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Do I break the appointment or just deleted it?

The single biggest pain point in the dental practice is holes in the schedule. WhenWhat is the difference between breaking an appointment and deleting an appointment?” Just the other day I encountered an office that was leaving the missed appointments on the appointment book so they could track them. What happens in these situations is that the office has not had any formal training or been given any resources on the best practices for managing the appointment book so they just make up their own system for tracking missed appointments.

I write about keeping the schedule full, it is always a big clicker. One question I receive a lot is, “

Keeping your schedule full is a management system that needs to have a protocol in place so that the entire team knows what to do when a patient misses an appointment and what steps to take to fill that opening. Today, I would like to give you all some best practice tips on what to do with the appointment if the patient does not keep the scheduled appointment.

Move the appointment to the Unscheduled List if the patient does not reschedule and you want to follow up with the patient. If you do not want to lose the appointment details, then you can store the visit on the Unscheduled List for a short period of time so you can make a couple of follow-up calls. There are two ways to get an appointment onto the Unscheduled List

Wait/Will Call the appointment – Use this if the patient did not show and gave you adequate time to fill the open time. Some offices have a 24- to 48-hour no-show policy so, if the patient cancels outside of that policy, then I would use the wait/will call feature.
Break the appointment if the patient is a no-show or cancels inside of your cancellation policy. When you break the appointment, it will put a note on the Office Journal and track the missed appointment on the Family File for future reference.

Delete the appointment if you do not need to follow up with the patient and just want to remove the appointment off your appointment book. When you delete an appointment, it will only show up on the Audit Trail and this task can also be password-protected.

For more information on this topic and read other articles, click the links below . . .

Keeping Your Hygiene Room Full . . . part 1 of 3

Keep Your Schedule Full Like a Pro

What's the best way to block out my Appointment Book?

“I need to make sure my team knows where to schedule appointments because I feel like there is no organization with the schedule,” said a doctor during one of our recent training sessions. “What is the best way to block out our schedule so my team know where to put the correct type of appointment so we can be more productive and less stressed out?”

These were the exact words from a doctor who was trying to create a system for scheduling and didn’t know where to begin with setting some standards for his team. We talked about the different methods for blocking out the schedule inside of the Dentrix software so that he could make the best decision for his practice.

I have seen offices use both the Perfect Day Scheduling feature and the Events feature for mapping their schedule. Today, I wanted to give you some pros and cons for using these tools to help you make the best decision for your appointment book.

Perfect Day Scheduling is designed to map out the schedule and give you a guideline for your team so they can easily see what type of appointment goes in that place. The great thing about this feature is that you can place multiple blocks throughout the day and, once you set it up, it will be set up every day until you change the setup. You can set up different colors to symbolize different appointment types. One complaint I get from doctors is that you can easily schedule over the top of the Perfect Day Scheduling blocks. In my opinion, this is more about the discipline of the team member scheduling to the system than the system itself. If you want to read up more about Perfect Day Scheduling, CLICK HERE.
Using Events to map out your schedule can be done and it will fix the issue of not being able to schedule over the top of the block. With an event, the team member would have to delete the event in order to schedule an appointment. Events can be created to span over multiple days and you can set them in your appointment book for up to a year time frame. Just right click on the appointment book and click on Create Event. You can also set the Events in different colors to symbolize different types of appointments.

Our goal here in The Dentrix Office Manager blog is to not only give you great tips and tricks, but also give you resources to make the best decisions for your practice.

Top 3 tips from my BDC course . . . "15 Ways to Make Scheduling Easier"

It is Business of Dentistry month and the countdown to August 17^th has started. Since transitioning my own office to Dentrix in 2003, becoming a Certified Dentrix Trainer in 2006 and then accepting the position of the Dentrix Office Manager blogger in 2011, attending the Business of Dentistry Conference is at the top of the list. I love networking with other Dentrix users and offering any resources I can. It is extremely fulfilling.

This year, I am slated to teach seven courses over the two-day event and I wanted to give you a sneaky peek into one of them today. On Saturday, I will be teaching “15 Ways to Make Scheduling Easier” and I have no doubt this will be a great topic. This article will not go through all 15 things for you, but give you my top three items from my course and point you to some blogs that I have written in these areas.

