting copies of IDs, insurance information, and other personal details may prolong this process, and keeping all of it organized can be a challenge. Digitizing such records provides easy access to all pertinent patient information, allowing you to avoid lengthy intake procedures.

Increased Patient Retention

Though this may have always been the case, in the modern age especially, patients expect convenience. Giving your patients access to their treatment plans, necessary forms, and relevant medical records can expedite appointments and allow individuals to participate in their care more actively. 

Likewise, without piles of paperwork to organize, your staff can focus their energy on providing quality service, which will likely improve the overall patient experience. With quick, efficient recordkeeping and attentive care, you can increase your practice’s patient retention rate.

Reduced Supply Costs

Consider the supply costs for your practice, which probably include things like printer paper, ink cartridges, and writing utensils. Dental electronic health records eliminate the need for excessive printing supplies — costs that add up quite a bit over time!

Additionally, if you remove the need for filing cabinets and bulky printers, you can free up space in your building. The reduced clutter may improve workplace morale and your office’s overall appearance, contributing to a smoother workflow.

Improved Security

Beyond the clutter and troublesome organization, paper forms pose a threat to patient information security. Staff may more easily lose paper forms. Likewise, any damage to your storage solutions could result in lost data if the papers within get damaged, torn, or destroyed.

Dental electronic health records eliminate these possibilities. Every medical record you upload to your files is safely stored, and staff members have quick and easy access at all times. Digital documentation provides a solution to the potential risks of paper filing and allows for patient record security you simply can’t guarantee with paper forms. 

More Effective Care

Oral health is a key indicator of what may be going on in the body, and it’s important that an individual’s dentist and primary care physician can easily share information and communicate to ensure comprehensive care.

The implementation of digital records allows you to share diagnoses, imaging results, and other pertinent information with providers outside your office. This will improve communication between you and other professionals treating your patients and allow those patients to receive the care they need sooner.

Modernize Your Practice With Dental Intelligence

Dental electronic health records allow oral health professionals to simplify the patient intake process and improve efficiency for staff. Schedule a demo today to see how our Digital Forms can save you time, money, and energy while ensuring the best possible patient experience.

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Online Scheduling makes booking dental appointments simple. Despite this convenience, your front-desk staff should still allocate the time and resources to keep up with phone calls throughout the day. Missed phone calls can pose trouble for your dental practice and encourage potential clients to book with your competitors.

How Can Missing a Phone Call Hurt Your Dental Practice?

Missing calls from your patients is a sign of bad customer service. Your patients expect you to be available when needed. Failing to pick up the phone leaves them feeling ignored. 

Some potential customers may not try to call your practice again if you don't pick up the first time. As a result, you can miss out on opportunities to grow your business.

Why Might Your Practice Struggle to Keep Up with Calls?

It can be challenging to keep up with these demands if your office experiences high-call volumes throughout the day. In this case, you should consider hiring more front-office workers to avoid keeping patients on hold for too long.

Your customers might abandon calls to your office if you do not have an answering machine or the inbox is full. If you set up voice mail for your front desk, ensure your message is less than 20 seconds long to avoid annoying your patient.

Many of your customers may not have time to call during regular office hours. Without an after-hours answering service, you could lose potential patients. If you can't afford to hire after-hours staff, you can establish a phone tree that directs callers to frequently asked questions or automated scheduling features.

Sometimes, your office staff might not have the conversational skills they need to navigate phone calls professionally. In this case, building dental office receptionist scripts help your team members avoid off-putting responses when callers ask questions.

How Can You Optimize Your Customer Service Over the Phone?

State-of-the-art communication software — such as Dental Intelligence 2-Way Communication — offers more ways to simplify your customer service. Screen Pops lets your team members know who is calling in and allows them to easily access their patient profile while on the call.

Call recording also helps you compile information on your patients' needs or concerns. For example, you may collect information from several patients that indicate your website does not provide clear office hours or service details. Call recording can help you plan your phone script according to your patients' commonly asked questions.

How Can You Train Your Office Staff for Over-the-Phone Service?

Missed phone calls could stack up if your front desk employees lack proper instruction or discipline. Fortunately, training can significantly improve their responsiveness to incoming calls, leading to a much more rewarding experience for your customers.

It's always best to pick up the phone as soon as it rings. However, sometimes your assistant may be too busy to answer the phone. In this case, they can redirect it to a second front office worker or kindly place the caller on a short hold. 

Your dental assistants should practice a customer-first approach when answering the phone — asking questions to understand patients’ needs and responding with practical solutions.

For example, suppose a client calls your office asking to schedule an appointment. It’s important to ask questions like, “Are you a new or returning patient?” and “What date works best for you?” while providing alternative dates if the schedule is already full. 

Enhancing Your Day-to-Day Operations with Practical Phone Services

Not every dental practice invests in the workforce and technology they need to provide productive over-the-phone service. At Dental Intelligence, we can help your business stay ahead of the competition.

We provide products like dashboard reporting features, customizable appointment reminders, and ringless voicemail drops for your patients to help boost dental office efficiency and patient satisfaction. Reach out to us and schedule a demo today to learn how we can help you improve your office operations.

Effective dental patient communication is one of the most important skills you can have as a dentist. While effective communication is important for reasons like patient experience and the success of your practice, it also impacts the level of care and treatment you offer your patients.

However, the obstacles in your path that can hinder dental patient communication aren’t always easy to see and avoid. Below, we’ll talk about the most common mistakes many dentists make when speaking with their patients and why it’s so important to keep those lines of communication open.

The Top 4 Patient Communication Mistakes Made by Dentists

Did you know that 30% of all medical malpractice claims¹ result from communication breakdowns? For dental practices and the professionals who work there, knowing how to speak to their patients and their staff is integral to ensuring a safe environment and happy patients.

Below are the four most common dental patient communication errors.

1. Breakdowns in Scheduling

Miscommunications in patient scheduling are common in the dental industry. For example, if patients show up late or not at all, or if another procedure takes longer than you initially thought, it can impact your entire dental schedule. Not only does it make it harder to practice efficiently, but it can waste patients' time. 

To avoid this issue, try using our Online Scheduling and Team Chat features we offer here at Dental Intelligence. With automated appointment reminders and virtual check-ins, scheduling breakdowns will become a thing of the past.  

2. Failure to Explain Treatment Plans Thoroughly

Another breakdown in communication between the dentist and patient occurs during the discussion of the patient’s condition and treatment plan. If your patient can’t understand their condition or how to manage it at home, they’re not going to make much progress towards becoming healthy again.

To prevent this problem, ensure that you speak with patients in a slow voice and use easily understandable language. Avoid using too much dental industry jargon that can complicate the discussion. Stick to the main points and avoid going on tangents. Another option is using treatment plan templates so patients can easily review their recommended treatment. 

3. Disagreeing or Interrupting Patients

We know that while most patients are pleasant and professional, some can become angry, frustrated, or hostile. However, it’s critical to avoid interrupting or disagreeing with patients during these situations. If a patient has a request and you refuse to comply, it’s sending the message that you don’t value or respect them.

Interrupting is also taboo. Nobody likes it when they’re speaking, and someone interrupts them, and it’s a trait that can make you seem unlikeable, arrogant, or unfocused. Instead, just wait for the patient to finish first before you speak. If you need to, take notes to help remind you of the point you want to discuss.

4. Treating Patients Like Numbers Instead of People

Your dental practice is, first and foremost, a business. Yes, you’re in the business of helping people, but not for free — you need to profit from your services so you can afford to live, just like everyone else.

While it’s always good to view your dental practice analytically to discover issues where you could improve efficiency to cut costs, remember that your patients are more than just numbers. They’re human beings, many of whom have anxiety about going to the dentist and can feel upset or overwhelmed once they’re in your chair. Your chairside manner should be professional and friendly yet firm, and don’t forget that a smile goes a long way!

Contact Dental Intelligence Today

Patient communication is one of the key factors in every successful dental practice. At Dental Intelligence, we know how easy it can be for small communication breakdowns to have a big impact on your dental practice and bottom line. We offer cutting-edge software solutions and resources for dental professionals. Schedule a free demo with us today to see our advanced solutions.

Resources

¹ PR Newswire

Many dentists find it challenging to establish short-term and long-term goals for their practice and then have further difficulty communicating those goals to their team and staff members.

Learn the best way to set goals for your dental team and how to get your team members to work together smoothly to accomplish those goals and give patients the best dental health care possible.

What Are SMART Goals?

For any dental practice, setting realistic goals is an important part of engaging employees, encouraging motivation, and increasing productivity. When each team member knows exactly what they’re working towards, it becomes easier to accomplish those goals.

SMART stands for:

• S – Specific: The goal you set should be specific and clearly definable, not a general statement.
• M – Measurable: Instead of saying, “I want to talk to more potential patients,” you should say, “I want to increase the number of new patients by three per week.”
• A – Attainable: Nobody wins when you set goals that you and your staff simply can’t achieve. For example, you’re not going to improve your collection rate by 80% in three days.
• R – Realistic: The “realistic” factor also goes hand-in-hand with “attainable.” The goals you set for your practice must be realistic and possible for people to accomplish.
• T – Timely: You need a precise timeline for goals. We recommend setting a few short-term and long-term goals, like for each week, month, and year.

Common Obstacles to Avoid When Goal-Setting in a Dental Office

When you’re finally sitting down and brainstorming the goals you want to achieve for your practice, there are a few common pitfalls to avoid. Here are some great tips on what not to do when working with your team to set and reach goals:

• Don’t focus so narrowly on goals that your staff misses “the forest for the trees.”
• Be reasonable when setting goals for employees so as not to overwhelm them.
• Don’t create situations where ethics, morals, or safety could be in jeopardy to achieve goals.
• Don’t focus too intensely on goals that you forget to build a strong relationship with patients.

How to Measure and Evaluate Your Goals

Brainstorming and setting goals are only half the equation. Once you’ve got goals set and assigned to each staff member and the office as a whole, it’s time to consider how you’ll measure and evaluate progress. Here are a few tips and suggestions to streamline the process.

Consider Upgrading to More Efficient Communication

How strong is your dental office communication? By upgrading to technology like our Team Chat, you can improve internal communication between you and your staff, making it easier for them to collaborate and connect throughout the workday.

It’s just like texting, except you can choose between individual and group chats. Plus, there’s a mobile app so you can continue communicating using a mobile device for even greater convenience.

Use Analytics and Reporting

Do you remember how we said that a SMART goal must be measurable? One effective way to evaluate and benchmark progress is by using advanced analytics and data reporting. With our cutting-edge software for Metrics & Reporting, we take the unique goals of your dental practice and use that to provide you with data-driven results. We use practice management data and transform that into clinical opportunities, helping your dental office boost productivity and streamline your workday.

Reward Initiative and Achievements

Once your staff begins accomplishing their goals, it’s important for you to reward their contributions. Keep your eye out for members who show extra initiative or productivity. While it’s vital to encourage your staff along the way, once they finally achieve their goals, it’s time to celebrate their accomplishments and hard work.

Showing your staff appreciation and how much their contributions provide value toward the practice is an excellent way to foster stronger team bonding, improve team building skills, and increase employee engagement levels. When they feel their hard work is recognized, they’re more likely to put in extra effort and become more productive.  

Let Dental Intelligence Help You Reach Your Goals

Don’t forget setting dental office goals requires you to be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. If you’d like to learn more, don’t hesitate to reach out to the Dental Intelligence team. Schedule a demo today to see how our software can help you achieve your goals and intelligently shape the future of your practice.

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Dealing with patient dissatisfaction is an unfortunate but inevitable part of running a dental office. As you know, happy patients are the key to running a successful and thriving practice. However, in today's day and age, patient retention is more difficult than ever before.

Patients want high-quality care for minimal cost and expect to have an excellent patient experience where they feel valued and respected. Below, we'll dive into the most common reasons for dental patient dissatisfaction and discuss what issues can cause patients to leave your practice for another.

Avoid Making These Common Mistakes That Lead to Unhappy and Dissatisfied Dental Patients

As a dental professional, you offer a service-based business. If you can't provide quality service to your patients, they're unlikely to return. In today's ultra-competitive landscape, patients have more options than ever before and zero qualms about switching to a new dental practice.

Therefore, it's essential to provide a top-notch experience and avoid making the following mistakes, which are the most common contributors to unhappy and dissatisfied dental patients.

1. Cold or Unfriendly Staff

One of the biggest mistakes you and your staff can make when dealing with patients is coming off as cold, unfriendly, indifferent, or uninterested. Even if you're dealing with characteristics of patients that are negative or rude, it's absolutely essential to remain calm, polite, and professional.

When a patient walks into your office, they should receive a smile and a warm greeting from the front desk staff and clear instructions about where they should sit, if they need to fill out paperwork, etc. Encourage your staff to smile and be kind, even when they have bad days.

2. Long Wait Before Appointment

One of the biggest grievances among patients — especially a new patient — is showing up on time to an appointment and then waiting an excessive amount of time to be seen. 

One study showed that long wait times in healthcare settings resulted in low patient satisfaction scores¹ and negatively impacted the patient's perceived quality of care and overall confidence in their provider. Simply put, the longer the wait time, the higher the degree of dissatisfaction of the patient.

If you're having trouble fitting in all your patients during the day, consider upgrading your technology and using software solutions for scheduling and communicating with your staff throughout the day. Modern technology can make it faster, easier, and more convenient for you, your team, and your patients and prevent ineffective communication from leading to longer wait times and patient frustration.

3. No Sense of Appreciation or Value

When patients come to your dental practice, they want to feel as though they're receiving quality service for the money and that you value their business. So instead of treating patients as a means to an end (more profit and a bigger bottom line), show them how much you appreciate their loyalty by implementing a reward program.

For example, you can start with the Dental Intelligence Patient Loyalty Program. It's easy: patients earn loyalty points for completing actions like making on-time payments, referring friends, and more.

Once they collect enough points, they can redeem them for rewards that you choose ahead of time. Loyalty programs foster a fun office environment and show your patients that they're an essential part of your practice — and, after all, they are!

4. Inefficient Office Operation

Providing your dental patients with excellent service and treatment is only half the equation. Another common reason why people have bad experiences at their dentist is because of sloppy, inefficient office operations, such as staff losing paperwork, inconvenient payment methods, excess charges, unexpected scheduling changes, etc.

Instead of using physical paperwork (which takes up a lot of storage space and can get lost easily), consider upgrading to Digital Forms and Patient Portal. These solutions make it easier and more convenient for patients and improve the efficiency of your office.

You may also want to invest in 2-Way Communication, which can help keep the day moving and reduce wait times and patient dissatisfaction.

Shape the Future of Your Dental Practice with Dental Intelligence

Would you like to learn more about the best ways to handle dental complaints and unhappy patients? First, check out the Dental Intelligence blog for more information. Then, schedule a demo with our team of our advanced software solutions for dental professionals.

Resources

¹ National Library of Medicine

Customer reviews, both positive and negative, can be powerful tools to manage your online reputation and build trust. Customer review responses show that your practice takes an active interest in what patients think and is willing to take their feedback seriously. 

However, keeping track of all the review sites can be challenging. Having a tool for managing these reviews like online reviews by Dental Intelligence can be a great asset to ensure you stay in control of how people view your practice. 

Reasons to Respond to Reviews

If you have a busy practice, the idea of responding to each and every review can feel overwhelming, and many practices simply give up. Some will still try to respond to negative reviews, but this uneven approach may seem disingenuous to potential customers who only see you trying to downplay bad comments. 

The key reasons to respond to reviews include the following:

• Staying in control of the narrative: Customer review responses are an opportunity to give context to a bad situation. Your response can shape how other customers see the review, which is especially important when dealing with negative comments. 
• Build loyalty: Customers want to see that you care, and if they’ve taken a couple of minutes to review your practice, you should be able to do the same. Unique and genuine responses to comments show that you value your patients. They are also a great way to foster loyalty and create life-long customers.
• ‍Reviews get the ball rolling: A business with plenty of reviews will automatically seem more reputable than one with one or two. Responding to reviews will encourage other patients to leave a review, making it much easier to gather reviews, especially in the early stages of the strategy. 

Responding to Positive Reviews

The key to responding to positive reviews is to keep your responses sincere and personal. Spamming “thanks!” to every positive review seems disingenuous and fake and will likely cause patients to distrust your practice.

Personalized responses show that you value the customer leaving the review, but remember to stick to HIPAA guidelines about giving out private treatment information. So instead of saying, “Thanks for the amazing review, Bob, we look forward to seeing you to finalize your crowns,” stick to something like, “We appreciate the detailed review, Bob, and can’t wait to see you again next time!” 

One great aspect of responding to positive feedback is that you can share it with the team. Many patients will compliment specific team members in their comments, providing a great opportunity to share the compliment and motivate the practice. You can even include the team member’s response in your review comment. 

