I was recently working with an oral surgery practice and a periodontal office and learned something that the general dental practice usually does not have to manage . . . patients being referred into the practice without an appointment. Now, in a general practice, you would need to manage patients being referred out of the practice to these types of specialists, but let’s look at things from the specialty practice point of view.

At both of these offices, the referral coordinators had an accordion file filled with referral slips of patients who had been referred to their office but have not scheduled. They both had a good system. However, both of these offices are in the process of going paperless and we were looking at systems for managing these patients inside of the Dentrix software.

Here is what we came up with . . .

When you go paperless, you will use the Document Center a lot for paper storage. Now some of you know that every patient has a Document Center because you have been using it for a while, but did you know that every provider has a Document Center as well? Yep, you can scan and store documents inside of your own Document Center and eliminate a lot of paper that floats around on your desk.

So, for these two offices, I recommended using this feature and also attaching the document to the referring doctor for easier tracking. Then, when a patient calls, they can go to their Document Center (or the provider you choose to use) and then search documents attached to a particular referring source and get a list. Then, when the patient schedules and they open the Family File, they can attach the referral slip to the patient and that document has now been linked up without having to scan it again.

Go to the Office Manager > Document Center > select the provider you want to use for holding these documents and then scan the referral slip and put it in the correct folder. I would recommend putting the patient name in the description field. You can now shred these referral slips and clean up your desk.

For more information on the Document Center, CLICK HERE.