Appointment book shortcuts – Everybody loves a shortcut. If you will not be able to attend the BDC this year, here is a blog I wrote that you might like on this topic. CLICK HERE
Looking up family appointments – Do you ever have Mom on the phone and she asks, “When are my kids’ appointments?” or “My husband wants to know when he is due for his checkup.”?
Using your lists properly – This is a valuable resource to keeping your schedule full. CLICK HERE for an article that relates.

How wide open is the back door of your practice?

How wide open is the back door to your practice? I asked this question to a doctor during one of our training sessions because he was so convinced that his patients did not leave his practice. He knew that his patients were scheduling their next visit and loyal to his practice. This practice was very successful and had very good production and collection numbers … but they were totally in the dark about what their patient retention number was.

I opened their eyes with the click of a button . . . okay, maybe three clicks.

When we opened the Practice Advisor Report during the training session, our entire agenda went out the window and we started down a completely different path. Patients were pre-scheduling their next visit at a rate of 54% and the patient retention was at 66%. I thought the doctor was going to fall off his chair.

Numbers tell a story and monitoring your key performance indicators is a must when running a small business. Remember, your dental practice is a small business. Dentrix and a group of dental practice management consultants put their heads together many years ago and developed the Practice Advisor Report to help you monitor these KPIs. One of the most important numbers comes on page 3 of the report.

From the Office Manager, click on Analysis > Practice Advisor Report. Click on Practice Advisor Report and it will open up a new window. Here are my recommendations when you are ready to look at the numbers for your patient retention.

Select the last day of the previous month in the Generate Report as of:
Select Procedure Date for more accurate numbers
Highlight your active providers
In the Continuing Care section, select only your recare continuing care types (Prophy, Perio, Recare, etc). Do not select X-rays or anything that doesn’t relate to recare.
Click Preview and it will launch the report

The Patient Retention is located on the third page titled Continuing Care. You can see the image below to get a visual of what it looks like. For more information on this topic, CLICK HERE to be directed.

Now if you have never set up this report before, I can send you an info sheet that outlines my recommendations or we can setup an online training session. Email me directly for either option. You can also check out other blogs about the Practice Advisor within this blog.

Your Own Personal Practice Management Consultant

The 5 Stats Every Office Should Monitor

Help your hygienists monitor their own goals

If you listen to a hygiene coach or consultant speak about numbers during a conference presentation, you may hear some industry standards like hygiene production needs to be 30% of practice production or they should be producing three times their salary. You will need to discover what the goals are for your hygiene department and help them reach those goals. Today, I want to help you with some tools inside Dentrix to help your hygienists monitor their goals.

Once you know what each hygienist’s individual monthly goal is, I would recommend entering those goals in the computer so your team can monitor those goals. You can enter the goal for each hygienist from the Office Manager > Analysis > Setup > Goals and select the provider ID to add the monthly goal. I would recommend adding in the goals for the entire year if you have that information available and you know everyone’s vacation schedule.

Now you can start using some of the amazing tools available in Dentrix to monitor the goals. One of my favorite ways is also a favorite for the hygienist because he or she doesn’t have to run a report. This is super easy and really helps to see the goal versus the scheduled versus the actual in a super easy to use view on the appointment book. From the appointment book, click on view at the top of the page then you can click on Add or Edit to change the view. You will need to change two things in order to see the production goal: Select the provider ID and make sure there is a check mark in View Amount. If you only want to show one provider’s goals at a time, then only select one provider for your view. Then when you click on the monthly calendar in the upper left corner of the appointment book, you will see it calculate the goal, scheduled production and actual production for that provider you selected in the view.

The next tool you can use is the Daily Huddle Report. This report will also add up the goal, scheduled production and actual production based on the provider IDs you select in your filters for the report. You can use this report as part of your morning huddle or each provider can look at it on a daily basis to see how he or she is doing for the month.

I strongly believe that the hygiene department is a highly integral part of the practice and should be held to the same accountability for production as the doctor. They just need some helpful tools to help bring awareness to the numbers.