Responding to Negative Reviews

Very few dental practices have exclusively positive reviews, and in fact, negative reviews make your business seem more genuine. The most important aspect is handling them appropriately without being defensive or dismissive. 

When responding to negative reviews, keep these best practices in mind:

• Give yourself time to cool down: Even warranted comments can be hurtful, and it’s often tempting to try and defend yourself. However, this knee-jerk reaction will often do more harm than good for your practice reputation. Instead, take a few hours to cool down, see the situation from the customer’s perspective, and formulate a sincere and appropriate response. 
• Keep your customer review responses simple: Avoid getting into long discussions, as they will make you sound defensive and won’t resolve anything. Rather, stick to short, appreciative responses that acknowledge the problem and outline what you plan to do to prevent a similar situation from happening again.
• Resolve complex issues privately: If you see a negative review, reach out to the customer by phone and see if you can come to an agreement. In most cases, patients just want their comments acknowledged, and if you are willing to admit your mistake and attempt to make up for it, most customers will either edit their review or remove it completely. 

Use Management Tools to Stay Ahead

Customer review responses can be rewarding and provide valuable insight into what your customers think of your practice. At Dental Intelligence, we believe that customer review management is one of the most important and successful patient retention strategies for your dental practice, and we’re ready to help you implement your own. Schedule a free demo today and find out how our tools can keep your business thriving. 

What adjectives would best describe your dental office environment? You may not think much about the overall mood and atmosphere at your dental practice, but it has a significant impact on the happiness and productivity of your staff and the satisfaction of your patients.

However, building a positive company culture isn’t something that can happen overnight. Read on for expert tips to help dental practices foster an uplifting environment and ensure that every patient leaves happy and satisfied.

The Importance of Creating a Positive Environment and Company Culture

Your dental office environment impacts not only the patients but also your staff. Consider these statistics that demonstrate the importance of creating a healthy and positive workplace culture:

• Happy employees are 12% more productive¹
• Approximately 56% of workers² agree that a strong workplace culture is more important than a big salary
• Happy employees take 10x fewer sick days³ than their unhappy counterparts
• Voluntary turnover increases by 50%⁴ in high-stress work environments

Ultimately, the general atmosphere of your dental office has a considerable impact on productivity and profitability.  Patients may also be able to sense when staff are unhappy, impacting their experiences as well. 

5 Steps to Help You Build a Happy and Healthy Work Environment for Dental Staff and Patients

1. Start a Patient Loyalty Program

Creating a positive dental office environment involves more than just focusing on the happiness of your staff. Instead, put your patients in the spotlight by starting a patient loyalty or reward program.

If you don’t know where to begin, that’s okay. We’ve already done all the hard work for you with the Patient Loyalty Program from Dental Intelligence. Patients can earn points for completing tasks, like showing up on time or referring friends and family. Then, they can redeem those loyalty points for rewards. It’s an effective way to enhance the experience of dental visits for your patients, boost satisfaction, and create a fun and positive work environment.

2. Foster Strong Communication Among Staff

The breakdown of effective communication is one of the biggest contributors to an unhappy and toxic work environment. To improve the lines of communication, start by implementing an “open door” policy. Create a safe space where employees can speak their minds without feeling any judgment or ridicule.

Another effective way to improve communication between your staff is by utilizing technology. For example, at Dental Intelligence, we offer Team Chat, a centralized dashboard where your staff can communicate individually or in groups. Our Morning Huddle is also an excellent way to start each workday with efficiency and open communication.  

3. Create a Comfortable and Inviting Office and Waiting Room

Many people experience symptoms of anxiety at the dentist. If your office and waiting room are drab, uncomfortable, dirty, or too “sterile,” their dental anxiety will inevitably increase.

Of course, the exam rooms need to be clean and sanitary. But, the waiting room should feel warm and inviting and have comfortable seating for patients. Offer free Wi-Fi, purchase quality furniture, and use artwork or décor that promotes feelings of relaxation.

4. Recognize Your Staff’s Achievements and Successes

When employees feel their hard work is valued and recognized, they become happier, more engaged, and more productive. You can show your staff how much you appreciate their hard work and value their contributions by celebrating every time an employee achieves a goal or succeeds at a difficult task.

You could throw potluck dinner parties, splurge on a catered lunch, or hold out-of-office get-togethers. Celebrating successes fosters team bonding and keeps motivation levels high.

5. Build Genuine Relationships with Your Patients and Employees

One critical key to creating a positive company culture within your dental office is by establishing relationships with your team that count. Take that same genuine approach with your patients. Be kind, patient, and caring. Show empathy and respect. If a patient or team member is talking to you, don’t just nod. Stop and really listen to what they’re saying.

Build a Happy and Productive Dental Office Environment with Dental Intelligence

At Dental Intelligence, we offer advanced solutions for dental professionals to help them streamline their practice, boost productivity, and increase patient satisfaction and retention. With the advice we just discussed, you can build a positive dental office environment with friendly staff, happy patients, and – best of all – a bigger bottom line. Schedule a demo today and see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice.

Resources

¹ Warwick

² CNBC Make it

³ The Lorman Blog

⁴ Harvard Business Review

Potential customers regularly use the internet to find information about prospective dental practices and will often incorporate reviews into their decision-making process. Using management tools from Dental Intelligence can help build up your portfolio of online reviews, but you will still have to implement strategies for dealing with the occasional negative review. 

While bad customer reviews can feel like a potential landmine, they can be a great marketing opportunity if handled correctly. Showing your customers that you can handle negative feedback and take their complaints seriously can foster trust. Properly addressed online reviews will also reassure new patients that they won’t have the same unpleasant experience at your practice as you’ve implemented methods to address the problem.

Best Practices for Handling Bad Customer Reviews

Correctly responding to negative reviews can be tricky, so it’s vital to have several best practices in place. These ensure your staff has the tools necessary to deal with unhappy customers appropriately and that your response to the poor review cements your reputation as a dental practice that cares about its patients’ experience and wellbeing.

Remember HIPAA Compliance and Consent Regulations

HIPAA regulations can present a barrier to how you respond to unhappy patients. By law, you cannot respond in any way that reveals any patient health information, including the fact that the patient was at your practice, without their consent. So while patients can discuss anything about their experience at your practice, if you respond with any patient-specific information, you could face steep HIPAA fines. 

Similarly, some states have restrictions on how you can communicate with patients. For example, you may need to obtain written consent before responding to any complaints via email. A smart alternative to email is to simply phone patients — phone calls often provide a more meaningful communication channel where it’s easier to resolve complex concerns without worrying about HIPAA and state regulations. 

Take Time to Cool Down and Plan Your Response

While you need to respond to bad customer reviews, it’s also a good idea to wait a few hours before responding. This break is the perfect time to plan your response while giving you time to cool down and look at the situation from the patient’s perspective. Planned responses have a better chance of sounding genuine and turning a bad situation into a positive opportunity. 

Own Any Mistakes Your Practice Made

Even the best-run practice will make mistakes; the best way forward is to own the mistake and learn from it. As long as the concern is legitimate, you can respond appropriately by:

• Admitting you made a mistake, without any deflections or defending arguments
• Offering to fix the mistake, either through compensation or additional treatment
• Outlining the steps you’ve taken so that other customers won’t have the same bad experiences

Avoid Prolonged Discussions

It’s incredibly easy to get into arguments online, which can be extremely damaging to your online reputation. Not only do extensive discussions improve the visibility of the negative review, but they also legitimatize it and make your practice seem defensive. Instead, craft a one-time response, and if the discussion continues, ask the customer to contact the practice directly. 

Understand How Review Sites Work and Remove Potentially Libelous Reviews

Not all bad customer experiences are legitimate, and some bad actors may use review sites to defame your practice. It’s important to understand your options, including knowing what tools you have available to respond to and resolve conflicts.

Most review sites have policies to prevent libel, including removing the offending review and banning the poster. Following the site’s terms and conditions is often sufficient to prevent actively defamatory reviews from impacting your practice. 

Reach Out to Unhappy Customers

Proactively reaching out to unhappy patients can do a lot to repair the situation. Simply contacting the patient by phone and discussing further options or offering compensation for their bad experience can often lead to patients updating their bad customer reviews and ratings. 

Stay On Top of Your Reviews

Your online reputation is essential to your success as a dental practice, and review management is a key component to developing and maintaining your reputation. Whether you want to learn how to get more online reviews or discover how to respond to reviews appropriately, Dental Intelligence is here to help. Schedule a free demo today!

Virtual consultations became extremely important during the COVID-19 pandemic when constant patient exposure put many healthcare practitioners at risk. However, even as the pandemic starts to subside, many practices have identified other benefits that make investing in video consultations an excellent idea.

What Are Virtual Dental Appointments?

Virtual appointments use remote communication methods, such as phone calls, emails, or — more commonly — video conferencing, to connect the patient and their dentist. These types of appointments are common in general practitioner offices but offer the same practical advantages for dentists and other healthcare practitioners. 

Most dentists use virtual consultations to assess the patient’s oral health and identify any potential dental concern before it becomes serious. They’re also perfect for treatment discussions, where the dentist can outline the potential treatment plan and estimated cost while answering the patient’s question, all from the comfort of the patient’s home.

Virtual Care Offers Benefits for Your Practice and Patients

Virtual dental appointments may feel tricky to set up at first, but once dentists, patients, and practice staff get used to the process, virtual care offers many advantages over in-house care.

Less Expensive

Many Americans consider dentistry as optional care when it comes to their health and are likely to put routine dental care on the back burner due to financial pressure. While this tactic results in short-term savings, it often causes severe oral health issues in the future that will cost even more to address.

A virtual appointment is significantly cheaper than an in-office visit, and many health insurance companies have started offering telehealth coverage. Basic video consultations are often sufficient to reveal potential dental concerns that your practice can then address in person. 

Virtual dental appointments are also cheaper for the practice. Dentists will require less personal protective equipment, and video sessions require less staff and office space. You can pass these savings on directly to the patient while still seeing a significant increase in revenue due to increased patient volume. 

Lower Risk of Infection

Dentists and other healthcare practitioners deal with patients that may carry infectious diseases, including flu and COVID-19. Even if they don’t get sick, the constant underlying stress and need for vigilance can take a heavy toll on your staff’s mental well-being. Virtual consultations don’t have any infection risk and will keep your team safe and productive for longer.

More Personalized Experience

Modern video conferencing technology makes a virtual appointment feel similar to a traditional one, allowing the dentist to foster a strong bond with each patient. Since virtual dental consultations tend to be slightly shorter than traditional appointments, dentists will have more time to discuss the patient’s concerns and focus on their issues without rushing them. 

An added benefit is that virtual appointments are easier to schedule than in-house visits, which makes follow-up visits significantly more useful. Patients appreciate the personalized touch of having their licensed dentist check up on them after specialized treatment, and the appointment will also help the dentist gauge how well the patient is recovering. 

Treat Emergencies Faster

Any patient with a serious dental concern can access care significantly faster through a virtual appointment than trying to schedule an emergency visit. While a virtual consult won’t help directly address the issue, the dentist can advise on how to best deal with the emergency and prioritize the patient’s in-house treatment using a virtual check-in system. 

Frees Up Chair Time 

One reason many patients love virtual dental appointments is that they are generally less time-consuming. Patients don’t have to worry about traffic or spending their valuable lunch hour at the dental practice. Instead, they can schedule a quick consultation whenever they have a few free minutes. 

Since virtual appointments only need a dentist to conduct the session, they also free up other staff to accept more in-house patients and provide specialized treatment. 

Consider Virtual Dental Appointments for Your Practice

Virtual consultations offer numerous benefits, but they can feel intimidating to implement. At Dental Intelligence, we can help handle every aspect of running your practice more efficiently, from showing staff how to write a dental appointment reminder email to implementing a virtual dental appointment system. No matter what your needs are, Dental Intelligence has the skills to help. Schedule a demo today!

Telehealth has become an increasingly popular tool for many healthcare practitioners. But despite offering many benefits to patients and practices alike, only 23% of US dentists¹ use virtual dental care. 

Virtual dental care uses telecommunication tools, including video conferencing, phone calls, and even email and chat, to connect patients and dentists regardless of location. Many dentists who provide virtual patient care find it an excellent way to provide basic dental services, such as routine oral health checks or treatment plan discussions.

The Benefits of Virtual Dental Care for Patients

Virtual dental care may be the key to attracting more patients to your practice while improving the patient experience for your existing customers. With virtual dental care, patients can experience easier access to care including urgent care and added patient convenience.

Easier Access to Care

Cost is one of the largest barriers to patients seeking basic oral health care. Many people avoid scheduling regular checkups or routine care to save money, but this approach leads to more serious concerns in the future. 

Virtual dental care is much more affordable than an in-office visit, making it an appealing option for many patients. These virtual consultations help build up a strong dentist-patient bond which will help convince the patient to accept specialized in-house treatment when necessary. 

Virtual care is also a better option for people who live far away from their preferred practice or who have mobility concerns. Many people may struggle to obtain transport to their dentist, but if these patients have a phone and a relatively good internet connection, they can get in touch with their dentist whenever they need to. 

Added Patient Convenience

Scheduling a dentist visit requires more than just setting aside an hour or two on the patient’s part. Patients need to consider traffic and commute time when booking their appointment, and any changes will often result in a missed or late session. Virtual dental care alleviates these issues and makes going to the dentist more convenient.

Access to Urgent Care

Virtual dental services can provide a channel for after-hours communication that improves overall practice efficiency and reduces unnecessary emergency room visits. Patients can receive treatment advice as soon as needed, and practices can schedule emergency sessions to deal with these urgent issues first thing in the morning. 

The Benefits of Virtual Dental Care for Practices

Virtual dental care also has significant benefits for dental practices that go further than improving the patient experience. Video consultations can transform how your practice offers dental services, leading to unprecedented levels of productivity and efficiency. 

Generate Leads

As very few practices offer virtual dental care, telehealth services can help you stand out from the crowd. Real-time virtual patient health platforms can streamline bookings and connect patients with a dentist much faster than traditional methods. You can even incorporate the platform into your CMS or marketing tools to engage patients further and generate high-quality leads. 

Boosted Productivity

A virtual consultation often just requires a dentist to talk with the patient, freeing up other staff to take care of in-house customers. This reduction in chair time means that your practice will be able to take on more patients without affecting their quality of care. 

Cost Savings

Licensed dentists do not need to wear personal protective equipment or use sterile equipment while conducting a video consultation. Your practice can pass these savings on to the patients or use them to invest in growing your business further. 

Finding the Right Telehealth Platform

Incorporating video consultations and virtual dental care into your existing practice workflows can be a challenge, but it’s one of the key steps to ensure a stellar new patient experience. Whether you want to improve your patient loyalty or attract new customers, virtual patient care offers many advantages that are difficult to ignore. 

Dental Intelligence has helped hundreds of dental practices implement new tools to meet the challenges of today’s dental industry, and we can do the same for you. Schedule a demo to discover how we can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and help your practice thrive. 

Resources

¹ National Library of Medicine

On a small scale, running a dental practice requires many tasks to be completed by a few people. Most people at a single location practice wear multiple hats. But with a DSO, every person specializes in their position to complete the tasks necessary to help with the overall growth and success of your practice.

Managing the operations of a DSO shouldn’t be taken lightly. You have a lot of employees, numbers, and processes to oversee. You spend countless hours trying to simplify processes. It’s a lot.

Dental Intelligence doesn’t just help you find actionable data so you know where to adjust — it also helps you automate your processes to reach your goals.

From simplifying payments and managing your AR globally to being able to drill down into data trends at the organization or practice level, Dental Intelligence has the tools you need to help you standardize your processes across locations and oversee them effectively.

Our Principal Product Manager, Elliot Walker, sat down with our VP of Business Development, Steve Jensen, on a recent episode of our Growth in Dentistry podcast to discuss our new AR Dashboard created exclusively for DSOs. Elliot has over 15 years of experience working with DSOs, from operations to insurance.

“Growth in dentistry, for me, is not just on one single bottom line or any particular role. It's really growth at every level,” Elliot said. “We're focusing on DSOs specifically, so that we allow everybody to grow at every single level.”

Focus on Actionable Data

Data is more than just numbers. It tells a story. And finding the right data isn’t always easy — there’s a lot of data hidden in your practice management software. Running report after report to find it probably isn’t how you want to be spending your time.

With DSOs, there’s even more data to sift through. Dental Intelligence puts relevant, actionable data right in front of you, so you can focus on what matters most for your organization. 

“Dental Intelligence helps you really understand what's needing your attention and what opportunities you have,” Elliot said.

When managing a DSO, it’s important to have easy-to-access comparative data for each of your locations. Dental Intelligence allows you to do just that! From patient growth to provider production to aging AR and beyond, you can easily compare metrics for all your locations side by side to see data trends and identify areas of opportunity within your organization.

New DSO AR Dashboard

At Dental Intelligence, we look for ways to help you intelligently shape the future of your practices. That’s why we created a dashboard where you can easily compare your AR globally.

