The real art of dentistry comes from putting your patients first. If you’re bogged down by the tasks in your office, you likely find yourself distracted by how your practice is operating. Improving the way work is done during business hours has a massive impact on your bottom line. Keeping office productivity at its peak means a better use of your time, a steadier stream of revenue, and even happier patients.
Keeping with the themes of office productivity, let’s jump right into our tips for speeding up the processes of your practice!
1. Mind Your Schedule
Conventional wisdom says that a full schedule is good for the bottom line, but an overflowing schedule can also be hurting your office’s productivity. The average dental appointment takes just under an hour to wrap up, typically representing cleanings, fillings, and check-ups. Understanding how accurate your schedule is can lead you to discover unknowns for how you spend your day.
Over the span of a few weeks, track your appointments for how long you expect, and how long they actually take. You might find that you’re able to fit in extra appointments, or that removing one from an overbooked schedule gives you the time to review your notes that keep you well past closing time.
2. Declutter Your Space
When you consider what clutter is, a desk buried under paper might be the first thing to come to mind. In reality, clutter is everywhere, and it’s slowing down your office productivity. Take your waiting room, for example.
When your patients enter the office, is the reception desk near the front door? Is there enough open space to keep people moving? Making sure that it’s easy to get around means people are less likely to loiter while waiting, and your office can keep moving.
3. Invest in Administration
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to drum up new business without spending your time on marketing to new patients. Positive word of mouth happens when you’re focused on your patients, and they’re getting 100% of your attention. When someone feels like they’re the most important person during their appointment, they let their friends and family know.
A one-man army might save on overhead, but being distracted by phone calls or scheduling appointments means a patient is not getting your full attention. Make sure that your office is properly staffed with people who can take the mundane work off your hands and make your minutes count.
4. Patient Questionnaires
Checking in with your patients directly after a visit while their experience is fresh in their minds can give you insight into how they interpret your process. If you haven’t taken the plunge into text messages yet, check in to see if your patients would prefer follow-up as a text. Texts are much faster and easier for reception, and more likely to get a response and appointment booking.
You can also take the time to learn if they’d be interested in online scheduling, or alternative ways of tackling treatment plans.
5. Go Paperless
If you’re leasing or renting the space for your business, think about how much real estate your papers and records are eating up. On top of that, maintenance always becomes a huge imperative, where extra effort must be paid to ensure that nothing is misfiled. By utilizing a digital library, you remove the risk of delaying appointments to search for something that wasn’t put away correctly.
With cloud or remote access, you’ll find yourself making every moment count by instantly accessing X-rays and patient records on a mobile device instead of getting up to run to your little library.
When a dentist makes a go of their practice, they face a lot of challenges that reflect the complexities of running a business. One of the biggest challenges in any business, regardless of industry, is personnel management. The lifeblood of day-to-day operations is the people you hire to help you focus on patients and the business—thinking about the HR strategies that will eventually lead to your practices’ long-term success.
Larger companies typically hire people or teams to resolve issues through human resources. Of course, creating more headcount is not the right fit for independent practices, but implementing HR doesn’t mean adding another person to the payroll, it’s an opportunity to show leadership.
Office headaches can be frequently misdiagnosed, but by taking a proactive approach that is thoughtful of common human resource issues, you’ll find a more positive atmosphere, happier colleagues, and even a better bottom line. Here are our top 3 HR strategies:
Always be knowing
When your employees start their first day, they have clearly defined expectations for their job. Those expectations should be as clear and accessible on the anniversary of their first year. While roles may be universal across practices, the demands and day-to-day work in your office should be well-documented and always available.
By creating an employee handbook, you contextualize a new hire’s expectations with your outlook. Incorporating HR strategies, such as outlining rules around the atmosphere, can remove confusion or awkward conversations about clothing, language, and smartphone use. Like a patient’s treatment plan, your employee handbook is a guide to maintaining stability and getting the outcome you expect.
Taking the time to produce a comprehensive guide means you’ve also clearly defined what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour. In the unlikely event that a termination results in a legal threat, you have a document that explicitly says how being late, rude, or negligent, would lead to a loss of employment.
Privacy in the practice
We all have high hopes when a new person is brought into practice. Over time, you might discover a clash of personalities, they struggle with certain work, or they no longer meet expectations.
Frustration and anger may make you want to point out every infraction when they occur, but rather than raising your voice, consider taking them aside for a quieter conversation. Getting in the habit of regular private conversations about performance opens up a chance to talk about your working relationship. Meeting at least once a month provides a chance to dig into deeper issues or causes, without anyone feeling like they’re being attacked.
Of course, the other side can be equally true. A new hire – or an old one – might be seeing real success or progress. Taking them aside to let them know you see their hard work signals that you appreciate them, and you’re not afraid to let it be known.
