Offering your patients a digital experience isn’t a luxury anymore but an expectation for many. Open Dental offers a variety of ways that let your office give patients a paperless experience, whether they’re in office or at home. This post will go over how digital forms can transform your office workflow.
Choosing the Right Type of Interface
Open Dental offers both Sheets and eForms for your digital forms experience. The chart below explores some of the key differences, so you can determine which one is right for your office.
eForms: Highly Optimized for Mobile
Nowadays, the majority of Internet traffic comes from mobile devices. This means it’s likely that your patients will be viewing your website, filling out their forms, etc. from a device like their smartphone. eForms are highly-optimized for mobile use, allowing your patients to fill out forms on their own device via eClipboard Web or from an office tablet using the eClipboard 25 app.
eForms allow you to optimize the patient experience through conditional questions. This means that patients only see questions that pertain to them – so no fields for insurance if the patient is self pay.
Once patients fill out eForms, they can be easily and quickly imported into the database, saving staff the time and effort of entering data in manually. You can choose to review forms before import or have forms import automatically.
Sheets: Bridging the Gap Between Print and Digital
Sheets on the other hand bridge the gap between printed and digital forms. Sheets offer a mobile layout and can be filled out digitally via eClipboard or the Web Forms interface, but they offer less functionality than eForms.
Sheets can easily be printed for a patient to fill out if they prefer paper and pen. You can scan in completed forms to save a copy in the Imaging Module, but data will need to be manually entered.
Sheets have more limited functionality than eForms and do not allow conditional questions. This means patients will see all available fields and questions on the sheet, regardless of their answers to prior questions.
If a patient fills out a sheet via Web Forms or eClipboard, staff can manually import information into the database. Sheets require that each form is manually reviewed before importing and does not support automatic import.
Breaking it Down
To summarize, if you want to offer patients the best mobile experience when filling out forms, eForms is the way to go. If you still expect to regularly print forms, then Sheets are your best option. If you need to print some forms, but others are normally filled out digitally, you can use a combination of eForms and Sheets.
For more information on these features and a more detailed breakdown of the differences, check out our Digital Forms page.
Have questions or are ready to start using eForms or Sheets, contact Open Dental Support.