“This dashboard is specifically for DSOs,” Elliot said. “It allows you to quickly compare from location to location in an interactive way so you can make discoveries with your data.”

Instead of spending hours aggregating reports to get a pulse on performance — which leaves room for human error — spend time growing your DSO with the AR Dashboard. Our dashboard gives you a high level view of the health of your AR across all clinics without having to switch between practices.

Personalize the viewing experience to your needs.

With this dashboard, you can see each practice side by side, so you can quickly decide which locations need your attention. You can also see what areas of your AR most need your attention between patients and insurance. Filters allow you to drill down even further to diagnose any issues.

With these options, you can choose how to best prioritize your team’s valuable time in order to get the results you want.

Get Started Today!

Whether your DSO is just starting out or has been around for a while, Dental Intelligence has the tools you need to continue growing your organization. Make data-informed decisions across your DSO and manage day-to-day processes and communication effectively with Dental Intelligence. Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you intelligently shape the future of your practices.

After a long day of providing excellent dental care, the last thing you want to think about is how you are going to collect payment from your patients.

Commonly, practices wait until they hear back from the insurance company on a claim and then reach out to the patient. But getting a hold of that patient and getting them to pay for services they previously agreed to can be difficult.

They don’t answer or respond to voicemails. You could spend the time printing and mailing a statement, but that will probably just end up in the trash.

That’s why we created Dental Intelligence Payments – a simple solution to an everyday problem amongst practices. With Payments, you can easily collect payment in a variety of ways from text-to-pay and bulk payment requests to virtual and physical terminals. We do all the hard work, so you can focus on patient care.

Practices like yours have collected an additional $25,000 on average in their first three months using Payments. The best part is, it’s a low flat rate of 2.59% for all payments processed through Dental Intelligence Payments. It’s taken out at the end of the month, so you can easily keep track of your deposits and make reconciliation a breeze.

Implementing Payments

Jina Alcobia, Director of Operations at Implant & Periodontics Specialists and Love Your Smile, recently started implementing our new Payments features at her practices. Jina has over 12 years of experience in the dental industry, so she’s seen a variety of softwares and operational processes.

“We've used other softwares before and it didn't quite go well,” Jina said. “But when we started using Payments, it was a game changer!”

At first, Jina was a little nervous to try implementing something new into her office.

Jina thought to herself, “I have to teach something new to my team and it's one additional thing that they're going to have to take on. Is it going to be good or is it going to be bad?”

Fortunately, once her team members saw the value that Payments added to their office operations, they were quickly on board.

New System = Better Results

Once Jina’s practice opened back up after being closed a couple months due to COVID-19, they implemented Dental Intelligence Payments and have kept it ever since.

Because of the pandemic, Jina and her team wanted to limit contact with things from the patient, such as payment. So they started sending out payment messages via text on the day of a patient’s appointment, prior to the appointment. This allowed the patients to pay through a secure link, so they didn’t have to worry about paying in office.

“What we do is a little bit different than what some other offices are doing,” Jina said. “I highly encourage people to at least try what we're doing because it's been really great for us.”

This system allowed Jina to collect payment prior to their appointment which also helped minimize cancellations and no-shows. She says they’ve only had one or two patients respond and cancel.

“I feel once they've sent that payment in, it kind of locks them into it,” Jina said. “They want to go to this appointment because they've already paid for it.”

Collecting Payments Made Easy

Since they’ve decided to keep this process around, now when they are treatment planning with a patient, they will inform them that they will be receiving a text message requesting payments on the day of their future appointment.

This system also helps simplify the appointment process and limit any confusion while in the office, since the appointment is already paid for. Patients come in for their work and that’s it.

Jina and her team also use other features from Payments, including physical card terminals. They use the physical card terminals for patients who prefer to pay in the office or didn’t have an opportunity to pay beforehand.

“It's another easy way for them to take care of their payment with you.”

Jina also loves that Payments makes collections simple.

“All of the payments that come in are in one spot,” Jina said.

Once they come in, they can choose whether or not to have it automatically write back to the ledger in their practice management system.*

By using Payments, Jina and her team have managed to keep their AR Days at 14 days and their AR Ratio at 0.6.

What makes Dental Intelligence Payments so effective?

Text-to-Pay

With Dental Intelligence Payments, you can send a friendly, personalized text or email message to any patient to request payment. Messages contain a custom link that they can click to view their statement and easily pay using a credit card, debit card, HSA card, or Apple Pay. In just a few clicks, their payment is securely made and your collection percentage is growing in the background while you focus on other tasks.

Two Types of Requests

We know each practice is unique, so we made sure you have options — you can send a payment request to a single patient or in bulk.*

With single payment requests, the specific patient will receive one message. Each message is personalized for patients automatically, but with single payment requests, you can add an additional note for your patient before sending. 

With bulk payment requests*, you can pull a list of patients with past-due balances and then send messages out in bulk. You can choose which patients from the list you would like messages to go to or select all of them.

Virtual Terminal

Virtual Terminal allows you to conveniently collect payment over the phone. By using the Virtual Terminal, you can securely enter a patient’s payment information to make a single payment. The best part is their card can be saved on file to make it easier to collect payment next time.

Physical Card Terminals

Dental Intelligence also offers physical card terminals for your in-office payments, making it easy to keep all your transactions and reporting from all sources in a single place. Our card terminals have tap, chip, and swipe capabilities and can accept payment from virtual wallets.

Card on File

Make it easier to collect payment in the future by saving the patient’s preferred payment method on file. Our card on file feature allows patients to choose whether or not they want to save the card on file to make future payments even more quick and convenient.

Payments Dashboard

Our user-friendly Payments dashboard allows you to see everything you need to know about collecting payments, so you can stay on top of your AR.

With the Transactions tab, quickly view all successful payments made by patients. You can see whether or not a payment has been associated yet, which means it was written back into the ledger in the practice management system.*

Once payments are fully processed and deposited into your bank account, they will appear on the list in the Deposits tab.

The Payment Request tab will give you a list of all requests that have been sent. You can also view additional information about the request, such as patient name, date sent, requested amount, paid amount, and status.

Ledger Write Back*

Once a patient pays, you can choose whether or not to have it automatically entered into the patient’s ledger in the practice management system. The Transactions tab makes it easy to keep track of associated and unassociated transactions, so you can make sure each payment is properly recorded.

Other Great Features

On top of the features mentioned above, Dental Intelligence allows you to issue refunds and provides a digital receipt for patients that is sent to them automatically.

Get Paid Today!

By using Dental Intelligence Payments, you don’t have to wait weeks or even months to get paid. You can get paid immediately!

You don't have to manually create reports. You don't have to email or mail statements one by one. You don't have to make uncomfortable phone calls that suck attention away from patients currently in your office. With Payments, you can quickly check and see who has a past due balance, click a few buttons, and eliminate hours of work while getting paid faster.

Payments has helped thousands of offices improve their collection percentages and simplify the payments process. Want to learn more about how Dental Intelligence Payments can help improve efficiency in your office? Request a free demo today!

^{*Ledger write-back and bulk request functionality varies between PMS integrations.}

As a dental professional, knowing HIPAA regulations is essential to ensure that your practice remains compliant. However, HIPAA for dental offices can be confusing, as the requirements differ slightly from other healthcare practices. For example, some dentists do not meet the criteria to be a Covered Entity, and specific HIPAA laws vary by state. In addition, many dentists may not realize that HIPAA limits the communication methods between staff, providers, and patients.

If you’re in the gray area regarding HIPAA guidelines for dental practices, keep reading. We will explain some of the most important regulations and policies you need to know regarding communication restrictions and compliance for providers, staff, and patients.

HIPAA Compliance: The Basics

HIPAA is an acronym for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which describes regulations and standards that healthcare providers must follow to ensure proper disclosure and use of protected health information (PHI).

The following types of patient information (contained in both digital and paper records) fall under PHI criteria:

• Names
• Addresses
• Phone numbers
• Medical records
• Social security numbers
• Facial photos
• Financial information
• Vehicle information
• Account numbers
• IP addresses
• Biometric identifiers

The HIPAA Security Rule has three requirements to protect PHI, including technical safeguards, administrative safeguards, and physical safeguards. Furthermore, it requires dentists to appoint a security officer to choose and employ HIPAA-compliant software systems

Essential Information Regarding HIPAA-Compliant Communications in Dental Practices

You may already know that your dental practice can be subject to a HIPAA audit at virtually any time. Therefore, it’s important to understand the limitations in place regarding communications to prevent failing an audit.

Text Messages

Texting is an effective form of communication between dental staff, but there’s one problem: a standard SMS message is not HIPAA compliant and, therefore, should never contain PHI regarding patients. One solution is implementing dental office communication software, like the Team Chat platform we offer here at Dental Intelligence.

Essentially, it allows dentists and their staff to communicate internally through a private platform and includes individual and group chat options. Plus, it improves efficiency, convenience, and patient experience by facilitating seamless staff communication.

Email

Another way to ensure HIPAA compliance regarding staff and patient communication is with a secured email platform. However, you may only disclose PHI in an email if you send it on a secure server using encrypted software. If you’re emailing on an unsecured server, you may not include any patient PHI.

Phone Calls and Voicemails

Any Business Associate or Covered Entity can leave a message in a voicemail inbox or answering machine, with a patient family member, or someone who answers their phone when the patient is unavailable to speak. However, you must make a “reasonable attempt” to limit the amount of PHI you disclose during communications that are not in person or face-to-face.

Letters and Postcards

HIPAA allows Business Associates to mail letters or postcards containing PHI to a patient's home (or if they have another mailing address) on behalf of a Covered Entity (that is, your dental practice). However, the best way to ensure that your office remains HIPAA-compliant is to limit the amount of PHI you disclose in physical correspondence to patients. In addition, many dentists have gone paperless or upgraded their office to a digital, cloud-based system that provides greater security and privacy than paper filing

Social Media

One gray area regarding HIPAA communication compliance is social media. Even a seemingly harmless post that contains a patient’s face without their consent can result in a violation. The most common mistakes or violations regarding HIPAA that healthcare workers commit on social media include:

• Posting photos with visible patient information, records, or documents
• Discussing or gossiping about patients (even without their names)
• Posting videos or photos of patients without explicit written consent
• Failing to check that social media posts are secure, private, or deleted
• Sharing PHI, videos, or images in a “private” social media group or messaging system that can identify a patient

HIPAA for Dental Offices: Communication Compliance and PHI

Although HIPAA for dental offices can be complex, your practice is still responsible for remaining fully compliant regarding PHI and communicating with staff, providers, and patients. However, upgrading to secure communication platforms and messaging systems, like the Dental Intelligence Team Chat, can make the process much simpler.

In addition, we offer innovative solutions for establishing relationships with your team, improving patient satisfaction, and streamlining your administrative tasks. Contact us at Dental Intelligence today to  request a demo of our cutting-edge technology.

While most dentists would love to focus on preventative care, most patients who step into a dental practice are looking for solutions to acute or chronic problems. However, before you start getting your dental treatment plan template from Dental Intelligence ready, you need to be able to convince the patient that they need the dental procedures you’re proposing — and that can be more difficult than it initially appears! Let us help with your dental case presentation skills.

Patients have various reasons to be wary of the dentist’s recommended treatment plans. They may worry about the costs of larger procedures, or they may have concerns about pain or the procedure itself. They may even feel that treatment is unnecessary and that the practice is out to exploit them for additional money. While dismissing these concerns may be easy, doing so only worsens the problem of reduced treatment acceptance. 

So what can you do to ensure the best patient outcomes? In addition to honing your persuasive skills, a planned dental case presentation focusing on patients is a great place to start.

What Should a Good Dental Case Presentation Contain?

Having a clear framework makes planning the case presentation significantly simpler. While each patient’s case is unique, a template helps dentists address all major components of a successful dental case presentation. 

These include:

• The patient’s concern, outlined as simply and clearly as possible
• The patient’s medical history
• The patient’s dental history
• The patient’s social and family history
• Justification for any special tests and investigations
• An explanation of the dentist’s intra-oral observations
• A clear diagnosis related to the patient’s initial concern
• A case prognosis if left untreated
• A proposed treatment plan and guide to dental treatment plan phases

Focus on the Problem

It’s easy for an experienced dentist to forget that while they clearly understand the implications of a particular dental condition, the patient doesn’t. Many patients with dental concerns may not have any symptoms, so they are unlikely to accept treatment for something that doesn’t appear to them to be a concern. Contrast these patients with those who come in with an emergency — who are usually more than willing to accept a proposed treatment plan. 

It’s best to start a dental case presentation with a thorough explanation of the diagnosis, how it affects the patient now, and how it will affect them in the future. Once patients understand the implications of their diagnosis, they are usually much more willing to accept treatments that address their future and current concerns. 

However, avoid exaggerating the problem and “scaring” patients into treatments. Dental patients must make informed decisions based on accurate information — and scaremongering may drive them away. 

Dental Case Presentation Best Practices

The best dental case presentation combines speech with non-verbal cues and visual aids, such as diagrams or photos. 

Other best practices include: 

• Holding the dental case presentation in a private consultation room, especially for major restorative work or patients needing multiple appointments
• Using layperson's terms whenever possible and explaining any technical phrases
• Discussing the reason for the treatment, what to expect during and after the treatment, and the risks associated with the plan or leaving the condition untreated
• Speaking calmly, encouraging questions and feedback, and addressing their concerns without dismissing them
• Confirming understanding by asking the patient questions about their proposed treatment. Note that simply asking a patient, “Do you understand?” will generally get a positive answer, even if the person doesn’t understand. This miscommunication can result in erroneous assumptions and catastrophizing on the part of the patient, leading to lowered treatment acceptance.
• Presenting information in small blocks and confirming their understanding before proceeding.
• Supporting your presentation with visual aids that help patients visualize the problem and treatment options. Common visual aids include physical models, photographs, and brochures.
• Avoiding using any high-pressure tactics — the consultation must be a conversation, not a sales pitch

Many patients are embarrassed when talking about financial concerns. Keep these conversations limited to a private space and reassure the patient that the dental practice has financing options to help ease the financial burden of major dental treatments. 

Ultimately, dental practices want to deliver the best service to their patients, which involves providing the best possible treatment for their condition.

Strong presentation skills, established best practices, and a proven template can greatly improve your treatment acceptance rate, resulting in happier and more loyal clients.

For more ideas on how to take your dental practice to the next level using a dental case presentation, contact us today and schedule a demo of our all-in-one solution!

Dental practices must handle schedules in a way that is healthy for the business. Schedule management should include handling patients who cancel appointments at the last minute or don't show up. Dental practices should train staff to reduce the rate of cancellation.

Dental practices can maintain a consistent appointment schedule by implementing strategies, such as using smart software to automate tasks. In this article, we discuss how to handle and minimize short-notice cancellations. 

Train Staff to Build a Relationship with Patients

Sometimes patients cancel appointments or do not show up because they fear dental visits. Train staff to assist patients who arrive at your dental practice by greeting them and having friendly conversations. Staff should establish a rapport with your patients so that they will feel more comfortable, which can lead to a decrease in cancellations. 

Send Appointment Reminders

Patients may forget they have an appointment, especially if booked weeks in advance. Staff should send up to three reminders to prevent forgotten appointments and no-shows. Ask patients to contact the dental practice if they need to change, cancel, or reschedule an appointment. By using appointment reminder software, you can automate the process of sending out reminders and allow the patients to confirm. If patients need to reschedule, they can let you know using 2-way communication.

If a patient calls to cancel, staff can learn the reason and try to resolve the issue. Remind the patient about their treatment procedures and oral health benefits to avoid last-minute cancellations

Educate Your Patients About Treatment Plans

Many patients may feel uncomfortable declining their dentist's recommendations. The likelihood of a patient not showing up or canceling their appointment is higher when they are not fully on board with the prescribed treatment. Ensure you spend a few minutes at the end of each appointment educating your patients.

Clearly explain how certain procedures can help improve their oral health and what problems may result from not treating the condition. By using treatment plan templates, you can easily provide the information your patients need on their treatment. Most patients will respond positively to your suggestions and advised treatment plans. Lastly, when your patients show up on time, make an effort to appreciate them, and give them recognition. 

Reduce Patient Wait Times

An effective way for dental practices to prevent short-notice cancellations is by reducing wait times. When patients arrive for their appointment, you should avoid making them wait too long. Patients are more likely to not arrive on time or even show up if they have previously experienced long wait times.

To reduce the effects of overrun appointments, consider implementing a short buffer time between each appointment. That way, your dental practice can see patients on time without interrupting the office workflow. 

Create Wait Lists to Handle Last Minute Cancellations

Dental practices can divide waiting lists into two categories: patients who frequently miss appointments and patients who don't mind coming in sooner.

Patients That Miss Appointments

Many dental practices deal with certain patients that make frequent cancellations. Consider moving appointments of such patients to a waitlist. Dental practices should send reminders (one day before the appointment) to patients on the waitlist to confirm appointments.