Always be including
Inclusion is a powerful and important tool that you have as either owner or manager of an office – and we’re not just talking about diversity. People don’t exclusively think about their jobs in a bubble. They have opinions on where they work, who they work for, and how that work is done. Sticking people on the sidelines while decisions big and small are made is a recipe for alienation and a lack of interest in maintaining your thriving office.
Regardless of which role an employee has, they will have ideas based on their background about the way things are run. Not to say receptionists should be consulted during extraction, but gathering opinions or hearing people’s experiences before a decision says that you value them and their knowledge—which could also strengthen your overarching HR strategies.
To set yourself out as a leader in the office, consider taking the time to seek coworker’s thoughts even before there’s a decision to make. Friction can occur in your practice without you knowing — maybe patients aren’t in love with the music, or your hygienist has an idea about recording patient care. Giving people a chance to speak their minds can make for some quick and easy wins that help build a better business and save a few dollars.
Evolution of the Dentist’s Office
The world of dentistry has made leaps and bounds since the profession was first recognized in the early 1700s. While Fauchard’s The Surgeon Dentist, A Treatise on Teeth may have provided a blueprint for oral care, those fledgling dentists could never have guessed the dental industry evolution and advancements their practices would see.
Fast forward to today, dental offices are seeing a renaissance in the way they care for patients and run their business. If you haven’t yet taken the step to go fully digital, taking a moment to think about how far we’ve come will give you the chance to reconsider what technology can do for you and your employees.
It can be tough translating the cloud, platforms, and AI into your day-to-day business, but we’re here to explain how welcoming the latest technology is just as important as collecting your patient’s name and number.
Let’s take some time to examine three ways in which the business of dentistry has changed, and appreciate how far we’ve come.
Informal Itineraries
Dentistry has spent decades sending assistants and receptionists to the Rolodex so they can spend the afternoon on the phone, drumming up business. This expensive, weekly-if-not-daily, routine relied on costly human capital neglecting other duties for the sake of filling a schedule.
Thankfully, technology has removed spending all Tuesday morning filling your Thursday afternoon. With an integrated solution through the dental industry evolution, reaching out to patients is now a simple SMS, sent on command. More and more people prefer texting over taking calls, so a casual reminder with the option to schedule an appointment is instantaneous, and it frees your people to focus on the office around them, and the patients in front of them.
For bonus points, an all-in-one solution will be able to automatically email or text a simple thank you following an appointment, and it’ll be appreciated.
A Flexible Connection
When dentists ventured into multiple locations to expand, there weren’t enough hours in the day to catch up. Whether you were driving across town for charts or dialling up every few minutes until you skipped the busy signal, it was exhausting – if not impossible – to stay on top of things.
Practices are very busy places and are forecasted to grow up to 19% by 2026. With the advent of the cloud, staying on top of multiple offices is now effortless, as opposed to impossible. Charts and treatment plans are available on your phone or tablet. Stay on top of your practices while on the train in the morning or from the comfort of home at night, with total security. Using a mobile-friendly app, you’ll even have time to check in with other offices while waiting for a curing light to beep.
Deliver In, Digitize Out
There was once a time-honoured tradition of writing up inventory sheets while waiting patiently for deliveries that showed up when they showed up. Tracking shelf-life, quantities, and replacements were a daily and weekly sit-down that needed double and triple checking before you could call up your provider.
It may not be the biggest bill, but your inventory takes up a lot of space and time. If your drug doses, disposable tools, even toys of tots run dry, you run the risk of downstream expenses for your practice. Rather than having someone count latex gloves and suction attachments, immediately enter invoices into a digital inventory. When you take an item out, use a simple barcode scanner to track stock.
After your inventory runs low, you can be instantly notified of an item that needs reordering, or with an integrated all-in-one, your system can send out an order on your behalf. Don’t forget to enjoy all the hours each week you’ll suddenly find free.
The Future, and Beyond
AI gets tossed around as potentially solving our future problems, but it offers a promise for positive change in our lives beyond how we get around, especially in the dental industry evolution. Looking into the future of dentistry, AI won’t mean that a robot will be responsible for bonding and extracting, but more of an assistant in a busy practice.
Imagine a future where recording an irregularity creates an instant notification from software that knows exactly how likely a diagnosis is. Immediately, you are aware of a trend over your patient’s past few visits, and you’ll screen them for disease before they leave the chair. This process won’t be days or weeks after the fact once you’ve scheduled a time to return.
Alternatively, think of AI integrated with your schedule. A last-minute cancellation for a longer-than-usual appointment might leave you with a two-hour gap, except that your system has automatically messaged the three patients who previously inquired about that same time. Now you’re back to a full schedule without lifting a finger.
If you’re interested in using software to streamline your office, learn how ClearDent solutions can help grow your practice.