Don't get caught with FOMO

I remember when I attended my very first Business of Dentistry conference in 2006. It was the first year I was a certified Dentrix trainer and I was super excited because my doctor agreed to tag along with me because it happened to be held at his favorite ski resort (so he could bail out if he got bored). I remember Dr. Gordon Christensen was the keynote speaker that year and my doctor was so impressed with the entire event he never made it to the slopes (at least during class time).

Since 2006 I have never missed a Business of Dentistry Conference (I would have serious FOMO) and this year will be no different. This year I am teaching six courses over two days and I am super excited to be such a big part of this amazing event.

CLICK HERE to learn more

Use my promo code when you register

BDC2017JOHNSON

Appointment Book Shortcuts you will love

Everybody loves a shortcut. That sounds familiar, right? I wrote a blog about the keyboard shortcuts a while back that you may want to check out. CLICK HERE to open it.

Today, I want to talk about some more scheduling shortcuts. When I am working one-on-one with team members, I often watch as they click, click, click, click and click again just to find out when the next appointment is or find out when the next family members’ appointments are. It’s exhausting for me to watch, let alone for the person doing all the clicking. Let’s look at a couple shortcuts.

More Information Button – This feature is located on all Dentrix toolbars and you can also find it in the lower left corner of the schedule appointment window. Have you ever been on the phone with a mom and she wants to know when her three kids and husband are scheduled next for all their future appointments … but you’re not sure what’s the most efficient way to find all these appointments for the entire family? Or are you working in the Patient Chart and your patient asks you when her husband is due for his checkup but you really don’t want to leave the chart and figure out how to look for that information? Both of these scenarios can be completed using the More Information button. See the image below of the More Information window.

Locate Existing Appointment - This seems to be a feature easily forgotten and so easy to use. It is, however, only found on the Appointment Book. Click on the icon and enter the first few letters of the last name and click on the >> to search. Then you will see a list for appointments for that patient or if he or she has a common last name, you may see other people listed here as well. You can click on one of the appointments and click on View. It will take you out to the appointment and highlight it for you to easily see.
Other Appointments – You will find this quick button inside of the appointment and can be helpful if you have the patient’s appointment open. This can be helpful if you are looking to see if the patient has his or her next visit scheduled.

Quick tips and shortcuts help all of us work smarter. If you have a quick tip or shortcut you would like to share, let me know by making a comment on this post. I would love to hear from you.

Take the anxiety and frustration out of scheduling

In a busy office, finding appointment time can be time-consuming and frustrating. Most scheduling coordinators I work with have created a system of using the day or week view, looking for open time. As you flip the red arrow moving forward and then forward again, the anxiety level starts to go up as your patient sits on the phone with you while you look for the first open time slot.

But what if you could narrow down your search and have the computer generate a list of the open time for you based on certain criteria instead of the endless clicking through the appointment book? Using the Dentrix search tool, you can customize your search for the patient you have on the phone and the conversation with your patient would be directed at exactly what they are looking for.

Here is how I would envision a conversation with a patient calling in to schedule an appointment with their favorite dental hygienist . . . .

Patient: Hi Dayna, this is Linda Jacobsen. I just received your email that I am due for my checkup.

Dayna: Great! Thank you for calling. Let’s find a time for you. Do you still want to schedule with Jenny? (I know she likes Jenny because I have noted it as her PROV2 in the Family File)

Linda: Yes, Jenny is the only person I want to see.

Dayna: Jenny works on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Which day works best for you?

Linda: A Wednesday afternoon would work best.

Dayna: Great, let me plug in that information and see what I can come up with for you.

Now I would open up my Scheduling search tool and see the list of dates and times that will work with Linda’s window. Select the parameters in the search tool that match your patient’s requests and click on Search/View. This will give you a list of available openings in your schedule and you can now go through the list with Linda and see which date she wants.

You have not only made it more personal for your patient but you have also eliminated the day to day or week to week endless search.

Time is one of our most precious assets

The dental office is busy, patients are running late and you frequently get sidetracked by the phones and tasks. In the midst of the chaos, the hygienist walks up front and asks where her next patient is. You look at the appointment book only to realize it is 15 minutes past the patient’s scheduled appointment time. Where did the time go?