Patients with Flexible Schedules

Build a waitlist of patients who require an appointment sooner or have flexible schedules. A wait list allows your dental practice to quickly fill a slot due to a cancellation on short notice. Doing so provides a win-win, as the patient waiting receives an earlier appointment and your dental practice fills a gap.

Offer Your Patients Incentives

Make your patients feel appreciated by offering incentives to arrive at their scheduled appointment time. The best way to accomplish this is by offering prizes and discounts. If your patients arrive at their appointments on time, you can offer them discounts on certain services. You can also create a patient loyalty program that awards patients for showing up on time.

Alternatively, if your patients arrive on time, you can enter their names into a drawing.  

Showing gratitude for your patient's promptness is a good alternative if incentives are not viable. Have staff encourage patients by thanking them for their visit.

Use Smart Dental Scheduling for Managing Patients

One of the best methods for increasing the efficiency of your dental practice is to utilize dental appointment scheduling software. At Dental Intelligence, we provide an online booking system that can minimize short-notice cancellations and no-shows. Visit us to learn the best practices for dental scheduling training.

Contact our team at Dental Intelligence today to request a free demo of our suite of tools including dental scheduling software.

Successfully running a dental practice is no easy task, especially keeping your appointment book full. As you know, building patient relationships and loyalty takes a significant amount of time and effort.

Below, we outline five patient retention strategies for dental practices, which can help you develop a genuine rapport with every patient who walks through your door. Read on to gain an edge on the game with our proven techniques for patient loyalty, retention, and satisfaction.

5 Effective Strategies Dental Practices Can Use to Improve Patient Retention

Did you know the average patient retention rate for dentists is a mere 41%?¹ Furthermore, it costs far less to retain a current patient than to gain a new patient. Data show that acquiring a new patient costs healthcare practices five times more money than retaining an existing one!

1. Implement a Patient Loyalty Program

One of the best ways to improve retention rates at your dental practice is by launching a patient loyalty or reward program and offering incentives. Implementing a rewards program improves patient experience, benefits your reputation, and may even result in new referrals.

For example, our patient loyalty program rewards patients for specific actions, such as patient referrals, on-time payments, appointment punctuality, and so on. Each positive action earns loyalty points, which the patient can redeem for rewards such as discounted services or free products. It’s an effective strategy that will benefit your dental practice and strengthen patient relationship management!

2. Upgrade to State-of-the-Art Technology

If your goal is to boost retention by improving patient experience, it’s time to invest in a technology upgrade. By streamlining administrative tasks like scheduling appointments, filling out paperwork, accepting payments, or outlining treatment plans, your patients benefit from greater convenience and efficiency. You can use the following technology upgrade ideas as patient retention strategies to increase satisfaction and patient experience:

• Implement an online patient scheduling platform and mobile app
• Launch a patient portal
• Use LiveOps®
• Invest in digital dentistry tech
• Expand patient payment options
• Create a user-friendly website, including a chatbot
• Use SMS texting for 2-way communication

3. Create a Safe, Comfortable, Anxiety-Free Environment

For many patients, the thought of going to the dentist fills them with anxiety, and sitting in a cramped, packed, and dull waiting room makes the experience even worse. However, you can address these issues proactively by making your dental practice a safe, comfortable, and stress-free environment. Here’s how:

• Improve your waiting room: Use comfortable chairs, add plants and décor, offer free wi-fi and TV, keep toys on hand for young children, supply snacks and beverages, ensure that your magazines are current, and more.
• ‍Enforce safety protocols: Be sure to give PPE (personal protective equipment) to your staff and patients and enforce strict protocols regarding sanitation and cleanliness in the waiting room and exam rooms.
• ‍Anticipate patient needs: If patients are noticeably nervous or anxious, guide them through their appointment by speaking slowly, explaining thoroughly, and being patient. You may also want to offer them headphones so they can listen to music during the procedure.

4. Stay on a Strict Time Schedule for Appointments

No patient wants to show up promptly to their appointment and sit in the office lobby filling out paperwork or waiting for an hour because the dentist is running behind or late. Therefore, do everything you can to ensure that your patient appointments are prompt, efficient, and on time — it goes a long way towards maintaining loyal patients and improving their experience.

5. Encourage Patient Feedback

Launching a platform where patients can express their honest feedback regarding your dental practice is one of the best ways to capitalize on patient retention strategies. For example, you can offer loyalty points for every patient who leaves an online review for your practice. In addition, reading online reviews allows you to gain critical insights regarding your practice and helps you successfully manage your reputation.

Improve Patient Loyalty and Retention Rates with Dental Intelligence

With the five patient retention strategies we just listed, you can improve patient experience, streamline your practice, and keep your appointment book full. Check out the Dental Intelligence blog to learn about patient loyalty program ethics and read more informative posts that can help you intelligently shape the future of your practice. Contact us today to schedule a free demo of our all-in-one product.

Resources

¹ ADA article

Did you know that American dentists have an average patient retention rate of about 41%? In today’s digital age, reputation management and patient feedback will directly influence the success and growth of your dental practice.

So how can you address those factors and boost patient experiences? In this post, we will explain five ways a dental patient satisfaction survey can benefit and strengthen your practice, improving the quality of care and driving growth.

How Can You Collect Patient Feedback?

Before we talk about the primary benefits of patient feedback, know that a dental patient satisfaction survey is the best way to gain honest feedback. First, let us quickly explain the tools you can use to request, collect, and analyze this critical information.

• Ask patients to fill out a paper survey after their appointment
• Create a patient portal and dashboard for online reviews
• Use our Swell integration for automated post-appointment review requests
• Send SMS messages or telephone surveys for fast, simple communication
• Manage your digital presence via a website, on Google, or otherwise

5 Benefits of Using Dental Patient Feedback Surveys to Evaluate Your Practice

1. Gain Valuable Insights About Your Dental Practice

You gain valuable insights when patients can express their honest, unfiltered opinion regarding the quality of care they received during their dental treatment. For example, you can discover areas where your practices could improve, such as customer service or communication. Conversely, you can identify strengths and what appeals most to your patients and apply those positive aspects to weaker areas.

2. Increase Patient Satisfaction and Retention Rates

Patient feedback surveys are excellent measuring tools you can leverage to improve overall experience and satisfaction. By learning what parts of your practice patients don’t enjoy, you can fix those issues and boost patient satisfaction.

In turn, this boosts your retention rates, which are critical to your continued success. Why? Previous studies show that it costs healthcare practices five times more money to acquire new patients than to retain existing ones!¹

3. Improve Patient Communication and Build Trust

Another way a dental patient feedback survey can benefit your dental practice is by improving communication, building trust, and establishing credibility. By evaluating patient feedback and then using that information to make positive changes to your practice, you show patients that you genuinely value their feelings and opinions.

In addition, opening the lines of communication between dentists and patients is an excellent way to build relationships, encourage transparency, and improve patient experience. When your patients are happy with your practice, they refer you to friends and family, driving growth and keeping your appointment book full.

4. Boost Your Reputation

In today’s digital world, effective reputation management can make or break the success of a dental practice. In fact, 81% of patients analyze reviews to help them choose a healthcare provider.² However, you can address this critical task head-on by evaluating patient feedback and using those insights to improve your practice. If you’re not actively managing your reputation and answering online reviews, it will inevitably harm patient retention, referrals, and satisfaction.

5. Identify Your Unique Selling Points

A vital key to success for dental professionals is pinpointing that “secret sauce” that makes your practice thrive and attracts new patients. Patient reviews and feedback surveys let you identify the best characteristics of your practice. Then, you invest time and energy into marketing that unique selling point to gain more patients.

For example, maybe you hold a weekly drawing for patients who receive routine cleanings, and the winner gets a free whitening session or an electric toothbrush. In fact, using dental giveaways to boost patient experience is another excellent strategy to keep your practice flourishing and improve satisfaction.

Patient Feedback Surveys: The Key to Building a Thriving, Successful Dental Practice

The critical data and insights you gain from a dental patient satisfaction survey can significantly benefit your dental practice. When patients see that you value their opinions and genuinely want them to have the best possible experience, the results will inevitably be positive. You can reap the numerous benefits of implementing a patient feedback program using tools from the professionals at Dental Intelligence. Contact us today to schedule a demo to see our innovation in action.

Resources

¹ Forbes article

² Forbes article

Dental complaints are a fact of life in the practice of dentistry. Of course, realizing that a patient had a negative experience at your dental practice never feels good. You may even feel upset or angry. However, it’s critical to address dental complaints promptly and professionally, which helps minimize the damage to the reputation and credibility of your practice.

Keep reading as we explain five expert tips on handling patient complaints about your dental practice.

How To Respond to Dental Complaints in a Professional Manner: 5 Tips for Dental Professionals

Nobody enjoys criticism. Hearing patients complain about your dental skills requires patience, grace, and open communication. Establishing communication in dental offices among dentists, administrative staff, and patients is one of the best ways to address and resolve concerns. For example, Team Chat is an effective way to strengthen communication and verbal skills.

1. Be Patient, Genuine, and Calm

Even if you feel like tearing your hair out or snapping back at a patient — and let’s be honest, complaining patients can often be quite rude — it’s important to maintain emotional and verbal control. At all costs, avoid escalating into a tense confrontation, which makes you look unprofessional or, even worse, aggressive. Instead, take a deep breath, count to ten, or splash cool water on your face. Teach yourself a trick or mantra to help you calm down, even if that means removing yourself from the situation for a bit.

2. Document the Complaint, Investigate the Facts, and Follow Mandatory Procedures

Every patient has the right to complain about their dentist or dental practice. A verbal or written complaint on a feedback survey is minor; sending an official complaint form to the state dental board is serious and could result in disciplinary action. If one of your patients makes an official complaint, be sure to collect related records, document the allegation in detail, and investigate the facts.  

If the board does discipline you, avoid another potential violation by strictly following their sanctions. Remember, substantiated complaints are public record. The best way to prevent the serious consequences that could result from a patient complaint is to provide top-notch care, follow state laws and regulations, keep meticulous records, and ensure that every patient has a positive experience at your practice.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Admit Your Mistakes

One of the best ways to build stronger relationships and show a patient you feel genuine remorse regarding their negative experience is to remain humble and admit your mistakes. Of course, every situation is unique. So, what if you believe you didn’t make any mistakes? Well, it’s not always black and white. You might say, “I’m sorry you had a bad experience. We greatly appreciate and value your business and want to make things right. What can we do to resolve the issue at hand?”

4. Compromise To Resolve the Problem

Like any other problem, compromise is often the key to a successful resolution. However, that doesn’t mean you’ll always be able to compromise. Some patients are determined to be unhappy or feel that you’re not offering enough. However, don’t let anyone take advantage of the situation or your willingness to resolve the situation.

Start the resolution process by collaborating with your staff and the patient. Be sure to listen carefully and empathize with their feelings. Before you mediate with the patient in person, start with a brainstorming session, which can help you develop potential solutions and compromises.

5. Follow Up With the Patient

One mistake dental professionals often make after handling patient complaints is neglecting to follow up. Take the time to personally follow up and communicate with the patient, whether it’s by phone, email, or in person. Maintain a professional tone and calm demeanor, and listen carefully to their words. In some cases, you may be able to keep them as a patient. Sweeten the pot by offering discounts, free whitening sessions, giveaways, etc.

Effectively Handle Dental Complaints With These Five Tips

At Dental Intelligence, we know how challenging it is to manage a thriving dental practice, and dealing with unhappy patients and dental complaints only adds more pressure. With these five tips, you can effectively manage dissatisfied patients to minimize the damage to your reputation and business. Schedule a demo with us today to learn more about the innovative tools we offer dental professionals and how they can benefit your practice.

A great way to grow your dental practice is to schedule appointments appropriately. Effective scheduling can accommodate new patients and ensure that returning patients come back to your practice regularly. However, short-notice cancellations, long wait times, or double bookings can occur due to bad scheduling practices.

Below are common appointment scheduling mistakes your dental office could be making and how to avoid them.

Not Having Fixed Working Hours

Dental practices strive to provide their patients with the best dental care. An inefficient use of time and energy is one of the most common mistakes made by dentists. Schedule patient appointments for important procedures when you feel the most productive, such as early morning or afternoon.

It's important to communicate your working schedule with your staff. For the dental practice to succeed, you should work the hours convenient for you and not your patients. 

Not Scheduling Enough Patients

Avoid giving patients control over your schedule. If your dental practice does not see enough patients during normal business hours, you most likely have a scheduling problem. Being open for more hours could backfire by increasing labor costs and decreasing overall productivity.

Over time, the dental practice may struggle to fill weekends or evenings. Instead of working more hours, try pinpointing why the staff cannot fill the schedule during regular hours. 

Not Training Staff to Prevent Cancellations 

No-shows and cancellations can be frustrating and disruptive to your dental practice. Staff should try to convince patients to visit your practice if they call to cancel. Also, ask the patient for a reason for cancellation.

Depending on the answer, your staff should have the training to explain the treatment procedures, costs, and benefits to their oral health.

Not Providing Staff with Call Scripts

When your staff member picks up the phone, they may not know what to expect. Potential new patients might be calling to make an appointment, or a current patient may need to reschedule. It's essential for staff members to have access to well-thought-out scripts so they can handle any situation.

Scripts can help maintain a consistent message or voice for your dental practice. The scheduling process will become easier if your staff can refer to specific materials. 

Not Following Up on Missed Appointments

When a patient misses their appointment, your staff should contact them to follow up. Instead of accusing them of not showing up, give them the option of rescheduling. Practices with dental appointment scheduling software can offer easy and convenient rescheduling.

Offering pressure-free rescheduling allows patients to select the date and time that is most convenient for them. An easy-to-reschedule system can help reduce the number of short-notice cancellations and no-shows.

Not Leaving Slots Open for New Patients 

No-shows are more likely to occur if patients schedule appointment times too far in advance. Whenever possible, try to accommodate new patients within three days. Many dental practices end up losing new patients by overbooking. 

Not Sending Reminders

Dental practices should send patients reminders before their appointments. A day before the appointment, you can give the patient a call. Ensure these calls do not provide the option of canceling an appointment.

The purpose of these calls should be to express your excitement about seeing patients on a particular day and time. If the patient says they cannot make the appointment, you have enough time to find another patient to fill the slot. 

You can also use Dental Intelligence appointment reminders to automate the process and allow patients to confirm their appointments.

Not Having a Call Wait List

Sometimes gaps appear in the schedule due to unforeseen circumstances. For such situations, your dental practice should maintain a short-notice waitlist. Upon cancellation, you can call the first patient on the waitlist to schedule an appointment.

Alternatively, you can check the day's schedule to determine whether any patients are past due. If they agree to earlier treatment, consider moving them to the open spot.

Advanced Dental Scheduling Solutions for Dental Practices

Many dental offices still provide appointments over the telephone or by walk-in. Scheduling appointments is an ongoing challenge, and unfilled appointments can quickly result in lost revenues. At Dental Intelligence, we can assist you with the process; read our dental scheduling tips to learn more.

Contact us at Dental Intelligence today to try a modern dental appointment scheduling system and more.

ADA policy promotes the use of the most current version of the ADA Dental Claim Form by dentists and payers when reporting services to a patient’s dental insurance plan. ADA Council on Dental Benefit Programs created the form by working with internal and external knowledge experts. Knowing what information this form collects and training your staff is crucial to your practice’s revenue and patient care.

The Current Version of the ADA Dental Claim Form

In the current version of the ADA dental claim¹, the ADA tried to make things as easy as possible. Staff should be able to complete this form quickly and easily—after all, it’s how your practice pays the bills, so it should be as painless as possible.

Here are some specific items to make sure you’ve properly identified and filled out.

• Boxes 1-2 relate to the type of service and preauthorization number if needed.
• Boxes 3-17 have to do with the patient’s insurance and dental benefit plan information.
• Boxes 18-23 require data from the patient’s intake forms (name, address, etc.)
• Procedure date (Box 24) is the date your practice performed the procedure.
• General area of oral cavity (Box 25) is arranged by numeric codes rather than abbreviations.
• Tooth system (Box 26) — “JP,” or the American system, follows the ADA’s Universal Tooth Designation System with a combination of letters and numbers.
• Procedure codes (Box 29) — add the most appropriate Current Dental Terminology (CDT) procedure code.
• Description of service (Box 30) — this written description should match the code in Box 29.
• Fee (Box 31) — should reflect the usual and customary rate, not the final negotiated rate.

What Do You Need to Know About the ADA Dental Claim Form?

While it’s a process your staff may complete hundreds of times a day, it’s still worth double-checking to make sure everything is perfect with your ADA claim submission to ensure prompt reimbursement. Late payments can be a hassle, and late reimbursements could be devastating to your patients and their families. 