The start of the year is the perfect time to reflect on the previous 12 months – see what worked and more importantly, what didn’t and assess how to improve your dental practice. To help you start the new year off on the right foot and set your practice up for success in 2019, we’ve rounded up five key ideas to improve your dental practice.
1. Set SMART goals
It’s important to set goals so you have a clear direction and milestones to work towards for the upcoming year. First, you have to look back on the previous year and review the progress you’ve made. Did you achieve your production goal? Did you improve patient satisfaction? Did you increase new patient acquisition?
From there you can identify areas of improvement or growth. If you were off of your previous year’s goals by a significant amount, aim for a number that is more realistic and attainable. If you achieved them all, consider increasing your goals for the new year.
Some common goals to consider:
Increasing the number of high production treatments
Increasing practice revenue
Decreasing patient churn
Decreasing no-show appointments
An important thing to remember when you’re setting goals for 2019 is to make SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals. This means instead of a generic “increase practice revenue”, a SMART goal would be “increase production amount by 15% from the previous month”.
2. Go paperless
More and more practices have been making the switch and operating completely paperlessly. If your dental practice hasn’t gone paperless yet, it’s something to consider for your 2019 planning.
Not only is a paperless dental practice good for the environment, but dentists have also come to realize that with new technology, they can run a more efficient practice at a lower cost.
Going paperless will help you:
Future proof your practice: As paper-based management methods are phased out, digitizing your data will help you integrate with the latest technology and keep up with the industry.
Protect your data: Keeping electronic records allows you to use cloud backup and ensures your data is not completely lost in the event of a natural disaster or cybercrime.
Increase your productivity: A paperless dental clinic helps you increase your productivity and streamline day-to-day tasks such as writing file notes, communicating with patients, and tracking outstanding payments.
Increase the value of your practice: Going paperless will help you increase your practice value in the long run as a software upgrade is an investment that won’t depreciate over time.
If you’re starting a new dental practice, going paperless from the very beginning will set your practice up for success. For existing dental practices, the benefits such as time and money saved in the long will offset the slight effort needed up front to convert your patient files from paper to an electronic form. A good dental software provider can help make the transition as smooth and headache-free as possible.
3. Invest in dental marketing
If you haven’t invested in dental marketing efforts, 2019 is the time to start. Dental marketing is crucial to practice growth because even if your retention rates are good, you won’t grow unless you can bring in new patients.
The good news is there are a few fairly simple and easy dental marketing tactics that you can do to get started. To start, consider:
Advertising: Try Google AdWords or Facebook ads.
SEO: Set up a Google My Business profile.
A social media strategy: Consistently post on social media platforms like Twitter.
Email marketing: Start a newsletter that shares practice updates, promotions, and dental tips.
If you already have some dental marketing in place, your goal may be to optimize your efforts. Think about implementing a dental marketing calendar for 2019. There will always be certain times of the year when you can push promotional campaigns to draw in more business such as an end-of-year reminder to patients to use their health benefits.
4. Protect patient information
Running a modern, paperless dental practice can be convenient and simple, but you also have to be aware of the security risks.
Electronically stored patient information is subject to cyber theft, and patients are more vigilant than ever about how their information is handled. In addition to giving your patients peace of mind, there are requirements for your dental practice to be compliant with both provincial and national privacy laws.
All of this means that you have to take the proper precautions to safeguard your practice, such as using appropriate hardware to enable data encryption and train staff to avoid sending sensitive information via unencrypted email. If not, the damage to your practice could result in lost customers, revenue, and brand reputation.
5. Improve customer satisfaction
Are your patients happy? As you work on bringing new patients in, don’t forget about your existing ones. In 2019, implement a plan to improve customer satisfaction. Happy patients are loyal patients, and loyal patients are invaluable to your business as they are essentially free advertising through reviews and word of mouth. Patients who are satisfied and loyal to your practice will refer their family and friends and write reviews.
Referrals are important because patients are more likely to give their business to a dental clinic if the recommendation came from somebody they know. Reviews are crucial because potential patients these days conduct research first and are swayed heavily by online reviews. Plus, loyal patients will continue to visit you, bringing you consistent business.
These 5 tips will help steer you in the right direction when planning for the year ahead. For more information, ClearDent’s dental software can help set you up for success in the new year.
From viruses to theft to natural disasters, there are countless threats to your patient and practice data every day. With increasing security breaches in the medical field, ensuring that your data is safe and secure has never been more important. Enter cloud backup for dental practices.
When it comes to choosing your dental software, one of the most important factors to consider is whether or not the software has cloud backup for your dental practice.
What is cloud backup?