Time is one of our most precious assets and it is something we can all do a better job at managing. So what if you had a tool that could help you manage your time better? What if you had a tool that could help the entire team manage their time better? Exclusively for Dentrix users, that tool is now available.

During this week’s Chicago Midwinter meeting, Dentrix launched the exclusive distribution of Simplifeye. I was in Chicago for the meeting, and I had the opportunity to see it firsthand and talk with the founders, Zach and Ryan Hungate.

This new software technology will streamline the doctor’s daily workflow, instantly notify the clinical team when their patient has arrived and give you more time in your day. The Simplifeye dashboard will also give your front office team the visual notifications when patients are late, the clinical team is running late and when the patient is ready to be checked out.

The dashboard will keep a running clock from the time the patient walks in the door to the time he or she walks out. This will give your team data on how often you are running late with patients.
When the patient is assigned to the doctor for treatment the timer can give you precise statistics so you will know exactly how long certain procedures take and you can adjust in your default time units, which could increase your production per hour.
With the iWatch integration, the doctor will receive information about the patients currently waiting. The iWatch will send info such as medical alerts, today’s visit and last visit.

The Simplifeye dashboard will be available as part of your Dentrix customer service plan and the iWatch integration is available for a small monthly fee. For more information, CLICK HERE and start saving time.

Case Acceptance . . . how much treatment are you scheduling each day?

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have gained a lot of

knowledge about treatment planning, case management and following up on unscheduled treatment. Keeping your schedule full is imperative to having a successful practice and knowing what reports to manage to ensure patients don’t fall through the cracks is one of the core systems we manage in the practice.

You might be asking yourself, “What is my case acceptance?” and “How can I show my doctor the cases I am closing every day?” Is there a report that will show the treatment plans that are accepted on a daily basis? What if you are on an incentive plan for case acceptance? How would you show that to your doctor?

All those questions came to me from a practice administrator who is tracking case acceptance for his team. Then, the same question came in from a treatment coordinator who is on a bonus program for closing cases. I found it interesting that I was asked basically the same question by two different offices within the same week so I thought, “If they have this question, I bet the rest of the world does as well.”

You may know that I love, love, love the Treatment ManagerReport for following up on patients with unscheduled treatment. However, this report does not let me filter by accepted cases. For my article today, this is where I want to focus. You can generate a daily list of treatment plan cases that have been accepted so you can now know how much treatment you are scheduling and you can show it to your doctor if you need to report it.

Let’s say that three months ago, a patient was diagnosed with two crowns and she left without scheduling. Today, you called the patient to follow up and you got her scheduled. Woohoo! If you mark the case as accepted, now you have a way of tracking it.

Let’s also say that, today, you have five patients come in and you schedule three of them for treatment. If you also mark those three cases as accepted, they will also show up on the same report. Now you will have an accepted case report with four cases for today.

Go to the Patient Chart with the Treatment Plan Panel in view or the Treatment Planner and click on the printer icon as if you were going to print a treatment plan estimate. Instead of clicking on the Print Treatment Case, click on the Practice Treatment Case Report. Then select today for your date range and highlight Accepted for the case status. You will generate a list of all the cases that were accepted today and be able to show your awesome hard work for today. Great job!

How can I see which doctor is scheduled to do the exam? Here are 3 ways . . .

One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from multi-doctor practices about the Dentrix appointment book is, “How can we see which doctor is assigned to the patient for the exam?” Since the appointment is set in the provider color (usually the hygienist color), it is difficult to see which patient each doctor needs to see during the day. Another question along these same lines is, “Can I post the exam to the doctor and the cleaning to the hygienist?”

In the past, there was no good answer.

Now with the release of G6, there is a way to answer both these questions . . . Yeah!

When you schedule a patient for an appointment in G6, you will notice an Addl Provider box in the upper left corner where you can add the specified doctor for this patient’s exam. When you add an additional provider, you will be able to view it in a couple of places depending on your preferences.

When you go to check out the patient and set the procedures complete, you can assign the exam to the additional provider and give that production to the doctor without having to go to the ledger and change it manually. This will save you a ton of time.