Learn more about digital forms by Dental Intelligence to collect the important information in a clear and effective way to make filling out the form as simple as possible. Here are some tips and best practices when filling out the ADA dental claim form:

• Note that Boxes 24-32 may require special instructions in cases where the procedure code (Box 29) is “D9985 Sales Tax.”
• Best practices require you to use JP codes for your tooth system (Box 26), but a value set is available² to make mapping international JO numeric codes easy.
• Patients may not always understand the finer points of medical billing, so it’s important to make sure your coding is clear, transparent, and understandable. Patients should feel their needs are met, from the first phone call to the last procedure. Being open about your billing procedures and codes is a great way to support that.
• Make sure to file your claim on time. Delays will only interrupt the payment process and make it harder to complete the forms accurately. You and your staff shouldn’t have to remember everything — not with Dental Intelligence and a full suite of billing tools at your command. 
• Make sure the description of service (Box 30) duplicates the procedure code (Box 29) as closely as possible so the insurance provider doesn’t reject the claim. Insurance companies aren’t doing their job if they’re not looking for ways to reject or downgrade claims.  

Dental Solutions to Save You Time

The ADA dental claim form shouldn’t be difficult to complete, but it can get complicated. To speed things up, learn more about dental medical history forms with Dental Intelligence to evaluate your current forms.

With Dental Intelligence software, you can conveniently capture patient data sets and simplify the process of submitting claims. Dental Intelligence makes it easy to see exactly where you need to go — and how you’re going to get there — with a full suite of tools, from marketing to appointment setting to payments. Schedule a demo with us today to learn more!

Resources

¹ ADA Dental Claim

² ADA Value Set

For some procedures, your practice can bill a patient’s medical insurance instead of their dental insurance. This leads to a common question: how to bill medical insurance for dental procedures, or whether it’s even possible. And the answer is a resounding “Maybe!” 

As any dental practice leader knows, cross-coding can be confusing and time-consuming—and there’s always the chance of the insurance company denying the claim, even after you go through the trouble. But there is overlap in the two systems of coverage, and there are techniques your practice can use to help ensure that insurance covers your patients’ procedures. 

It’s as simple as tying the dental procedure back to a medical diagnosis and demonstrating the link to dental care. 

What Are the Concerns with Billing for Dental Procedures? 

On the one hand, you have dental insurance, which does something very specific — and on the other, you have health insurance, which rejects many claims. You’re trying to get your patient’s care to the place where the two systems overlap. That will result in better outcomes, more reimbursement for your patient, and the satisfaction of a patient well-cared for. 

Of course, dental procedures and treatments billed to health coverage must be medically necessary and use a proper medical code. 

Always make sure you’re clear about why the medical treatments are necessary and identify them with the correct ICD-10 and CPT codes. If you’re billing Medicare, make sure to use the CMS-1500 form.

Any insurance company will reject incorrectly filed or coded claims. It’s important to be sure your procedure is covered before making the attempt. 

What Types of Treatments Does Medical Insurance Cover?

Broadly, there are four categories in which you may have a medical claim: 

• Diagnostic: These are any tests, consults, exams or medical imaging that lead back to a source of pain. You would not be able to bill for your patient’s annual wellness x-rays, but medical insurance would cover specific x-rays to determine the location of an infection. Thorough diagnostic tools like Panorex x-rays, CBCT, and Tomography are all procedures that may qualify for medical reimbursement. 
• Traumatic: Patients’ medical insurance may cover treatment for dental injuries. In general, mouth trauma will often require medical diagnosis, so medical insurance may cover it.
• Surgical: You may be able to submit extractions, removals, implants and biopsies, and many other preventive procedures for reimbursement by medical insurance. Likewise, a situation where dental issues delay other treatments may call for coverage. For instance, if your patient can’t undergo chemotherapy because of a dental issue, then an oral health exam becomes medically necessary.
• ‍Non-Surgical Procedures: Conditions that aren’t traumatic but nonetheless require a medical diagnosis or referral, such as draining an abscess or treating an infection. Cysts, TMJ, and chemotherapy can all have effects throughout the body, and medical coverage could even extend to sleep apnea treatment and dental implants. 

What Are Dental Billing Best Practices? 

The categories above should cover almost all relevant circumstances, although your patient’s Explanation of Benefits (EOB) may help to clarify the particulars. In fact, some coverage might even extend to services that only holistically benefit their oral care, like counseling for improving nutrition or quitting tobacco. 

Remember, the standard your dental practice needs to meet involves showing necessity for the treatment and connecting it to a medical diagnosis. 

Even when you know how to bill medical insurance for dental procedures, patients often still have copays or partial payments out of pocket. To simplify payments for dental care, try Dental Intel’s all-in-one payment solution. With flexible payment options and the ability to remind patients about their bill via text or email, practices collect about $25,000 more per month.

Dental Solutions That Align With Your Patients’ Needs 

Now that you know how to bill medical insurance for dental procedures, you can train your billing department and improve patient care by seeking reimbursement from medical insurance, not just dental insurance. Ultimately, it’s about making sure your patient’s care has adequate coverage, wherever it comes from.

Cross-coding to medical insurance can save your patients money, and that’s a win for your practice. At Dental Intelligence, we offer digital tools to simplify team communication and patient billing to increase dental office collections. Contact us today to schedule a demo and explore how we can improve your dental practice operations.

Patient care comes first. But if your dental practice doesn't earn revenue, it can't stay in business. Correspondence with insurance companies can lag, your staff can make errors throughout the reimbursement processes, and in-house systems or methods can become outdated.  

The important thing is to remember that revenue is a cycle, and managing that cycle — revenue cycle management, or RCM — is about setting the stage for growth in everything that you do. 

Your dental revenue cycle management is all about increasing revenue and cutting costs as your practice grows. That means taking steps to make sure your patient's health journey, from approach to treatment to recovery, is as painless and efficient as possible. The fewer touches, the better — and that means getting things right the first time. 

Here, you'll learn several strategies to keep your revenue cycle growing strong without costing your patients so much as an extra minute. As you'll see, it's all about becoming and staying as efficient as possible. 

Cutting Costs in Patient Acquisition and Retention 

An insurance company will reject claims without correct information, and it's the small details like this you'll have the most trouble tracking down after the fact. Make sure you have the patient information you're going to need throughout the process by reviewing your intake paperwork and procedures. Digital forms make it easy for patients to submit their information. At every appointment, make sure to confirm with each patient that their information is still correct.  

Be realistic about your marketing and the information prospective patients would be looking for: 

• How much time do you and your staff spend on getting new patients?  
• Is your social media abuzz? Do you spend time nurturing those relationships?
• Is your Google Business Listing completely up to date?
• Are your practice's street address, website, and phone number correct and easy to find? 

Finally, verify patients' coverage and benefits well before any scheduled appointments. Be transparent with your fee schedules and procedures, including your patient's responsibilities, so there are no surprises for either your patient or your practice.  

Following Billing Best Practices 

Look at your billing systems and procedures themselves. See where things are getting caught up in the process, where mistakes are being made, and make note of any time the process slows down. Making sure your systems are up to date — and there are no obvious time-wasting areas — is a perfect first step in maximizing your RCM. 

Dental insurance claims can account for a great deal of your practice's revenue, so streamlining your billing processes is absolutely necessary to enhance your RCM. 

Everything your practice has done or undergone to the present day provides data you can use to figure out a better solution. If you're constantly reaching out to patients with past-due bills, try Dental Intelligence's seamless digital dental payments. You can let patients know their bill is due via text or email and accept major debit and credit cards, Apple Pay, and HSA. Dental practices that use Dental Intel Payments get paid an average of 12 days faster and collect $25,000 more within the first three months.

Maintaining a Full Schedule 

Keeping patients coming in the door isn't just good for your practice; it's good for your accounts receivable department and dental revenue cycle management. That's why it's important to stay on top of appointments, follow-ups, annual visits, and all the procedures your patients are too busy to schedule "right now," but they promise to get back to you with dates. 

It's not just about booking the visit, either — you'll want to take every opportunity you can to speed up the process of getting your patients into your practice, treating them, and collecting payment. For scheduling and cash flow purposes, that means: 

• Getting data into your system as cleanly and easily as possible 
• Making it easy for your staff to send patient data where it needs to go
• Ensuring you have everything you need already set up before a patient enters the office.

By staying on top of your schedule, filling in dead spots, asking for referrals, and passing on your business card, you can turn every patient interaction into a chance to mint a new brand ambassador. 

One way you can fill holes in your schedule is by allowing patients to book online using Dental Intelligence Online Scheduling. Let patients book when is convenient for them, while allowing you to keep control of your schedule.

Dental Solutions for Your Practice and Patients 

Dental revenue cycle management is an important way to keep your business going strong. When you learn how to get paid faster, you can stop spending time chasing past-due payments and more time filling your schedule and caring for patients. At Dental Intelligence, we help streamline your practice with a suite of digital tools. Schedule a demo with us today to learn how you can make the dental revenue cycle more manageable.

Choosing forms with fields for insurance information, patient data, and other details makes your new patients’ first impression of your practice a positive one. Great patient care depends on your knowledge of your patients, so start the patient relationship with customized intake forms.

What Should You Include in New Patient Information Forms?

Use your new patient dental forms to get full coverage information, consents and waivers, dental histories, and more.

• General information and preferences: It’s good to get the basics upfront, but this is also a great time to ask about the little touches that make your new patients feel happy, at ease, and at home from that first “hello.”
• Insurance information: Get the patient's dental and medical insurance coverage since medical insurance can cover some diagnostic tests and treatments.
• HIPAA and consent forms, and any waivers.
• Dental and medical histories to get a fuller picture of the concerns your patient may be bringing with them. This will ease every step of their journey, from the first appointment to more in-depth treatment plans.

Your digital and paper record of a patient can tell you a lot more than just the date of their last appointment. Big life changes, such as gaining new dependents or changing jobs, impact your patients’ medical care, and it’s important to capture those changes as quickly as possible. Check in with your existing patients at the beginning of their appointment to see if they need to update their information.

Beyond the Intake Forms: What to Include in Your New Patient Welcome Packet

Your dental practice should make your patient feel understood and taken care of as soon as you make that first contact with a lead or referral. First impressions matter, and that means the intake process is about more than just collecting patient data and payment information. Introducing a new patient to your services should feel friendly, easy, and comprehensive.

Our suggestion for a patient welcome packet, in addition to the required new patient dental forms, includes the following:

• A welcome letter explaining your practice, journey, and qualifications. Patients want to know the dentist behind the mask, and that includes seeing a more personal and human side of the dentist. Plus, it makes patients feel valued and friendly from their first interaction.
• A walkthrough of their first appointment—what new patients can expect, what to bring, and how it will work. It’s no secret that people get nervous about going to the dentist. By allowing them to visualize their visit, you can ease a lot of those unnecessary nerves.
• ‍Introductions to the staff, including the front desk administrator who’ll conduct their intake, will make your office feel like the welcoming second home you want it to be.
• ‍Any other procedures specific to your business, such as COVID-19 safety information.
• ‍A simple cost sheet shows transparency and ensures there are no surprises. In today’s complex medical system, you will gain a lot of goodwill simply by being upfront about costs for each treatment and how you calculate them.

Why Digitize Your New Patient Registration Forms?

In the new patient registration process, patient paperwork is unavoidably the focus. Some patients may balk at filling out long forms, but by making the process fun and easy—and digital—you’re able to capture more and better information than with handwritten forms.

Remember, you’re collecting information as the basis of a records file that will follow this patient through the rest of their life. Even physical forms, if they’re of high quality, can make the data entry process a breeze. Dental Intelligence offers your dental practice a variety of forms and services for just this purpose. Dental Intelligence’s forms for dental practices can help you collect, arrange, and access your patient data digitally to eliminate paper forms and save time for your patients and staff.

You will want to keep these forms in hard copy at the front desk so you’re ready for walk-ins or patients that need another shot at completing them. Or consider installing a Kiosk, so patients can fill out their forms digitally in office.

New Patient Forms to Streaming Intake for Your Practice

At Dental Intelligence, we’re passionate about making your patients’ every visit a good one. The best way to do that is to balance speed and comprehensiveness with your new patient dental forms. Visit the Dental Intelligence website to learn more about dental referral forms, and schedule a demo with our team to learn how you can customize intake forms to fit your practice.

Most dental care providers understand that collecting payment when presenting dental patient financing options is the key to cutting down on accounts receivable. After all, your dental practice is in the business of providing dental care, not credit.

However, patients tend to treat their dentists as credit providers instead of seeking patient financing services. In turn, most dental practices allow late payments because they don’t want to lose patients. When this happens, you will find that patients frequently walk out the door after receiving treatment with no payment plan in place to settle the outstanding amount.

The sections below discuss how to collect money from past-due accounts.

Formulate and Implement a Financial Policy

Before providing dental treatment, the patient should agree to your practice’s financial policy. This agreement should outline the acceptable payment types and the payment responsibilities of cash, check, credit card, and insurance patients. The agreement should also state when your office expects the payment. You can use digital forms from Dental Intelligence to allow for an easy way for patients to review and sign your financial policy.

Implement a Payment Collection System

Your dental practice can implement any collection system for pursuing unpaid invoices, provided that it complies with your state’s laws.

Under most dental offices’ payment policies, a patient account is due within 30 days. Under your financial policy, payments can also be due before the patient’s next dental appointment.

When the payment becomes due, your office should call the patient or send them a message to notify them that their account is overdue. Your team should document all communication with the patient and include the date and time of follow-up calls. Follow Ups allows team members to easily track which patients have past-due accounts and mark their call attempts.

Set a threshold amount for these notifications so that you don’t need to contact patients who owe small amounts, which can end up wasting valuable time and money. Most practices only contact patients owing $100 or more.  

You can also send a notification before the payment becomes due. For example, suppose you receive the explanation of benefits (EOB) letter 20 days after providing treatment. In this case, you can send the EOB letter and the first notice letter to the patient.

Once the payment becomes due, you can send the second notice letter or call the patient to notify them that their payment is due. Some dental practices send up to four notice letters.

Suppose the patient doesn’t pay the account within a specific period after receiving the fourth and final notice. In that case, you can refer the account to the collections attorney or agency for legal action.

The more frequently you bill, the more effective you can expect your collection process to be. For example, you can bill on a net-10 or a net-15 basis instead of waiting 30 days.

When contacting a patient, use the communication method they prefer, such as mail, text, or phone. Consider using Dental Intelligence Payments to allow for an easy collection process where patients can pay via text or email. That way they don’t have to mail a check or make a phone call.

If the patient settles the amount at any point during the collections process, send them a zero-balance letter indicating that you received the payment.

As a business owner, you can implement any collections process that complies with the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).  

You should implement the same process for all past-due accounts. Extending a special courtesy to some patients can significantly affect your accounts receivable management.

Offer Flexible Payment Options

The longer a payment is due, the more challenging it becomes to collect. Offering flexible payment options can make settling the amount easier for the patient. These financing options include a payment plan, financing, or a membership program.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer a dental financing solution in partnership with Wisetack, which makes the collection easier for you and your patients.

Our patient financing options allows you to receive the funds in your bank account, while Wisetack settles the account with the patient over time. In other words, you provide a flexible payment option without assuming any risk.

Schedule a demo with Dental Intelligence today to learn how to collect money from past-due accounts.

Having conversations with patients about dental financing options is likely one of the most significant challenges your team faces every day. With dental care expenditures continuously rising, scheduling treatments with cost-conscious payments can be challenging. 

In this guide, let’s look at how to discuss dental financing options in a manner that:

• Encourages patients to accept expensive treatments
• Decreases the number of account referrals to collections
• Increases the number of patient referrals

Consider the guidelines below to address cost objectives and increase your case acceptance rate. 

Be Confident About Your Pricing

Dental financing conversations are often uncomfortable, especially when dental team members themselves believe no grounds exist for high treatment fees.

When a patient calls you out on the pricing of a treatment you recommend, it can be easy to second-guess your fees. However, when considering the expenses you incur to run your office and provide treatments, it becomes easier to stand behind your fee structure.

Once you start tracking expenses, such as wages, rent, laboratory fees, insurance, and dental supplies, you and your team can confidently discuss treatment costs with patients.

Demonstrate Treatment Value

Prospective patients often object to a dental procedure’s cost because they don’t understand how a specific treatment will benefit them.

Patients might understand what fillings, veneers, or crowns are, but do they realize what positive impact these treatments will have on their well-being, appearance, or quality of life?

For example, a patient may understand that a crown prevents further tooth decay. However, do they know that this dental treatment will restore their facial appearance and make it easier for them to talk and chew?

Discussing the patient’s problems and the solutions you can offer allows you to demonstrate the treatment’s value and frame the treatment as an investment.

When To Have the Cost Conversation

If you run a fee-for-service dental practice, you should have the cost conversation during the first phone call with the patient. Having this conversation during the initial contact is crucial because the patient will need to make a payment when they arrive for their appointment.