Also known as online backup, cloud backup simply means that your dental practice data is copied, encrypted, and stored remotely on multiple cloud-based servers in a data center, rather than stored locally on a computer in your office. This allows you to access, retrieve, and restore online dental records in the event of a disaster.
67% of dental organizations report that they’re using cloud-based applications, and according to Forbes, almost all companies will be reliant on the cloud in some way in the near future.
Benefits of cloud backup for your dental practice
1. Peace of mind
You can rest assured that your data is always protected and instantly retrievable in case of natural disaster, theft, or cybercrime. With cloud backup, your files are no longer dependent on your office’s computer or server. Your online dental records are backed up in the cloud and stored across several online server environments so even if one server fails, your data is never lost.
2. Increased security
Cloud backup is far safer than storing physical copies or keeping the information on a computer in your office because data in the cloud is stored at a professional data center with dedicated, around-the-clock security. In addition, cloud backups are more preventative against ransomware attacks as they’re outside of your practice network.
3. Saved time and resources
Cloud backups mean data is kept on remote servers, and the software provider that offers cloud backup is responsible for storing and securing your information, which takes the onus off of you and your IT team.
Good dental software providers frequently conduct manual audits to catch any technical glitches that may affect your backup to ensure there are no roadblocks if your data ever needs to be restored.
Cloud backups also occur automatically, saving you the time and effort that is involved with manual backups.
4. Automatic backups
Human error accounts for 52% of data breaches. This is a risk that your dental practice cannot afford if you want to remain compliant with patient privacy laws. With cloud backup for dental practices, your data is backed up automatically multiple times a day, reducing the risk of human errors and ensuring the accuracy and security of your patient information.
5. Encrypted data
It’s crucial that your dental practice is compliant with PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act). Backing up your dental data in the cloud helps you remain compliant as your data is always encrypted.
Cloud backup providers will typically encrypt data at multiple points in the process, such as at the original source, in transit, as well as at rest in the provider’s data center, to ensure maximum security. And even if your data is encrypted and thieves were able to get their hands on your practice information, they wouldn’t be able to access it without an encryption key.
6. Complete compliance
There are strict data residency requirements regarding information kept in the cloud based on where the data is stored. It’s not uncommon for cloud backup providers to store information across the globe. However, what that means for you is that you have to be aware of the local privacy residency laws and regulations. With ClearVault, your data is always stored in Canada, remaining fully compliant with Canadian privacy acts.
7. Easy restorability
A complete backup system ensures there are no interruptions to your business if a disaster ever occurs. This not only includes the backup process but also the process to recover the information lost. With cloud backups, restoration is much easier than manual or other methods.
A full disaster recovery plan should include a backup verification to ensure that you’re restoring exactly what was backed up and recovery drills that ensure your disaster recovery plan works smoothly.
Using cloud backup can reduce inefficiencies, increase your data security, and give your patients peace of mind that their information is secure.
The CDA (Canadian Dental Association) iTrans enables dental offices to securely and electronically submit dental claim benefits on behalf of patients to insurance companies. EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is a method for dental offices to submit dental claims electronically. The CDA created CDAnet to give Canadian dentists EDI capabilities. Below are some common tasks you would come across using our ClearDent EDI transaction manager.
View EDI responses from a patient ledger ClearDent has made it easy to access info regarding claims that have been submitted to the insurance company.
Click on the Ledger tab
Highlight the claim in question
Right-click on the claim
Select “View EDI response” from the menu list
This will launch the EDI transaction manager and bring you directly to the explanation of benefit (EOB) that you received for that patient from their insurance
Click on the “Details” button to access additional information about the claim
Check outstanding EDI responses To check any outstanding EDI responses, follow the steps below:
From the main screen of Cleardent, click on the “Credit card manager”
Then click on the “EDI transaction manager”
Once it’s open, click on “Wizard”
Select “Check mailbox for outstanding transactions and ClearDent emails”
Then click “Next”
Check the provider that you want to see the outstanding transactions from
If you’re using iTrans, check “A CDA-ADQ paperwork” and select the iTrans selection
If you’re not using iTrans and are using a modem, check “An insurance carrier” and select the insurance company you want to see outstanding claims from
Click “Next”
Once the transaction has gone through for the outstanding, you will see which has come back and get a reference number
When you click “Finish”, you can print it out and see details as to which patients the outstanding transaction has been completed for
Skip the EDI wizard screen when non-ortho codes billed When creating an invoice to send to insurance, a window will pop up that allows you to change payee, add in the school name, and specify whether it’s an orthodontic claim before sending it out. Additionally, if it is a denture claim, the initial or prior placement claim would need to be entered. In most instances, you won’t need this screen if the majority of your claims will be for treatments like hygiene or basic restorations. Luckily, there’s a handy setting that allows you to skip this screen, saving you that extra click before submitting the claim electronically.