I hope this tip helps you be more efficient and productive in your everyday routine. You use your practice management software every day and it is the little things that make the biggest impact on your day.

Recare is the lifeblood of your practice

If you are a general practice or pediatric dental practice, your recare system is the lifeblood of your practice. Your doctor’s schedule feeds off the hygiene patients so it is critical that you have a seamless system. But are your hygiene systems working as well as you think they are? You may have patients falling through the cracks or not receiving the reminders that you think they are.

The most important component of your recare system is the setup and making sure your team understands the details. I want to take some time today to walk you through proper setup, checking your individual patients continuing care, and which report to manage.

First, the setup is key. I wrote a blog post on May 23, 2012, called “KISS your Continuing Care Types,” but obviously not everyone read it so I am going to take some of those tips and re-apply them today. Many offices, understandably, try and create a system for 3-month Perio, 4-month Prophy, etc., by setting up new Continuing Care types but trust me . . . IT DOESN’T WORK! Remember that you can only attach one Continuing Care type to the procedure code. To

understand what I am talking about, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Procedure Code Setup, then highlight the D1110 and click edit. You will notice in the middle of the window there is a >> Auto Continuing Care where you can attach one Continuing Care Type to this code. This means you cannot link up a 4-month Prophy and 6-month Prophy to the same code.

Your options are Prophy and Perio or Recare. You can link the Prophy to the D1110 and the D1120 and the Perio to the D4910, or link the Recare to all three.

After you have this setup corrected, when you schedule your patient for a cleaning, it will link up to the appointment correctly. When you set complete, it will update your patient’s due date.

But what if your patient is a 3-month Perio or 4-month Prophy? How do you get it up update the due date correctly? You can update the patient’s frequency on his or her Family File in the Continuing Care window. Once you change the patient’s recare frequency, then your reports will be accurate. When you schedule the patient for his or her next visit, the system will know when he or she is due.

After you get this setup fixed and the patient’s frequency updated on the Family File, then you can feel confident that your Continuing Care Report is accurate. If you are using the Dentrix eCentral communication manager, you will know that your patients are receiving reminders when they are due. For a full article on the Continuing Care report, CLICK HERE.

Doctors . . . take the roller skates off

Doctors, do you feel like you have roller skates on all day? Does your team complain because they never get a lunch? I see this more and more in the practice mainly due to a lack of structure in the appointment book. However, this scheduling crisis can be resolved with some planning and discipline.

Perfect Day Scheduling is one of the most underused but most powerful features in Dentrix. I have doctors call me and say, “Dayna, my daily production goal is $7,500 per day and our schedule is full every day but we are not meeting our goal. Maybe I just need to lower the goal.” No, you just need some structure in the scheduling process.

I agree that the most important thing that the front office team does is keep the schedule full. However, if all they are doing is putting warm bodies in the chair, this can create unnecessary chaos and unproductive days. Scheduling is like playing chess … it takes skill and patience.

The easiest way I have found to map out your schedule is start with a clean slate. In your appointment book, go out to a week next year and find completely empty days and print out these schedules. First, decide where your new patients will go. If your goal is 20 new patients per month, you will need about five blocks per week. Then block out your productive time for the doctor so that 75-80% of the production goal is met before lunch. Next, in the hygiene schedule across from the doctor’s productive time, I would block out SRP and perio maintenance. This will help have room in the hygiene chair and the doctor doesn’t have to step out to do too many exams. Finally, fill in the rest of the open time with crown seats, single tooth fillings, and other non-productive procedures.

The above recommendation, of course, is a very generalized guide and will need to be customized for your practice depending on how many treatment rooms and providers you have in your practice. This is a great place to start, plus you can tweak it as you go along your journey of productive scheduling and take those roller skates off.

CLICK HERE for more detailed instructions on mapping out your perfect day.

All I want for Christmas is a new iWatch

Is a new iWatch on your Christmas list for this year or are you already wearing your iWatch wondering what to do with it? I have a couple of suggestions for you . . . use it to help you manage your time and patients at your dental practice.