On the other hand, suppose your practice implements a traditional reimbursement system, which involves an insurance payout after processing the patient’s claim. In this case, your objective should be to onboard the patient. After verifying the patient’s benefits, your team can discuss available financing options.

Once the patient understands the value of the treatment and decides to continue with the procedure, they need to understand which financing option is best for them. This step is crucial, whether the patient is solely responsible for the entire payment or the gap between the cost and insurance payout.

Tell the patient the amount due after applying for their benefits, then ask them how they would like to pay. In some cases, patients pay immediately with a credit or debit card. However, if the patient wants to learn more about their options, you can offer a payment plan that requires weekly or monthly payments.

Alternatively, the patient can consider dental loans. Patients can use these unsecured personal loans to pay for their dental treatments. If your practice partners with a specific credit provider, you can recommend it as a financing option. In this case, you may need to explain the applicable financing terms, such as the prepayment penalties, unemployment protection, and fees.

Who Is Responsible for Discussing Financing Options With Patients?

Each team member should be comfortable discussing dental financing options with patients, including the dentist, front office staff, and financial coordinator.

Ensure that all your team members understand the expenses surrounding dental treatments. You and your staff should be able to present treatment and payment plans confidently while emphasizing the treatment’s value for the patient.

Contact Us at Dental Intelligence

If you want to provide your patients with stress-free financing options, consider the fully integrated patient financing program by Dental Intelligence and Wisetack. These financing options integrate fully with your treatment plans and provide your team members with instant answers to questions patients typically ask. This solution also provides your patients with pay-as-you-go dental financing options, saving valuable time and money.

Schedule a demo today to learn how to provide dental financing for patients.

Missed appointments are a fact of life for most dental practices, but they can be devastating to smaller practices and a hindrance to more established ones. A recent survey estimates that over 30% of patients don’t make their healthcare appointments, leading to almost $150 billion in annual losses over the entire sector. 

Practices have developed plenty of strategies to deal with no-shows, including wait lists, written cancellation policies, and reminder calls. These manual strategies require extensive resources to be successful but lend themselves extremely well to automation. 

What Are Automated Appointment Reminders?

Automated appointment reminders replace the traditional practice of making phone calls to patients a few days before their scheduled consultation. These calls let patients confirm their availability while also reminding forgetful clients about their next appointment. Automating the process using a specialized patient manager lets practices send out reminders at set times without any manual intervention.

High-end dental appointment reminder software, such as what we offer at Dental Intelligence, even allows clients to choose how they receive patient reminders — text messages or email reminders. Combined with online booking systems, this software enhances patient communications and frees up valuable resources that help your practice grow.

The Benefits of Automated Appointment Reminders

Some practices are reluctant to implement new platforms, but automated appointment reminders are relatively simple to implement and offer an impressive rate of return. They offer many benefits that make them essential to any modern dental practice. 

Reduces Missed Appointments

Missed appointments cost money, not only in terms of lost revenue but also disruptions and unused capacity. Patients miss appointments for various reasons, including emergency situations, anxiety about treatments, lack of transportation, and sheer forgetfulness. 

Reminders address many of these issues. They remind patients of upcoming appointments while allowing them to confirm or reschedule their bookings. They also reassure patients that the practice cares about their well-being and wants to offer them patient-centric treatment. 

Improves Front Desk Efficiency

Front desk staff are usually extremely busy, and going through a call list and trying to reach every patient before their appointment is time-consuming, frustrating, and often ineffective. Patients rarely answer their phones, meaning that front desk staff have to call repeatedly before getting a response. 

Automation frees up a lot of the manual drudgery associated with appointment reminders, giving staff more time to focus on essential tasks that require human intervention. Even better, a reduced workload often results in higher motivation and increased efficiency while providing better service to clients. 

Supports Ongoing Treatment Plan Adherence

Very few patients remember when they last visited the dentist, making it almost impossible to reliably schedule annual check-ups without intervention from your front desk staff. Patients that require ongoing support often forget appointments, disrupting their treatment schedule and resulting in added work for dentists and the front desk. 

Most modern booking systems allow for setting appointments well into the future, streamlining yearly and quarterly appointments. Automated appointment reminders enhance this system by automatically reminding patients about their upcoming appointment. 

Enhances Patient Experience

Automated appointment reminders make it easier for patients to manage their bookings as well. Reminders allow patients to confirm, reschedule, or cancel their appointment, giving them flexibility while letting the practice fill their slots efficiently. 

Many practices benefit from combining online booking systems and automated appointment reminders, giving patients significant control over their schedules. Many patients appreciate this extra level of care and convenience — the fewer roadblocks the patient experiences, the more likely they are to show up for their appointment. 

Automated appointment software will even let practices tailor patient communications based on past interactions and stated preferences. If a patient prefers email communication, you can tell the software to send them an email reminder instead of a text message. These small touches show that your practice cares about its patients and is willing to go the extra mile to meet their needs. 

Take Your Dental Practice to the Next Level

Even simple automation tools can help dental practices take their service to the next level by providing many benefits to staff and patients. If you’re considering moving to a streamlined, digital workflow, automated appointment reminders are a great place to start.

At Dental Intelligence, we provide dental practices with actionable solutions to common practice problems, including drawing up treatment plans, managing patient bookings, and automating many routine tasks. Whether you need help writing a dental appointment reminder email or want to integrate our systems into your existing practice management system, our team at Dental Intelligence is here to help. Visit our website to schedule a demo today!

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‍Achieve an Effortless Workflow With These Top 5 Design Tips for Dentist Offices

So, you’re just about to open a new dental practice, or your current office needs an upgrade. How can you design a functional, modern, and visually pleasing layout? Here are some practical dental office design tips to keep in mind as you brainstorm:

1. Consolidate Spaces To Accommodate Workflow

One common mistake in dental offices is designing a workflow based on the available space instead of the other way around. Successful designs use a workflow-first approach to maximize efficiency, such as consolidating sterilization equipment in a single room.

For example, you could have unwashed tools in one work area, ready-to-use tools in another, and cleaning products/equipment nearby. Also, consider using the natural layout to separate sections rather than physical structures or walls, as it prevents staff from walking more than necessary and bumping into each other.

But how can you tell whether your changes are able to increase dental production? Consider upgrading to the Dental Intelligence dashboard, which provides advanced metric tracking and analytics for key performance indicators. You can analyze data, gain critical insights, and turn practice management into growth opportunities.

2. Find Hidden Space by Repurposing a Closet or Office

Is your dental office at capacity? Would you like more patients but lack the physical space necessary to accommodate them? You just might have more space than you realize. Of course, a complete room renovation and upgrade involves a significant investment and construction process. However, the ROI (return on investment) may be worth it.

Look around for a poorly utilized or unused space, like a closet, storage room, or office you could convert into a patient or procedure room. If you need help consolidating, consider hiring a design team to help you. Unless you’re HGTV-ready (and most of us aren’t), investing in professional design services will make the remodeling process faster, safer, easier, and hassle-free.

3. Consider Optimizing Your Workflow with a New Layout

For most dentists, utilizing a “U” or horseshoe-shaped workflow provides the greatest efficiency. In this type of layout, patients enter the reception area, continue through a hall into their treatment room, and then leave through the opposite side. The result is a smooth, natural workflow that prevents traffic jams.

Another example would be creating identical treatment rooms with the same setup and supplies. Ultimately, it allows staff to perform regular dental services in any treatment room, which prevents “bunching” and eliminates the risk of delays and long waits for the patients.

4. Upgrade Office Technology

Do you use paper forms and scheduling? If so, it’s time to consider going digital. At Dental Intelligence, we offer several advanced tools and cutting-edge software solutions that can streamline your practice, improve patient experience, and free up valuable time for your administrative staff.  

One excellent example is our digital Patient Portal. Patients can fill out intake, consent, and privacy forms before arriving for their appointment. It allows you to admit patients faster and decreases wait times, ultimately improving daily production.

We also offer a Virtual Check-In, which eases the workload for your receptionists.

Those examples are simply a few ways our Dental Intelligence software allows you to increase production even without considering an increase in new patients. Furthermore, investing in new technologies improves patient experience and shows them you’re a modern, high-quality facility where quality of care matters. 

5. Consider a Minimalist and Thoughtful Design

A bright, kid-friendly layout is acceptable for pediatric dentist offices, but adult-only practices may benefit from a minimalist and thoughtful design that maximizes patient comfort in the waiting area. Use clean, sleek lines, comfortable (but not oversized) furniture, modern technology, and a neutral color palette. Offer free Wi-Fi, beverages, snacks, and more amenities in the waiting room, and go light on the artwork and knick-knacks.

Design Your Dental Office to Support a Naturally Smooth Workflow

The five dental office design tips we just listed are an excellent starting point for new practices or renovations. If you’re interested in learning more about streamlining your business, improving patient experience, and maximizing efficiency in the office, we invite you to read more from our Dental Intelligence blog. Contact us today to schedule a demo with the Dental Intelligence team.

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Are you considering a dental office bonus system to motivate your staff and boost productivity? Staff enthusiasm and motivation will rise and fall naturally throughout the course of the year. However, implementing a bonus system may help push your employees to do better and keep your dental practice thriving.

At Dental Intelligence, we help dental professionals improve their practices, driving growth and production. Below, we explain all about dental bonus systems and how you can use them to benefit your business.

What Is a Bonus System?

A dental office bonus program is a compensation-for-work system that rewards your employees' enthusiasm and hard work. For example, they can earn rewards or incentives if they complete work above and beyond their usual output.

A bonus program keeps employees motivated, engaged, and giving their best performance towards furthering the practice and caring for patients. Furthermore, it gives them a good feeling when they come to work for more than just a paycheck and instills a sense of pride in their work.

How Can a Bonus Plan Benefit Your Dental Practice?

A bonus or incentive plan can offer many different benefits for your dental office, including:

Increasing Work Production

Of course, the intended purpose of a bonus program for your dental team is to increase productivity at work, whether that's scheduling new patients or improving collection numbers. Once you set a monthly goal for your dental staff, you can start increasing dental production using Dental Intelligence by leveraging our cutting-edge software and actionable solutions. You can use Follow Ups to track team member’s calls and their success in different tasks such as getting patients back on the schedule or past due balances paid. The ultimate benefit of increasing productivity is the ROI (return on investment) regarding growth and profits for your dental office.  

Boosting Employee Motivation and Engagement

In addition to increasing dental production, establishing an office incentive program also boosts the motivation and engagement of your employees. It eliminates the "groundhog day" feeling of monotony in a work environment and lets your dental team feel more satisfied, proud, and accomplished. Ultimately, your staff will feel that their work has more meaning besides just helping your business grow and profit.  

Strengthening Staff Relationships and Company Culture

When your dental team can align and work towards a single goal, it has the added benefit of strengthening their work relationships and creating a strong, solid company culture. Everyone working towards a common purpose fosters a sense of camaraderie. Then, when their collective hard work achieves goals, your staff can bond over a mutual admiration.   

Best Practices for a Dental Office Bonus Program

Structuring an effective bonus program with attainable goals is a bit harder than it sounds. Below are some attributes of a good bonus system to keep in mind when creating one for your dental assistants and administrative staff:

• Win-Win: The foundation of your bonus system should be a win-win situation for both you and your staff. It shouldn't cause you a financial loss, and you should give the rewards will full enthusiasm and willingness. 
• Attainable: Create goals for your staff that are realistically achievable yet still provide a challenge.   
• Short-Term: The plan should be relatively short-term. For example, annual bonus rewards can seem impossibly far away, which can result in lagging enthusiasm and motivation. Instead, consider implementing a monthly goal system.
• Measurable: Your system should have easily measurable goals. Of course, you’ll spend time thoroughly explaining and outlining the bonus program. However, your expectations should be very clear, regardless.

Quick Ideas for Bonus Programs

Here are a few ideas for bonus plans:

• Monthly Bonus: Offer team and individual incentives when staff meets a monthly goal.
• Spot Bonus: Reward staff members "on the spot" when they show particular initiative or hard work.
• Competition Bonus: A competition bonus system rewards the first few team members who meet your assigned goal. Use a sliding scale, such as: The top ten get good rewards, the top five get even better rewards, and the top three win grand prizes.
• ‍Profit-Sharing Bonus: If you have room in the budget, you may want to structure a system that rewards your staff with a certain percentage of the month's profits for your practice.
• ‍Referral Bonus: Offer rewards for staff who refer new patients or employees.

Grow Your Practice with a Dental Office Bonus System

A dental office bonus system can reward and motivate your employees and allow your practice to flourish. Interested in learning more about how to enhance your dental practice? Find out how to improve your dental waiting room, streamline scheduling, and increase production per visit on the Dental Intelligence blog. Contact us today to schedule a demo of our innovative products and solutions.

Dental practices face several obstacles to delivering high-quality care, such as getting patients to accept treatment plans. According to a recent Levin Group practice survey¹, case acceptance rates for two-thirds of U.S. dental practices fall between 20% and 50%, which is well below the common industry target of 90%. 

It’s easy to get stuck on numbers and statistics, but the most effective way of improving your practice’s case acceptance rate is to understand what makes patients refuse treatment. By having a system in place that promotes treatment acceptance, you can improve the client experience while keeping your practice thriving.

Create a Positive Initial Impression

A new patient will already have an impression of a dental practice before walking through the door. Prospective clients will frequently use the internet to find a dentist in their area. Having a well-designed and appealing website is essential to attracting new patients and creating a strong impression of professionalism, care, and trustworthiness.

You can also employ strategies such as calling patients before their scheduled appointment to confirm and say that you’re looking forward to meeting them. This generally creates goodwill by showing the patient that the practice cares about individuals, but employing this strategy means walking the fine line between caring and spamming. 

Online reviews also play a big part in a patient’s initial impression of you and your practice.

The better the patient’s impression of the practice and its staff, the more responsive they will be to proposed treatment plans.

Hone Your Dental Case Presentation Skills

Every dentist approaches dental case presentation differently, with varying levels of success. Having an established template for most treatment options and role-playing case presentations can help dentists get practice at delivering vital information about dental treatment without overwhelming the patient and resulting in a higher case acceptance rate. 

A good dental presentation will contain the following aspects:

• A clear outline of the problem and its potential implications if left unaddressed. Many patients don’t present symptoms, so they’re not urgently seeking care. Most will try a “wait and see” approach and only request treatment when the condition worsens. Dentists can circumvent this by explicitly stating how the condition can worsen if left untreated and how early intervention is often less painful and more affordable than emergency care. 
• Visual aids to help the patient understand the issue and the proposed treatment. You can even give them a copy of their completed dental treatment plan by Dental Intelligence, which they can refer to later.
• A detailed explanation of the proposed treatment, including the benefits of treatment and potential risks. The dentist should explain how the treatment will address the specific concern and present alternative options and their risks and benefits. 
• A way to confirm patient understanding — many patients will say they understand when, in fact, they don’t. This miscommunication leads to faulty assumptions that affect the patient’s final decision.
• Simple and concise language without too many medical terms. Dentists can also use shorter sentences or break the presentation into blocks, allowing the patient time to understand and ask questions before moving forward. 

Understand Patient Concerns

Patients typically have three barriers to accepting treatment: financial concerns, fear, and the time commitment associated with longer treatments. Dental practices should have plans in place to address each of these roadblocks while still taking them seriously — a dentist that scoffs at a patient’s nervousness will quickly lose patients.

For most patients, the main concern is cost, especially for larger treatments if the patient doesn’t perceive them as urgent. Treatment coordinators should provide various payment options and inform patients of these options during the case presentation. Consider offering patient financing options from Dental Intelligence through Wisetack.

As finances are generally a prickly subject, it’s vital to train your team to handle these issues compassionately and effectively. Common techniques include reassuring patients that costs are a common concern, that they are not alone, and that the dental practice is ready and willing to help them get the care they need and deserve. 

Follow Up After the Consultation

Wherever possible, treatment coordinators should schedule the appointment before the patient leaves the practice. 

Patients that don’t have a fixed appointment will start worrying about their options and whether they really need the treatment. This is especially true for non-emergency patients, who may not experience any pain or difficulty due to their condition. A friendly follow-up can reassure patients that they’ve made the right choice. If necessary, practices can schedule a follow-up consultation to address the patient’s reluctance and book the treatment. 

If you have questions on how to improve treatment acceptance and take your practice to the next level, get in touch with us at Dental Intelligence and book a demo today!

Resources

¹ Dental Economics

When potential customers in your area do an online search for a dentist near them, you want your website or Google Business Profile to be among the top results. Various factors determine your search engine ranking and online visibility, such as your:

• Presence on Google Maps
• Proximity to the searcher
• Local website optimizations
• Google Business Profile presence
• Online customer reviews

Of these ranking factors, positive customer reviews are among the most crucial. Google uses reviews to determine your practice’s credibility and resulting search ranking.

Prospective patients also trust online reviews to gain insight into your service and dental treatments. The more positive online reviews you have, the more patients your practice will attract, ensuring that your practice grows sustainably over the long run.