Go to the Configurations menu from the main screen and click “Practice information”
On the EDI tab, select “Skip Claim Detail for Non-Ortho EDI submission”.
This will skip the additional window that pops up when you are submitting the claim if the orthodontic tag is unchecked
However, rest assured that this setting only skips the window if the orthodontic box is not checked. If there are ortho codes entered, the window will still appear as you would need to know if it’s an ortho billing.
Auto-adjust fees on invoice based on the EOB response ClearDent has an auto EOB reader function that allows you to charge the patient exactly what the EOB says you should be charging. This comes in handy in a number of scenarios: if the patient has insurance but you haven’t put in all the details of the coverage they have yet, if their plan is on an older fee guide coverage, or if they haven’t updated you on their new coverage yet. ClearDent will automatically calculate what falls under the patient side and the insurance side of the ledger based on the coverage that was inputted. But if the information is not accurate, the EOD from the insurance after sending the claim will most accurately reflect what the insurance is going to pay you.
If the patient is a non-assignment patient (the cheque comes to the patient), you won’t need to track it specifically. For reporting purposes, you can get a sense of what their coverage is without sending an EOB but when you turn on the feature, it’ll read the EOB and automatically update the invoice to which side the ledger the balance should fall on. To turn on this feature:
Go to the Configuration menu
Select “Practice information” and select the EDI tab
Under “Auto adjustment after the EOD”, select whether to enable it just for the primary insurance or for duel insurance EOB. If you choose duel insurance, ClearDent will automatically update the invoice to match that secondary EOB once it comes back
Some insurance companies will actually talk to each other through iTrans so you get an EOB from both primary and secondary together without having to wait for one and then the other
With this feature enabled, when you get to that final screen, the patient balance is going to match what the EOB says, regardless of what you have listed on the patient’s file. There are some instances when the EOB auto-adjust feature won’t work: if the claim is backdated or if the procedure code is split and does not match the EOB response. If there’s no EOB received, it will not automatically be adjusted. It will still be based on the details you have in the patient’s insurance breakdown. If the patient is not an assignment patient (the default payee is set to subscriber), and the cheque is going to the patient, then leave everything on the patient side of the ledger. You don’t want to have any of it showing on the insurance side of the ledger because the patient will pay the bill on when they come in for their appointment.
Looking for more guidance? Visit ClearDent’s new online Help Centre for on-demand training videos, detailed user guides, and FAQs. Whether you’re new or experienced, our Help Centre has everything you need to enhance your product knowledge and troubleshoot issues effortlessly. Click here to learn more →
ClearDent’s dental ledger helps you quickly and easily access patient information to process treatments, enter payments, submit claims, print statements, process insurance, and more — all from one convenient location.
To get to the ClearDent’s dental ledger, search for the patient name then click on the “Ledger” tab at the top.
We’re going to take you through three common scenarios with our dental ledger: managing patient billing, processing payments, and making adjustments. For even more information, we also have ClearDent support videos available for our customers.
1. Billing patients
Select “Add” then choose “Bill”, or you can select the “Bill” button directly
Here, you will also see the patient name, date, primary and secondary insurances, main provider, fee schedule, and billing grid. Add any relevant notes in the pop-up window
To add a procedure, select from the drop-down menu
Type in the procedure and enter tooth number and surface if applicable
Update any linked policies with how much insurance will cover for that procedure
After you’re done adding all the procedures to this transaction, click “Next”
A submit claim window will pop up if the patient has insurance; it will only apply to the primary insurance
You have the option to print claim, submit by EDI, or submit later
A summary of the insurance claim will then pop up for you to verify; hit “Ok” to finish
2. Reconciling payments
There are three common cases when it comes to reconciling payments: adding a payment, underpayment, and overpayment.
Adding a regular payment
Select “Add”
Choose either “Patient payment” or “Family patient payment”
Select “Pay by” method from the drop-down menu
Select “Auto calculate”
Hit “Allocate” at the bottom of the window, then “Ok”
You’ll have the option to print a receipt or statement of the payment
The dental ledger will now be updated and the line of payment will turn in green.
Adding an underpayment
You may have to deal with underpayments when a patient is paying an outstanding balance with insufficient funds.
Once you navigate to the ledger (the tab will be red to indicate that the patient owes money), the running total is located on the bottom right.
Select “Add” and choose “Patient payment”
Next, select their payment method
If they were paying the full amount, you would select “Auto calculate” but in this case, they’re paying a partial amount, so select “Manual enter” and input the amount the patient is paying
Hit allocate. ClearDent distributes the paid amount to the codes that are outstanding following the first in, first out rule. If you want to use the payment for a specific code first, select “Clear” to allocate the payment manually by clicking the amount under Pmt Allocated column
Once you hit “Ok”, you’ll have an option to print receipt or statement
The dental ledger will now be updated and items that are completely paid will be highlighted in green with black text.
