According to the ADA’s Health Policy Institute’s recent report, nearly 35% of dentists reported that their practice was not busy enough.
There are various tools in Open Dental that can be helpful in improving appointment workflow. These tools help to ensure that patients don’t forget to schedule appointments and don’t miss the appointments they already have scheduled.
Effective Communication
If you’re sending appointment reminders via email to patients who don’t check their email frequently, then it’s unlikely your communication will be effective. Make sure to check which communication methods are preferred for them. You can set these preferences in Open Dental to help ensure automated messages and other communication is using the patient’s preferred methods.
Open Dental offers automated messaging options that can be set up to send via email or text message and will consider the patient’s contact preferences. Other areas of Open Dental will take these into account when displaying contact information, so taking a few moments to set this information on a patient’s account can be incredibly helpful down the line.
Get Patients on the Schedule
Making sure that patients don’t forget to schedule the work they need is arguably the most important step in keeping your appointment book full. It’s often easier to retain the patients you’ve already got than it is to recruit new ones.
Use lists and reports in Open Dental to find patients who need to get treatment scheduled. This includes:
- Recall List – We’ll go into this in more detail in the following section.
- Planned Tracker – Find appointments that have been set up, but still need to be scheduled. Easily follow up with patients and schedule their appointments quickly.
- Unscheduled List – These are your patients who missed or had to cancel their appointments. Follow up with these patients to get them back on the schedule.
- ASAP List – Last minute cancellations can be a drag, so use the ASAP List to find patients who are willing to take an earlier appointment when one opens up. (Bonus: If you’re using Web Sched ASAP, patients can easily scoop up an opening when they’re sent a dedicated link – no need for a call back or additional manual work by staff.)
- Treatment Finder Report – This report makes it easy to find patients who have treatment planned procedures that they haven’t scheduled. You can filter the report by insurance remaining, procedure code, and more to find the right patients to fill an opening.
Recall Appointments
Recall Appointments are the bread and butter of many dental practices. These are the appointments that patients are most commonly scheduling, so we’re taking a moment to give the Recall List a little extra attention.
From the Recall List, you can easily filter by recall due date, type, and more to find the right patients to get onto the schedule. View patients’ preferred contact details and quickly reminders.
The Web Sched Recall eService lets you include a scheduling link when sending reminders so patients can schedule at their convenience.
Recall appointments can be quickly generated and scheduled using the Sched buttons. Open Dental will automatically add any procedures (exams, x-rays, etc.) that are due on the upcoming recall date, and your schedule will move out to the first available date that doesn’t conflict with the due date.
When patients are in the office, it’s also easy to schedule their next recall by using the Make Recall options from the Appointments Module. Just like with the Recall List, using these options will automatically create an appointment with the necessary procedures and will move out the schedule – making it easy to quickly drag and drop the appointment to schedule.
Automated Messaging
Patients are often making appointments several months in advance and appointment cards are easy to lose or overlook. Automated messaging can help bridge that gap.
The eReminders eService is available at no additional cost when your office is on support. This service allows you to set up automated emails that are sent to patients at customizable intervals. If you’re signed up for the Integrated Texting eService, these reminders can also be sent via text.
eConfirmations take this a step further by letting patients reply to a text or click a link in an email to confirm their appointment. Once they do, their appointment status is updated in Open Dental – no need for staff to manually update appointments.
Using the tools available in Open Dental helps your patients make and keep their appointments, ensuring you have busy days ahead!
Want to learn how to use all the tools in Open Dental to your advantage? Contact us or use the built-in Help Feature for more information.