Setup and Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Before implementing a review-based marketing strategy, you must ensure that your patients have a platform to leave reviews. Dental patients often use platforms such as Yelp, Facebook, or the Better Business Bureau. However, because Google dominates the search engine market, you want to be sure your patients leave reviews on your Google Business Profile.

After claiming your Google Business Profile, you need to take advantage of this listing by adding details, such as your name, address, phone number, and practice website URL.

Adding this information will optimize your Google Business Profile and increase your ranking for relevant search terms, such as “dentist near me.”

Provide a High-Quality Patient Experience

Improving your practice’s dental patient experience will go a long way toward increasing its number of positive online reviews. Happy customers are more likely to give positive reviews. You can evaluate patient experience by assessing the following factors:

• Ease of scheduling appointments
• Scheduling protocols to minimize patients’ wait times
• Coordination between the front- and back-office staff
• Quality of telephone and face-to-face communication with patients
• Protection of patient information
• Office and bathroom cleanliness
• Available dental financing options
• Treatment presentation

A positive experience eliminates objections patients may have to give a positive review. You can also confidently request a star rating and testimonial without fearing that a patient will leave a negative review.

Ask For Reviews Via Email or Text

Patients often want to leave positive reviews but don’t know where. After the patient leaves, you can send them a review request via text or email using Online Reviews from Dental Intelligence. You can also manage your reviews using our Swell integration.  

The review request you send should explain that you value your patients’ input and that their reviews can help others make informed decisions. This method makes it easy for patients to leave a review without wasting valuable time.

Embrace Negative Reviews

A negative review is not necessarily bad for your practice, and you shouldn’t let an irrational fear of negative evaluations keep you from using this valuable marketing tool. Most significantly bad reviews allow you to identify potential weaknesses you can address to improve your practice.

Google users tend to distrust businesses that only have five-star reviews. A negative review here and there indicates authenticity and transparency. Responding to negative reviews also demonstrates your commitment to customer service.

Contact Us at Dental Intelligence

At Dental Intelligence, we offer digital marketing strategies and lead monitoring solutions to help you leverage the value of online reviews. Our automated review request solution supports up to five review platforms, including Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Contact us today to schedule a demo if you want to find out how to get more online reviews and grow your dental practice.

When a patient calls your dental practice, they’re getting a critical first impression of your office and how it runs, which will determine whether they make an appointment or call another dentist. Therefore, implementing a set of standard dental office receptionist scripts is essential.

In this post, learn best practices for dental office receptionist scripts that will help your team engage patients and prevent any lost conversions.

Simple, Polite, and Professional Dental Practice Call Scripts for Receptionists

Here are some script examples, based on the most common patient phone calls and questions that dental offices receive:

1. Confirm an Appointment Time

Many dental offices call patients to remind them of a future appointment or dental treatment. It’s best to call patients a few days ahead to remind them, which gives you extra time to fill the appointment slot should they cancel. Here’s a general script to follow:

“Hi, (patient name). This is (caller) at (practice name). I’m calling to confirm your upcoming appointment with us on (date) at (time). Does that still work for your schedule?”

Should the patient say no, ask if they would like to reschedule. If not, prompt them to call back when they are ready to book a new appointment, and wish them well.

“Okay, would you like to reschedule that appointment? We have a few openings on (dates and times). Okay, perfect. We look forward to seeing you then. Have a wonderful day!”

Alternatively, you can use automated reminders to help patients remember when their appointment is. For example, upgrading to dental appointment reminder software from Dental Intelligence is an excellent way to remind patients of their future visits, reduce the time your staff has to spend on the phone, and makes confirmations faster and more convenient for patients.

2. Possible Future Patients

New or potential patients can be challenging. It’s much harder to acquire new business than it is to retain loyal patients, as it takes time to establish trust. Here’s a script for following up with potential patients:

“Hello, (patient name). This is (caller) from (practice). We noticed you had recently called to inquire about (treatment, price, etc.). Is this a good time for you to talk?

No:

“Okay, when would be a good time for us to call you back?”

Yes:

“Would you like more information about (specific question/service) or to book an appointment? We have openings on (dates and times). Can we schedule you for one of those times?

3. Rescheduling Missed Appointments

Many patients miss appointments—it’s a fact of life for healthcare and dental professionals. However, you should ideally call them back within a day or two of missing an appointment.

“Hi, (patient name). This is (caller) from (practice). Since you missed your appointment on (date and time), can we reschedule you for another time? We have openings on (dates and times).

4. Scheduling Return Visits

It’s also essential to call patients who may not have had time to schedule a new appointment after their last time in the office.

“Hello, (patient name). This is (caller) from (practice). We’re calling to schedule your next (service, treatment, cleaning). Can we set a date now for your next appointment? We have openings on (dates and times).

Important Tips To Remember When Following Office Call Scripts

Here are a few tips for dental office staff to remember when they’re engaging with patients over the phone:

Be Brief: Nobody has time for long phone calls during the day, particularly if they’re at work. Stick to the call objective and keep it brief.

Be Genuine: When speaking with patients, keep a warm and genuine yet professional tone. Personalize the conversation without straying too much from the call’s purpose.

Be Thorough: Before you finish the call, give a quick recap for the patient and explain what (if anything) you expect of them. For example, tell them again the date and time of their appointment, whether they need to fill out paperwork on the website, to call back at a particular time, bring their retainer, and so forth.

Best Practices for Dental Office Receptionist Scripts

Do you want to learn more powerful and simple ways to schedule patients and help your business grow and thrive? We’ve got everything you need here at Dental Intelligence, including advanced software solutions and cutting-edge tools to streamline your practice. Contact us today to learn more about our services or schedule a demo.

In today’s digital age, claiming the Google Business Profile for your dental practice isn’t just smart—it’s absolutely necessary. Increasing the strength of your digital footprint and attaining more visibility gives you a valuable edge over the local competition and often results in more qualified leads, conversions, and new patient bookings.

At Dental Intelligence, we help dental professionals drive growth using a combination of expertise, skill, and cutting-edge solutions. Below, we explain why it’s so essential for dentists to maintain a Google My Business profile and how it can benefit your practice.

What Is Google My Business?

A Google Business Profile (GBP) (formerly Google My Business) is the Google Maps image and business description that shows on the search engine results pages (SERPs) when a user searches for your practice name or phrases like “Dentists near me.” This valuable tool allows business owners to manage their online presence effectively and ensures that profile visitors see current contact information.

In addition, it’s much easier to rank at the top of Google SERPs for your GBP than for your actual website. Setting up the page and claiming your business is simple—verification usually takes a few weeks to finalize. It’s one of the best ways to leverage local SEO for dental practices to drive more organic traffic and quality leads.

In addition, you can maximize the benefits from your local SEO (search engine optimization) efforts using tools and software from Dental Intelligence, like our marketing strategies, online review platforms, and Swell integration.

How Does a Google Business Profile Benefit Your Dental Practice?

So, why is it crucial for dentists to actively maintain their Google Business Profile page? Consider the following benefits of using local SEO and GBP to market your practice:

Establishing Trust and Credibility

Your GBP page combines a map, business listing, contact information, photos, and reviews in one place – Google Search and Maps, which undisputedly rules the search engine market with an 85 to 90% share. It shows the general public that you’re a reputable, trustworthy, and credible business.

Increasing Your Online Exposure

When people search for dental services in your local area, they use queries like “dentists near me” or “best cosmetic dentists.” When this occurs, you want them to see your practice first, and managing your GBP is an excellent way to accomplish this. According to a Google My Business study¹, the average company obtains 59 actions from its GBP listing every month.  

Strengthening Your Local Presence

As a dental professional, your SEO efforts will focus primarily on obtaining local business instead of reaching a nationwide audience. Thus, it’s essential to have a current, accurate, and informative business description on your Google Business Profile, allowing potential patients to contact you immediately when they need your services. Likewise, maintaining this page strengthens your local presence and reassures the public that you’re a legitimate, credible business with a happy and satisfied patient base.

Boosting Leads and Conversions

The goal of SEO is to reach a wider audience, generate more leads, increase conversions, and book new patients. Claiming and managing a GBP listing facilitates your SEO efforts and improves visibility, which means you have more page views, calls, and, ultimately, more business. In fact, 88% of consumers² will call or visit a company within 24 hours of making a local search on their mobile device.

Managing Your Reputation

Your Google Business Profile also includes an online review section where you can reply to patient feedback. Actively responding to positive and negative reviews is a critical part of effective reputation management. Furthermore, it shows patients you genuinely care about their experience with your practice, establishing trust and credibility.

Actively Communicating and Engaging with Patients

A GBP page also encourages patient engagement and facilitates communication. You can view feedback, respond to reviews, upload photos of your practice, and more. In addition, people can “like” and “follow” your business. Your GBP listing also allows patients to self-schedule appointments from your profile, which improves convenience, efficiency, and patient experience.

Optimize Your Digital Presence and Drive Growth With a GBP Page and the Help of Dental Intelligence

As you can see, the benefits of actively managing your dental practice’s Google Business Profile page are well worth the small investment of time and effort required. At Dental Intelligence, our products and services help dental professionals develop a seamless workflow, increase production, and drive growth.

Check out our Dental Intelligence blog for more tips, like the perfect dental SEO keywords, optimizing marketing strategies, how to monitor key performance metrics, and more. Contact us to schedule a demo of our innovative solutions.  

Resources

¹ Google My Business Study

² SEO Tribunal

The first days and weeks of a new job can be daunting. To help recent hires hit the ground running, it’s critical to make them feel part of the team as soon as possible. Here are our top tips on how to welcome a new team member to your dental practice:

Have a Well-Thought-Out Onboarding Strategy

If you run a small dental office, it may be tempting just to make up the onboarding process as you go along. You have enough on your plate as it is. Why add the extra responsibility of creating a formal onboarding process to your to-do list? Besides, small businesses don’t need these kinds of formal HR protocols, right? 

Wrong. All dental practices should have standardized processes for training and onboarding new hires. This not only takes the guesswork out of onboarding but also ensures that you don’t inadvertently skip important steps or best practices. 

The simplest way to go about it is to create an onboarding checklist. Potential action items for your list include:

• Compliance: Start by taking care of any legal and policy-related issues, such as verification of employee documentation and form submission.
• Clarification: Train new employees, ensure they understand their roles, and set clear expectations. 
• Culture: Introduce new hires to the rest of the team and the company culture and values.
• ‍Connection: Assign a dedicated mentor or point of contact for each new hire.

In addition to the onboarding checklist, it’s also a good idea to have an employee handbook with all the information a new hire might need to hit the ground running.

Set Clear Expectations 

To perform their duties properly, employees must first know what these are. Make sure new hires understand all aspects of their positions, including not just their core duties but also any fringe or occasional responsibilities. For instance, a dental assistant in a smaller practice may have additional roles such as scheduling appointments or keeping records.

A great way to set clear expectations from the outset is to enclose a job description with the offer letter. Later in the onboarding experience, you may also provide training materials that cover the position in more depth and that new hires can refer to going forward.

Check In on New Hires and Give Feedback

It’s essential to check in with new hires often, even if you think you’ve explained everything or they look like they have it under control. 

Regular check-ins can help you identify and address potential issues early in the employee onboarding before they become real problems. It’s also easier to monitor policy compliance and confirm that new hires can complete their tasks by the end of their shift.

As you do that, be sure to provide easy-to-understand, actionable feedback on how the new hires can improve or become more productive. This is an essential part of learning how to welcome a new team member.

Encourage Communication and Collaboration

Easy, open, and rapid communication and streamlined collaboration between staff members not only make your practice more efficient but also facilitate employee engagement and can help new hires feel part of the team more quickly.  

At Dental Intelligence, we make this happen using our system for office communication for dental practice teams. Our communication solutions allow you to:

• Connect with your coworkers
• Send individual and group messages
• Get notifications about unread messages 
• Manage schedule changes in real time
• Keep all team members in the loop
• Collaborate and communicate even when away from your computer

Make New Hires Feel Part of the Team With Dental Intelligence

The onboarding process is crucial for ensuring the future success of new hires and establishing relationships with your team — and you only get one chance to do it right. Once that introductory period is over, it can be hard for new hires to unlearn bad practices, become more engaged, or better connect with other staff members.  

At Dental Intelligence, we take onboarding seriously. That’s why we developed our communication software for dental practices. With it, you can set the right tone for all your future working relationships. 

Don’t take our word for it. Contact us at Dental Intelligence and schedule a free demo to learn how to welcome a new team member using our cutting-edge communication solutions.

According to a 2015 study by the American Dental Association (ADA), 75% of dentists experience stress on the job. Keep reading to learn how to manage and reduce workplace stress using mindfulness, self-care, and social support.

1. Learn To Identify Good and Bad Stress

The word “stress” has a negative connotation that’s somewhat unwarranted. Not all stress is bad. Occasional short-term challenges can keep you energized, motivate you to set and achieve goals, and boost your professional performance. According to some studies, good stress may even have health benefits. 

Chronic stress, on the other hand, is bad for you — even if it’s moderate. Over time, this type of stress can wear you out both physically and mentally, resulting in anxiety, decreased performance, poor concentration, and more.

As dentists are at a higher risk of experiencing workplace stress than the average professional, it’s essential to learn to identify good and bad stress. That will enable you to take measures to nip negative stress in the bud and use positive stress to develop as a professional and grow your dental practice. Common symptoms of chronic stress include:

• Fatigue 
• Headaches
• Body aches
• Digestive issues 
• Hypertension 
• Hyperventilation 
• Rapid heartbeat
• Shallow or rapid breathing
• Appetite changes
• Sleep disturbances
• Irritability or mood swings
• Anxiety 
• Depression 

2. Make Self-Care Non-Negotiable

In your line of work, self-care isn’t optional. It’s imperative that you set aside time to recharge your batteries daily. Otherwise, there may be negative consequences not just for you but for your patients as well.

The good news is that many self-care practices can fit seamlessly into your busy schedule. Even something as simple as not skipping lunch breaks or doing short breathing and mindfulness exercises between appointments can be very beneficial for your physical and mental health.

Other potential self-care strategies you may want to explore include:

• Exercising
• Dancing
• Meditating 
• Getting massages
• Engaging in hobbies or creative pursuits 
• Socializing with friends and family
• Going on trips
• Spending time in nature
• Building a regular spiritual practice

The only limit is your imagination. Any activity that improves your physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual health — other than spacing out in front of the TV or mindlessly scrolling your social media feeds — can help decrease your overall stress and make you more resilient.

3. Set Healthy Boundaries With Patients

Patients and dentist-patient relationships are significant sources of stress in dentistry. No matter how friendly you and your staff may be, some people still won’t enjoy their visits to your office. Patients are often anxious, upset, scared, or in pain, and these negative emotions can easily spill over to you without you even realizing it.

It’s essential that you learn not to internalize patient anxiety, especially if you are a highly sensitive or empathetic person. You can sympathize with patients without empathizing with them.

One way to do that is by assuming an active role in the process and helping people through their anxiety instead of feeling it with them. For instance, the ADA recommends using guided breathing exercises to help patients relax.

4. Build a Robust Support Network

Social support is critical for improving our resilience to stress. In addition to bonding with the people in your personal life, consider investing time and effort into your work relationships as well. Connecting with people who are going through similar challenges can help validate your emotions and make the experience less stressful overall. 

One of the best ways to build rapport within your team is to improve dental office communication. Modern technologies like our dental practice communication system can be of great help in this regard. You can use our software solutions to:

• Start individual and group chats
• Receive notifications about unread messages on your phone
• Streamline collaboration between staff members
• Manage schedule changes and plan your day in real time
• Create a better patient handoff experience
• Keep the entire team in the loop

Reduce Stress in Dentistry With Dental Intelligence

At Dental Intelligence, we understand that efficient collaboration and good interpersonal relationships are critical for a successful, stress-free dental practice. That’s why we designed our dental practice communication system to help you drastically improve team rapport and interactions.

Don’t take our word for it. Contact us today to schedule a free demo to see the system in action and get more communication tips for improved dental team performance.

In addition to improving health outcomes, patient education has a strong business rationale. Keeping dental patients informed about treatment options, oral health conditions, and the latest advancements in dentistry can increase satisfaction and retention rates and even help you attract more patients. 

With this in mind, check out our top tips for developing and delivering effective dental education for patients:

1. Ensure That Your Educational Materials Are Accessible 

As a dental professional, you likely default to technical language without even realizing it. That’s not a problem when speaking with other oral health experts, but you want to avoid medical jargon when communicating with patients. Use everyday language where possible, and keep your informational materials concise, simple, and easy to understand. 