Adding an overpayment
If the patient only has cash and you don’t have change, they can request for the extra amount to be left on their account as a credit.
Select “Add” and choose “Patient payment”
Next, select their payment method
Choose “Manual enter” and type in the amount the patient is paying
Once you hit “Allocate”, you will see an unallocated amount with the overpayment
When you hit “Ok”, you’ll be asked what you’d like to do with the remaining balance
Select a provider to save the credit under and click “Ok”. In most cases, you would save the credit under the owner of the clinic. The reason being that if the patient never returns to use the credit and you can’t reach them to issue a refund, the credit becomes part of the house account.
The dental ledger will now be updated, and the running balance at the bottom will reflect the credit.
3. Making adjustments
While there are many different adjustment types, we’ll go over how to do a write off, transfer from insurance to insurance, as well as transfer from insurance to patient.
Performing a write off
Select any line in the transaction. It doesn’t matter which one, this is just to tell the system that the adjustment you want to make has to do with this transaction
Click “Add adjustment”
Choose the “Write off” drop-down: write off
Select either “ Auto calculate” or “Manual Enter” and click “Adjust all”
Select the amount that is outstanding for the patient and click “Ok”
There will now be a new adjustment line in the ledger, indicating a write off in the amount you selected for the patient.
Transferring a charge from primary insurance to secondary insurance
Select the primary insurance in the “From insurance” drop-down, then select “Auto calculate” and click “Adjust all”
Grab the full amount and click “Ok”
Unlike most adjustments, a transfer between insurances will leave two adjustment lines. One to show the transfer from the primary insurance to the patient and the second to transfer from patient to the secondary insurance. This is standard to show that it is moving from one carrier to another.
Transferring a charge from insurance to patient
Typically this is done when you receive the insurance cheque, and it’s lower than what was originally expected. You’ll need to subtract the charge from the insurance side of the dental ledger and move it to the customer side.
When you enter the insurance cheque, you can transfer it to the patient side of the ledger but if, for whatever reason, you don’t transfer it then, you can follow the steps below to make an adjustment and transfer the amount to the patient after the fact.
Click “Add adjustment” and select “Transfer to the patient”
Select the carrier from the drop-down if there are multiple
Select either “ Auto calculate” or “Manual enter”
Include a note with any relevant information about why the adjustment was made. You can choose to have the note appear on the statement or receipt when you print them
Click “Adjust all”
Click “Ok”
The dental ledger will now be updated with an additional pink line, indicating that the patient has a balance that has now been transferred. The running balance of the patient at the bottom will reflect the new balance.
Looking for more guidance? Visit ClearDent’s new online Help Centre for on-demand training videos, detailed user guides, and FAQs. Whether you’re new or experienced, our Help Centre has everything you need to enhance your product knowledge and troubleshoot issues effortlessly. Click here to learn more →
Data breaches are a very real threat to healthcare providers such as dentists. You have to ensure that your dental practice has the proper dental IT solutions and cybersecurity procedures in place to adhere to PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) principles and prevent data breaches.
The need for cybersecurity in the healthcare industry
More and more dental practices and other healthcare businesses are being targeted by cyber criminals:
Many hackers target small dental offices because they think small businesses don’t have the proper security software or firewalls in place.
Your dental practice is a wealth of patient data, which means you have to take the proper cybersecurity precautions to make sure that you are adhering to PIPEDA principles and your patient data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Digital dental practices
In the last few years, dental practices have taken a huge step towards digitizing their businesses and utilizing the internet to improve patient care and centralize dental data.
Storing patient information in the cloud has its benefits:
Automatic backup
Access is available anytime, anywhere
Patient data can be securely shared between practices
Dental practices are vulnerable to security threats and data breaches if proper precautions are not taken. Stolen patient data can be sold on the DarkWeb, resulting in identity theft, fraud, blackmail, and other criminal activities. Hackers may deny you access to the data they stole through ransomware and extort your practice for money.
The consequences to your dental practice include not only time and money spent on crisis management and data recovery, but also potential lawsuits from patients, brand and reputation damage, and loss of important patient information. In the end, you are on the line for any potential data breaches.
Adhering to PIPEDA principles in dental practices
PIPEDA was put into effect on January 1, 2004 and is comprised of ten PIPEDA principles:
This Canadian act ensures the safe collection and storage of personal data that all businesses, including dental practices, need to comply with. Personal data includes name, age, address, phone number, email, weight, height, health information, medical history, income, blood type, marital status, and much more. While PIPEDA is applicable to all Canadian businesses, there are also additional privacy acts to adhere to. Read more about the privacy and security requirements on data for each province.
Every dental practice needs to ensure that their patient data is securely stored. Below are two crucial tips in ensuring your dental practice adheres to PIPEDA principles.