Imagine this . . . what if you could get a little buzz on your wrist from your iWatch letting you know that patient in room #1 is ready for an exam and you could check her medical alerts before you even walk into the room? What if you could then speak a command into your iWatch and it would automatically launch the patient’s most recent pano onto the monitor? Using these new apps designed around the efficiency of the dental practice gets me all excited … and it should you too.

I have learned about two new products specifically designed around the iWatch and helping you manage your time around the operatory. Below you will see a video interview I did on a company I spoke with at a recent dental meeting and a link to another product that I absolutely love. If you are interested in this technology, research both products and schedule a demo to look at each one.

CLICK HERE to check out Simplifeye

CLICK HERE to check out OperaDDS

Your Active Patient Base may not be accurate

We are coming to the close of 2015 and I would like you all to start thinking about planning for next year and what that might look like. However, before we can start looking at annual planning for next year, we need to continue focusing on this year and really critiquing the numbers. If you have been reading my blog posts for a while, you know that I talk a lot about how numbers tell a story and having accurate numbers is extremely important in analyzing the health of your practice.

If you are using the Practice Advisor Report on a monthly basis for analyzing, managing, and forecasting your key performance indicators (KPI) … congratulations! If you are not yet using this amazing tool, you can read up about it by CLICKING HERE. Learning how to make the numbers on this report as accurate as possible is the key to using this report to its fullest potential.

There is one number on this report that could be skewed, depending on how you deal with your missed and broken appointments. I realize that the ADA CDT coding came out recently with procedure codes for Missed Appointment (D9986) and Cancelled Appointment (D9987). However, I am urging you not to use them. When you post a procedure code to the patient’s ledger, it automatically updates the patient’s last visit date. So if you post a D9986 to the ledger to note that the patient missed an appointment today, the family file Last Visit Date will still get updated to today. This last visit date number is used on the Practice Advisor report to calculate your Active Patient Base. You might be asking, “Well, Dayna, how would you suggest we track missed appointments?” I’m glad you asked! Here are some suggestions . . .

· Use an adjustment code instead. You can have a maximum of 40 adjustment types listed in the definitions so if you have not met this max, then this would be my first choice. If you have maxed out on adjustment types, then I would look to see if you have any duplicates that you can combine together and then add two new ones. With an adjustment, you can post a $0 amount just to document it or you can post a dollar amount to show the fee. This would need to be a + adjustment type.

· Make sure you are using the Break Appointment feature and not the delete appointment when a patient misses an appointment. When you break an appointment, it will make a note on the Office Journal and update the missed appointments on the Family File. The Practice Advisor Report will also calculate your lost revenue from broken appointments.

· Document a missed appointment in the Clinical Note. Now this will not give you a searchable code to look for, but it will give you the documentation in case the patient becomes a risk or argumentative about missed appointments. You can always print the clinical notes if needed.

Like I said, “Numbers tell a story.” If you want an accurate Active Patient Base count, stop posting a procedure code to the ledger when the patient does not keep his or her appointment. If you would like to learn more about the Practice Advisor Report, here are some other blog posts on numbers . . .

Do you know how many patients are leaving your practice? CLICK HERE

The 5 Stats Every Office Should Monitor . . . CLICK HERE

Top 10 features in Dentrix you are not using

In 2003, my dental practice converted from an archaic DOS-based dental software to the impressive and robust Dentrix practice management software. To say the least, I was completely overwhelmed. Two years later, in 2005, I still felt like I hadn’t even scratched the surface of my new powerful software’s potential so I applied to become a Certified Dentrix Trainer in order to learn everything there was to know about the Dentrix program. What better way to learn than to get a certificate?

Now I know that not everyone has the opportunity to become a Dentrix trainer like I did, but with a little self-motivation and some tips from me, you will be well on your way to being a “Dentrix super user.” Since I am working with dental practices every day, I have the unique opportunity to see what features they are using, what features they are not using, and what features they have no idea even exist. My goal today is to give you my top 10 you might not even know exist.