You also need to remember that people process information differently. Auditory learners learn by listening, visual learners learn by seeing and reading, and process learners learn through association and application. Your educational materials should cater to the different learning styles and feature a well-balanced mix of text, practical examples, and high-quality visual aids, such as:

• Photos
• Graphs
• Videos
• Animations
• 3D dental models

Generational differences can also influence how people absorb information. Older patients may prefer paper-based brochures and booklets, whereas millennials and Gen Z patients are more likely to use digital resources like blogs, online articles, mobile apps, and other software solutions. Keep those differences in mind and consider providing both hardcopy and electronic educational materials in your practice.

2. Don’t Scare Patients — Empower Them

It’s important to educate people about various oral diseases and conditions, as well as the potential consequences of neglecting oral care or failing to address issues early. 

However, you don’t want to terrify your patients into inaction. Instead, create a sense of agency and empowerment by detailing the available treatment options, laying out concrete steps patients can take to improve their oral health, and explaining how your practice can help.

You should also set time aside for one-on-one discussions before, during, or after appointments. By personally answering patients’ questions and appeasing their concerns, you can help them feel seen, heard, and supported. In addition to improving dental care outcomes, that’s a highly effective way to increase retention rates and generate repeat business.

3. Step Up Your Branding Efforts

Informational materials can do more than provide dental education for patients: They can also promote your business. 

At a minimum, everything from the waiting room brochures to the informational videos on your website should feature your practice name, logo, brand colors, and contact information. 

Don’t stop there — make sure that your materials also reflect your dental health philosophy and your services. Do you prioritize a healthy lifestyle and regular preventative care over invasive procedures? Make sure your communications, branding, and informational materials get that message across.

If you want to really stand out from the crowd, consider developing original content using intraoral photography, case studies, and patient interviews from your practice. Many dental care providers repurpose and recycle the same generic information, so creating unique materials can help you cut through the noise.

4. Use Loyalty Rewards To Facilitate Patient Education 

Patients today don’t want to read boring leaflets. The patient education of the future is fun, interactive, and gamified. 

That’s precisely the philosophy underpinning the patient loyalty program by Dental Intelligence. Our smart solutions for loyal patients can incentivize various behaviors that will improve health outcomes and make your practice more efficient, such as:

• Confirming appointments
• Being on time
• Submitting insurance information
• Filling out patient forms
• Referring family and friends
• Making payments on time

Crucially, you can customize our loyalty program to reward patients when they engage with messages from your practice, including educational communication. 

Educate, Engage, and Delight Your Patients With Dental Intelligence

Dental patients today expect to have information and services at their fingertips. To outrun the competition, you must stay ahead of the technology curve and deliver the modern solutions your patients seek and love.

At Dental Intelligence, we understand the importance of creating interactive dental education for patients. With our smart solutions for dental practices, you can not only engage and inform patients but also receive powerful analytics, benefit from online scheduling, process payments online, and more.

Don’t take our word for it. Contact us to schedule a free demo and learn how to attract new patients, retain existing ones, and boost your revenue.

One of the key aspects of a successful dental practice is a high treatment acceptance rate. Not only do low acceptance rates decrease overall patient health, but they can also affect the practice’s bottom line.

A dental treatment coordinator (DTC) can play a significant role. The dental treatment coordinator’s main responsibility is guiding patients through various options with the goal of treatment acceptance. By relieving dentists of this duty, DTCs can apply their sales skills to reassuring and informing patients, resulting in higher acceptance rates and better quality care. 

Using a dental treatment plan template from Dental Intelligence can encourage patients to consent to treatment and make it easier for your DTCs to present treatment effectively.

The DTC Conducts the Case Presentation and Follow-Up Discussions

In many small dental practices, dentists are responsible for case presentations. Unfortunately, these can take up to an hour for complex cases, dramatically cutting into the dentist’s time. Having a dental treatment coordinator take on the task — while still having the dentist offer additional input and technical expertise — frees the dentist to focus on providing dental care instead of patient administration. 

Treatment coordinators can even increase the success of case presentations, as they will have enough time to make the patient feel comfortable during the session. They will answer any questions and address any concerns, allowing the patient to make an informed decision about their treatment plan. Patients feel reassured by consistently dealing with one person instead of several dentists assigned to their case. As the treatment coordinator builds the relationship, patients will be more likely to seek and accept treatments for their oral health problems. 

Dental treatment coordinators are also responsible for following up on patients who leave without scheduling their treatment. While the ideal scenario is having the consultation and immediately scheduling the treatment, most patients want time to contemplate their options. While allowing patients to do so can build trust, most patients are unlikely to schedule a visit after leaving the practice. Following up within two or three days shows the patient that the dental office cares for their well-being, and the dental coordinator will be able to alleviate any lingering concerns and schedule the treatment during this follow-up session. 

The DTC Outlines Financial Options 

One of the largest factors for care refusal is the financial burden of treatment. Even patients with health insurance coverage may not have the finances to cover copayments, especially for larger, more complex procedures. Unfortunately, many patients are reluctant to bring up financial concerns as the reason for refusal, which is why the dental treatment coordinator should do so first. 

After the case presentation, the dental treatment coordinator should outline the practice's various payment plans. These can include discounts for up-front payments, interest-free monthly payments, or third-party financing. By treating this part of the case presentation as routine, coordinators reduce the stigma of needing financing assistance, which often translates to a higher treatment acceptance rate. Dental Intelligence offers easy patient financing options through Wisetack, which make it even easier for patients to say “yes.”

Characteristics of an Excellent Dental Treatment Coordinator

DTCs are often the face of the dental practice, so they must have the right characteristics to succeed. These characteristics include being:

• Engaging: Treatment coordinators must be able to form a connection with prospective patients. They should be able to provide advice clearly without too much detail to avoid overwhelming the patient and should be able to foster a sense of trust and reliability.
• Prepared: The key to a successful case presentation is preparation, which includes having the right visual aids and script and being ready to answer any patient's questions.
• ‍Persistent: Patients have many reasons to refuse treatment, including fear of pain, financial concerns, or feeling that they don’t need the treatment. A good dental treatment coordinator will be able to listen while being persistent enough to encourage patients to make the right decision, even if the initial answer is a “no”.

The Power of a Dental Treatment Coordinator

A good dental treatment coordinator can be an asset to any practice. They free up dentists to focus on providing high-quality treatments and can increase customer loyalty, improve the customer experience, and keep acceptance rates high. 

Whether you want to learn about dental treatment plans or need assistance with any other aspect of your practice, Dental Intelligence is here to help. Schedule a demo to discover how to take your practice to the next level!

Dental narratives explain to insurance companies why they should accept claims. When your patient needs dental treatments beyond their standard covered services, you must provide documents and supporting explanations detailing why a given procedure will improve the patient’s health. Many dental care practitioners feel overwhelmed by writing narratives.

At Dental Intelligence, we help dental practices improve their internal operations for optimal patient and team experiences. Our software also helps you easily collect payments for dental services without wasting precious resources. Continue reading below to learn our top six tips on writing dental narratives for insurance claims.

1. Understand Coverage Inclusions and Exclusions 

Before writing narratives, determine what the insurer will or will not cover. For example, most organizations cover two standard cleanings per year, so you shouldn’t waste time writing narratives for services included under this umbrella. 

Insurers often state which treatments they don’t cover. A few common examples include the following:

• Attrition (tooth structure wear and tear)
• Abrasion (tooth damage from brushing)
• Abfraction (tooth damage from traumatic forces)
• Erosion (gradual tooth destruction from products or poor hygiene)

Using the above terms in your narrative will likely result in a denial from many companies. Learning what you can and cannot say to insurers can help you improve success rates. 

2. Skip the Prewritten Templates 

Stock dental narratives may seem the quickest and easiest solution, but they don’t adequately display the patient’s needs. A narrative should tell the patient’s full story, including the context surrounding their problem, potential future complications, symptoms, etc. You will not find such specific details in prewritten templates. 

Stock narratives typically use vague information that may not relate to your patient’s needs. Such inaccuracies can lead to denials and fraud claims. To maintain your practice’s reputation and claim approval rates, you should write each narrative individually. 

3. Keep the Narrative Concise and Informative 

While you want to discuss the patient in detail, you don’t need to tell their whole life story. Only include the most relevant information relating to the claim. The narrative should generally cover the “who, what, when, where, and why” supporting the patient’s medical necessity. 

For example, the narrative for a ceramic crown may include the following details:

• Existing crown placement (if replacing) details with date and reason for replacement
• The pathology report on the tooth’s condition
• A detailed cosmetic explanation (when appropriate)
• The amount and location of decay
• Any past or planned root canals
• The prior filling restoration size
• The estimated amount of tooth remaining after decay removal
• The remaining tooth structure condition
• Fracture notes
• Additional diagnoses, like cracked tooth syndrome
• Tooth periodontic and endodontic prognoses
• Patient symptoms or chief complaints
• Radiographic images
• Intraoral images
• Prep and complete dates

4. Add Context to the Evidence

Insurers cannot look at an x-ray of a broken tooth and understand why the patient would need treatment. You must explain the context behind all attached evidence, translating what the information indicates and why it proves that the patient’s health depends on the requested service. 

When explaining context, focus on tooth functionality and future complications if not fixed. Try to include specific figures, like decay percentages and estimates, for the most detailed explanation possible. 

5. Avoid Mentioning Cosmetic Problems

Most insurers won’t accept claims for cosmetic issues. For example, if the patient cracks a front tooth and wishes to fix it, you may need to consider functional reasons that can improve the claim’s acceptance likelihood. For a cracked tooth, you could explain how the patient has pain, trouble chewing foods, and a general lack of functionality rather than discussing how their smile looks. 

6. Keep It Professional 

Before submitting your claim, you want to ensure it sounds professional and legitimate. We recommend the following tips:

• Avoid abbreviations and slang words
• Do not handwrite the narrative
• Spellcheck the document for errors
• Add all supporting evidence in downloadable formats
• Attach digital clinical notes when appropriate

Get Paid Faster With Dental Intelligence

Crafting successful dental narratives improves claim acceptance rates, patient outcomes and satisfaction, and practice revenue streams. At Dental Intelligence, we want to help you learn how to get paid faster. Our comprehensive software automates the payment collection process with seamless digital experiences that your patients and team will love.

Schedule a demo with Dental Intelligence today to see how our platform can transform your dental practice.

If you’re not actively managing your dental appointment book and analyzing key procedure metrics, you could be adversely affecting your practice.

Let’s start by discussing how overly long dental procedure times could impact your practice.

How Dental Procedure Time Impacts Your Practice

The amount of time it takes to complete each procedure can profoundly affect the overall success and productivity of your office. For example, let’s say that the average times for routine dental procedures are higher than you originally planned. It becomes far too easy to have a sloppy scheduling mindset and unhappy patients when that happens.

Long Wait Times

One of the worst qualities a dental office can have is ultra-long wait times for patients. If your dental treatment duration rates are higher than they should be, the inevitable result is a packed waiting room and disgruntled patients. You should keep average times for procedures as low as possible without sacrificing the quality of care.

Fewer Appointments

If a dental procedure time takes longer than usual, you will have less time for other patient appointments. Of course, the key to a thriving and productive dental practice is effective time management, not overscheduling or cramming as many patients in each workday as possible. However, if you have to cancel on patients because you don’t have enough time to fit in their dental treatment, it will result in lower profits and unhappy patients.

Low Production

Low production rates are another common impact of letting your dental procedure times run over. In particular, it’s crucial to have a good mix of low-ticket treatments like cleanings and high-ticket procedures like root canals or dental implants. Improving your time management skills regarding patient procedures is one of the best ways to run a thriving dental office.  

How To Manage Dental Treatment Times for a Thriving and Productive Practice

Let’s discuss some actionable advice and expert tips you can leverage to keep procedure times down and productivity up.

Utilize Online Patient Scheduling

Switching to digital software systems for patient scheduling is one of the best ways to ensure that your procedures and treatments stay within their appointed time frames. For example, one solution is online dental scheduling by Dental Intelligence. It allows you to streamline your scheduling practices, prevent double bookings, and update schedule changes in real time. The best part is, patients can schedule online any time, anywhere.

Analyze Important Metrics

How can you determine if your dental treatment times are running over? You can start by measuring and analyzing key metrics. For example, you may want to spend two weeks recording the timeframes for each type of treatment and dental procedure. Which appointments take the longest? By gaining this valuable data, you can better understand how to mix your workday to maximize time efficiency and production.  

Set Daily and Monthly Production Goals

Your dental practice should focus on increasing cost efficiency while decreasing anxiety and stress for your staff and the front desk. For example, you can do this by setting daily average production goals that lead to higher monthly and annual goals. Here’s how you can do it:

• First, determine your specific monthly or annual production goals by the number of available working days within the particular period.

• Take that number and then decide how much growth you want for the following months and year: i.e., 10%, 15%, etc.

Now, you have a hard number that can act as a guide. As we said earlier, that will make it much easier for your staff to determine a good mix between low-profit treatments like cleanings and high-profit procedures like root canals.

You can use Dental Intelligence’s Metrics and Reporting to easily set goals and review your data. No need to run your own reports. Everything is already built out for you.

Switch to 10-Minute Increments

Although many dentists use 15-minute increments for their patient scheduling, you may want to consider switching to 10 minutes. It keeps your time management skills sharper and helps you cut appointment times. Consider this: If you have three dental assistants who manage to save even 15 minutes each workday during the year, your practice can benefit from 500 extra working hours annually!

Contact Us at Dental Intelligence Today

Are you interested in more ways that Dental Intelligence can help your practice and lower dental procedure time? Check out our blog to learn about the different types of dental office scheduling, tips for improving productivity, and how to streamline your workday. Reach out to us and schedule a demo of our advanced software solutions today.

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Overscheduling patient appointments is a widespread problem for dental offices across America. Packing your workday with too many patient appointments can cause some serious harm to your office and its reputation.

How Does Overscheduling Dental Patients Impact Your Practice?

To successfully run a dental office, you must provide your patients with a positive experience and high-quality care. However, some dentists focus more on profitability than patient satisfaction, and one of the most common problems resulting from that mindset is overfilling their schedule.

Consider the following reasons why patient overscheduling is harmful to your dental practice:

Long Wait Times

Nobody wants to arrive on time for their dentist's appointment and spend the next hour sitting in a packed waiting room. One study showed that long wait times¹ negatively affected dental patients' satisfaction levels, with first-time patients being the most dissatisfied and unlikely to return. Think about it: Would you want to go to a dentist that you knew had hour-long wait times? Of course not!

Rushed Work

If your patient schedule is overfull, the only way to ensure that you see every patient is by working faster. But, as you know, rushing your work often leads to mistakes, unhappy patients, an increased stress level, and poor quality of care.

In healthcare, making a mistake can have severe repercussions for you, your patients, and your business. Of course, patients must give informed consent before any treatments or procedures, but that doesn't provide comprehensive protection against you for making a mistake due to carelessness.

No Breaks

Another inevitable result of a packed appointment book is that both you and your staff have to sacrifice your breaks or, at the very least, cut them short. Remember, an unhappy employee is one who has to work through their lunch break! In addition, if your staff members are unhappy, they are more likely to become irritable with patients, negatively affecting your practice.

Poor Feedback

Receiving poor feedback and negative reviews is one of the most significant impacts overscheduling can have on your dental practice. One of the first factors potential patients research when looking for a new dental practice is reviews and feedback. If you're receiving negative feedback because of long wait times, poor quality of work, and overworked front desk staff, it will undoubtedly affect the quality of your business.

How Can Your Dental Practice Stop Overscheduling?

How can you fix this problem? Let's discuss a few solutions:

Adjust Your Appointment Schedule Blocks

If the time you spend with each patient tends to exceed the allotted appointment time on a regular basis, you may need to spread out your appointments by 5-10 minutes each. Seeing fewer patients per day will give you higher-quality time with the patients you do have, which can improve retention and lower stress levels in your office.

Online Dental Scheduling

One of the best ways to avoid overfilling your appointment book is by upgrading to online dental scheduling by Dental Intelligence. With our Online Scheduling, you can let patients book their own appointments directly into your management system. Plus, it frees up your staff to devote time to other important tasks.

Use Appointment Reminders

Another effective way to streamline your scheduling practices is with appointment reminders for patients to help them remember their upcoming procedures and routine appointments. No more of those little scheduling cards that get thrown out or lost! Use texts instead.

Consider a Dental Scheduling Coordinator

Instead of overburdening your office staff with all the administrative work, why not consider hiring a dental scheduling coordinator? A scheduling coordinator manages the entire flow of your workday and scheduling practices. Then, you can rest easier knowing that your workday will be smoother, more efficient, and more productive.  

Invest in Your Dental Practice with Dental Intelligence

Overscheduling can harm your dental practice in more ways than one. From negative reviews, unhappy patients, and overworked staff, your business will gradually see the adverse effects of poor scheduling habits.

Instead, consider upgrading to Dental Intelligence. Our advanced software solutions provide the tools and resources dental professionals need to improve the quality of care and streamline their practice. Reach out to us for a demo of our Online Scheduling and other tools.

Resources

¹ National Library of Medicine