Train employees to mitigate security risks
Data has shown that human error is commonly the cause of data breaches and that the actions of healthcare employees cause 3x as many breaches as external attacks. Without the proper training, employees could be putting your entire practice at risk.
Restrict access to personal email accounts and non-work-related websites
Discourage joining public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks
Require passwords for any device used for the dental practice in case it’s lost or stolen
Choose strong passwords
Set user permissions for different roles
Educate staff on the latest cyber threats
Outline a response plan so the team knows what to do in the event of an attack
Avoid disclosing private contact or treatment information over the phone or email – instead, use encrypted communication methods, such as encrypted email, to protect sensitive patient data
Implement security features
There are a few dental IT solutions that you should put in place to help ensure you have the proper foundation set up to prevent security breaches.
Install anti-virus and anti-malware software for all of your devices
Set up VPN (virtual private network)
Always update your web browser, software, and operating system
Encrypt data transmitted to insurance companies, labs, and other practices
Automate the encryption of your production and backup hard drives with appropriate security hardware
ClearDent helps you stay fully compliant with both provincial and federal regulations. Our dental software comes with automatic software updates, transfers data securely, and is both encrypted and password protected to meet industry data security guidelines. See how we can help you manage your cybersecurity. Sign up for a demo today.
85% of people consider online reviews just as trustworthy as a recommendation from someone they know. According to Zendesk, 90% of people are influenced by positive online reviews and 86% by negative reviews. Online research has become a major factor in people’s decision making, and online dental clinic reviews are no exception to this growing trend.
Positive dental clinic reviews are crucial
Patient reviews of dentists, in particular positive ones, will help grow your clinic. Good comments for dentists and clinics are what entice new patients and persuade others to switch dentists. It’s your best form of free advertising – people trust reviews because you can’t pay for them. They’re honest accounts of other people’s experiences.
Positive dental reviews also help your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google are constantly making changes to their algorithms to show the best results. Positive dental reviews tell Google that your clinic is highly recommended, and it will in turn rank you higher.
Considering how impactful they are, a strategy around online dental reviews is important as part of your overall dental marketing plan.
Getting dental clinic reviews
Before you even think about online reviews, you have to make sure you’re providing excellent dental service that would encourage patients to leave a positive review. This includes friendly service, a convenient omnichannel experience, and a well-managed dental schedule.
[Find out how ClearDent helps you provide excellent customer service – book a demo today]
Make sure your dental clinic is listed on the main review sites so that patients can leave dentist reviews if they feel like:
But it’s important to keep in mind that most patients won’t leave dentist reviews unless it requires minimal effort. Below are some ways you can make it easy for patients to leave a review:
Add a link to one of the review sites on your website
Include a link in your email signature
Send an email campaign asking for feedback and reviews
Send a snail-mail request with the link
Send patients a follow-up text two days after the appointment
Always respond to reviews
Getting reviews is only one part of it; you have to actively monitor and respond as well. How you respond to reviews affects your clinic reputation.
If it was a positive dental review, thank your patients. When you respond to reviews it tells both current and prospective patients that by taking the time to craft a response, you care about them. If your team has the bandwidth, you should be responding to all dental clinic reviews.
Yes, even negative reviews
Unfortunately, negative dental clinic reviews are unavoidable. The good news is that if you only had 5-star reviews, it tends to come across as unrealistic and patients may think that you purchased reviews.
No one is perfect 100% of the time. The important thing is to respond to patients and try to turn the experience into a positive one. Negative dental clinic reviews provide you with invaluable feedback about your clinic; every negative review is a learning experience and an opportunity to improve clinic processes.
When responding to dental clinic reviews, especially negative ones, it’s extremely important to keep all federal and provincial privacy laws in mind. These laws are in place to ensure that you do not violate patient privacy. Dentists are not allowed to respond in a way that exposes patient information or even acknowledge the individual was at their clinic without the patient’s written consent. So while a patient can share details about their appointment and the dentist or clinic, you cannot respond with any information specific to that patient.
While you have to take extra precautions to make sure you’re adhering to privacy laws, it’s crucial to respond. Sometimes you may not be able to change the mind of the patient who wrote the review, but its public nature means that many current and potential patients are watching how you respond. Your responses can influence their decision on whether or not to do, or continue doing, business with you.
You can mitigate negative reviews with these tips:
Exercise empathy: Patients who wrote a negative review are not happy. When you express empathy by showing you understand where they’re coming from, it goes a long way to assuage their frustration.
Show a willingness to address their problem: If and where possible, let them know that you’ll be looking into the issue they brought up.
Don’t take it personally: It can be hard not to feel attacked when reading negative reviews but it’s important to take these as chances to improve your clinic. Wait at least a day before responding to the negative review so that you have a chance to cool down.