Quick Letters and Letter Merge – Maybe this sounds familiar . . . you have a folder on your desktop with all of your office’s letters you send out to patients, including collection letters, welcome letters, and letters to specialists. When it is time to send a letter, you edit the date, enter the patient’s name, address, and salutation, then sign the letter and scan it into the document center. That process sounds like a lot of work to me. Why not add your custom letters into the Quick Letters or Letter Merge with the proper merge fields and let Dentrix do all the work for you? The best part is it will automatically put a note on the Office Journal and you can “Send to the Dentrix Document Center” without scanning (see #5 on the list). Here are some more blog posts related to this feature . . .

Send letters that make an impact . . . CLICK HERE
Can you write me an excuse note . . . CLICK HERE

Dentrix Mobile – Have you ever been sitting in the comfort of your home watching the weather forecast and hoping that the power doesn’t go out … then suddenly there’s nothing but darkness. You check the office and the power is also out there … so how are you going to let your patients know not to come in? Has your doctor ever been out of town and received a call from a patient requesting a drug refill but he or she has no way of checking the last prescription or the patient’s last visit unless he or she goes into the office? Both of these two common scenarios can be solved just by registering for Dentrix Mobile. It’s included in your Dentrix customer support plan so there is absolutely no excuse for not using this service.

Three reasons you should be using Dentrix Mobile . . . CLICK HERE
A lifeline to your patient info . . . CLICK HERE

Payment Agreements – I wrote an article called “Get it out of your head and into the computer” back in April 2014. The theme of the article was speaking to office managers who store all their verbal payment agreements in their head. What I am seeing is this is still happening, but I am also seeing new doctors purchasing practices with a significant amount of the accounts receivable over 90 days past due or new office managers taking over a practice where there has been no management of the accounts receivable. Using the Payment Agreement feature in Dentrix will not only help you get organized with patients who are making payments, but also allow the entire team to see on the ledger what the arrangement is with the account.

Two options to help you manage your A/R . . . CLICK HERE
Get the info out of your head and into the computer . . . CLICK HERE

Tracking Gratuities and Referrals - Do you know where your new patients are coming from? Are they hearing about you from friends, Google Search, or the ValPak flyer that cost you $15,000 to send out? Your marketing dollars depend on where patients are being referred from so you should know where to continue spending money and where to stop. When a patient refers a new patient, do you give him or her a thank you gift? Would you like to track if you gave the referral source a Starbucks or Home Depot gift card last time or be able to track a referral source’s gratuity history? Tracking referrals and gratuities in Dentrix is super easy and gives the doctor a lot of good information about where to spend marketing dollars … but I find most offices never use this useful tool.

Building relationships one referral at a time . . . CLICK HERE
Keep tight reins on your referred patients . . . CLICK HERE

Sending to the Dentrix Document Center – This will save your team a ton of time in unnecessary scanning, unnecessary wasted paper, and unnecessary hard drive storage space. When you scan a document into the Document Center, it takes many more steps and the file size of a scanned document is about 100 times larger (just a guess) than that of a file send electronically through the Dentrix Document Center printer driver. Anything you want to print can be virtually printed to the Document Center for file storage. This is such an amazing yet underused feature.

A little known secret . . . CLICK HERE

Perfect Day Scheduling – Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if you could see your patients on time, complete 80% of your production goal before lunch, get out for lunch on time, and finish your day without pulling the roller skates out of the closet. This can be a reality if you create it. Take control of your appointment book with Perfect Day Scheduling. When you use perfect day scheduling, your team knows exactly how to schedule because you have mapped it out for them. There is no room for error.

What if everyday could be a perfect day . . . CLICK HERE
The new patient experience, scheduling the appointment . . . CLICK HERE

Goal Tracking – Every dental practice has production and collection goals they need to meet in order to keep the financial state of the business healthy. I always encourage doctors to share these goals with the team and be transparent with the key performance numbers with the team. There are several places in Dentrix to watch and monitor your practice goals so the team can strategize and work together on exceeding the goals. You can monitor your goals on the monthly calendar, Practice Advisor Report, and the Daily Huddle.