Own up to the mistake: If it is a legitimate complaint, avoid acting defensive or pointing fingers. It doesn’t resolve anything and casts your clinic in a bad light. Apologize that they didn’t have a great experience and offer to reach out to the patient personally to address the problem.
Use the right tone: When responding to reviews, avoid using a lecturing or patronizing tone and don’t use technical jargon that your patients may not understand.
Keep it short: Avoid going back and forth in an online argument with the patient. It doesn’t reflect well to have that type of discussion in such a public forum and will likely violate privacy laws. If the response requires further follow up, take it offline and offer to contact the patient directly.
Using online reviews to grow your clinic include asking for and responding to them. Responding to reviews—whether good or bad—could win you new patients and increase patient retention.
See how ClearDent can help you gather reviews through automation – Book a demo today
No matter how well you plan your dental schedule, dental emergencies are inevitable. At some point or another, every dental clinic has to deal with last-minute requests for emergency appointments. To help keep your dental clinic running smoothly, you need to implement dental triage protocols for emergency situations.
There are two important things to consider when dealing with dental emergency triage: questions and scheduling.
1. Dental Emergency Triage Questions
While you should try your best to accommodate patients, it’s simply not possible to fit in every patient that calls in requesting a last-minute appointment. Gathering information by asking dental emergency triage questions when patients call is an important step when handling these situations.
You have to be able to weed out an urgent dental emergency from those that are not quite as critical by asking some key questions. Focus on gathering as much information as possible to pass along to the dentist.
As part of your dental triage protocols, ask the below questions when a patient calls with a dental emergency to best plan and allocate resources for their appointment.
Dental Triage: Questions To Ask
Ask if they are a new or existing patient. If they are a new patient, you’ll have to create a new file for them so you can record the notes. If they’re an existing patient, ask for their name so you can look up their file.
Ask these questions to get to the root of what the problem is as quickly as possible and to determine the severity of the pain:
Where is the issue? Which side? Which tooth?
Is the patient currently in pain? If so, how long have they been in pain and what’s the severity of the pain?
Is the pain getting better or worse?
Is there pain to hot or cold temperatures?
Is swelling occurring?
Is the patient currently taking any medication for the pain? If so, what type of medication and what dosage?
Has there been previous dental treatment in the area?
Additional Questions for Dentures, Fractures, Crowns
It’s often helpful to ask additional questions once you’ve identified the type of dental problem. Some examples of questions to ask depending on the type of problem:
Dentures: Find out what type of denture it is, how old the denture is, and whether the patient has a spare denture
Fractures: It is on a tooth that has a crown? If it’s a crown, does it feel loose? Find out how much the tooth fractured – is there tooth left? Ask them how the fracture happened
Crowns: Ask if it’s a permanent or temporary one as well as how old it is.
Why Are Dental Triage Protocols Important?
Setting up dental triage protocols to gather the necessary information at the onset will help you assess the situation and plan accordingly. For example, asking if the patient is in pain will help you determine whether to try to get the patient in as soon as possible or when there is a better opening in the schedule.
While you’re not diagnosing the patient, these dental emergency triage questions will help give you an indication of how much time you need to allocate for the appointment. A chipped tooth, a new crown, and a tooth extraction all require different appointment lengths and preparation.
Document the information you gather during the phone call in the patient’s file so that your team has complete access to all the information they need when the patient comes in.
2. Scheduling Emergency Appointments
Once you’ve gathered the information, you’ll need to prioritize and find time to schedule an appointment for the patient.
Many clinics allocate time in their dental schedule for high-production appointments, such as root canals. In a similar fashion, consider also allocating time slots in your calendar for patient’s dental emergencies. Understanding the best way to maximize your schedule and react to emergency situations will not only help you give the appropriate care to your patients that need emergency help but also help ensure it’s done at minimal disruption to your regular patients.
After-Hours Support
In addition to responding to dental emergencies during clinic hours, make sure you have dental triage protocols in place to respond after-hours too. Many dentists are a part of a group of dentists that rotate being on-call after hours.
What To Do When Patients Call After Hours
When patients call after hours, you can craft an answering message that gives them options for after-hours care. Some dentists include their personal numbers so patients have a way to contact them or provide a number to a provincial resource such as HealthLink BC which helps both patients and dentists in BC find appropriate healthcare resources near them.
Never turn a patient away
Dentists are legally and professionally obligated to respond in the event of a dental emergency. You should never turn away a patient in pain for any reason.
It results in a bad patient experience and, these days, when patients are unhappy, they have no reservation about sharing their negative experiences on social media, hurting your dental marketing efforts.
When you try your best to treat patients with dental emergencies, it goes a long way in terms of patient retention and loyalty.