Let's do some goal setting . . . CLICK HERE
Looking ahead to . . . CLICK HERE

More Information Button – Have you ever been on the phone with a mom and she wants to know when her three kids and husband are scheduled next for all their future appointments … but you’re not sure what’s the most efficient way to find all these appointments for the entire family? Try the More Information button and I can guarantee you will fall in love with this super quick search tool. You can find the More Information feature on all Dentrix modules. When you are selecting a patient anywhere in Dentrix, you will see it at the lower left corner of the window.
Create Batch of Primary Dental Claims – Are you sure you have batched and sent off all your insurance claims from last week? How about last month? Use this second pair of eyes to double check and make sure all your claims have been sent out. Not only will this give you peace of mind, but also keep your accounts receivable out of the 90-day past due column.

Are all your insurance claims going out . . . CLICK HERE

Patient-Friendly Descriptions – Do your patients often ask what a “resin 2surf, post” or a “Crown-porc fused noble metal” is? Or is your practice in an area where English is not the primary language for many of your patients? If you would like to create a treatment plan that your patients would more easily understand and helps them understand what each procedure is, then start using patient-friendly descriptions. With Dentrix G6.1, it is even easier to use because you can edit these descriptions in the procedure code edit.

No speak English, no worries . . . CLICK HERE

Have fun experimenting with these features and working toward increasing your level of efficiency and customer service. Drop me a line at dayna@raedentalmanagement.comif you have other questions. I’m happy to help.

Your hygiene department is the lifeblood of your practice

Do you sometimes feel a little out of touch with your recare patients? Do you think sometimes there are patients you haven’t seen for a while and you wonder where they are? Are you ready to take your hygiene department to the next level?

Your hygiene department is the lifeblood of the practice. If you don’t have a reliable system for managing when your patients are due for their regular checkups, then your office could be spinning its wheels when it comes to working from accurate lists. If set up properly, the Dentrix Continuing Care system will run like a well-oiled machine. Let’s look at the features that will help you generate accurate lists, give you some custom filter options, and streamline the process.

First, decide what continuing care types you want to track and make sure they are linked to the correct procedure code. Remember, you can only have one continuing care type per procedure code. Some examples might be:

PROPHY linked to D1110 and D1120
PERIO linked to D4910 and D4341
RECARE linked to D4910, D1110, and D1120

CLICK HERE for more information on linking up your continuing care types to procedure codes.

The next piece you want to think about is how you might filter your lists and what kind of customization you can do within the Dentrix Continuing Care system. You are dealing with different biological systems and personalities, so Sally might need to come in every 3 months for her prophy and want to be scheduled only with HYG1 and Michael might need to come in every 6 months for his prophy but want to see HYG4. How do you keep track of all these personalized settings? Its super easy!

On the Family File, double click on the Continuing Care box > highlight the Prophy and click edit. This will open a new window. Here you can edit the patient interval and select a specific hygienist of choice.

After you have customized the patient’s Continuing Care screen, you and your team can now generate customized lists with the push of a button. You can create a list for HYG1 patients and a different list for HGY4 patients. This can help your hygienists and front office team fill openings faster and feel confident your lists are accurate and up to date. CLICK HEREfor more information on keeping your hygiene schedule full (make sure to read all three articles).

Dentrix G6 launch . . . . be amazed!

I had the pleasure of talking with Brad Royer, the Dentrix product manager, about the release of Dentrix G6. The launch date is scheduled on April 30, 2015 during the California Dental Association meeting. Stop by the Dentrix booth during CDA to see all of the amazing features but you can watch our interview now to hear about the highlights.

Dentrix G6 demonstrates our commitment to listen to our customers. We have been gathering customer feedback via our online suggestion box, social medial polls, and industry conferences. One of the messages we have heard is that you are looking for easier upgrades and thoroughly tested software. We believe that Dentrix G6 addresses this request.

We are also committed to providing new and improved features and functionality to our Dentrix customers on a consistent basis. With Dentrix G6, we are pleased to offer customers exceptional new tools, features, and functionality. Brad Royer, Dentrix Product Manager

Challenge yourself to become a Dentrix Master and get recognized on the Wall of Fame

This is your year to become the best you can be in your career. Challenge yourself to become a Dentrix master. Join me on the Wall of Fame as I post up your accomplishments on my blog all throughout 2015. CLICK HERE to start your success.

Watch my video to hear all the details . . .