The success of your practice depends on the entire team– the front-end staff, the hygienists, the dental assistants, and the doctors. Unless you are all working together seamlessly and with a good rapport, your practice cannot be successful.
But have you ever wondered just how much work your entire team actually accomplishes in a day? They keep the office organized, the practice running smoothly, and the patients so happy that they continue to come back again and again. It’s a big job.
Unfortunately, it is very easy to lose sight of just how big a job it is and what is actually happening behind the scenes when you are most of the time on stage performing. So what is it that helps your practice run so smoothly?
It’s the little things.
The little things make a huge difference to patients when they come to your dental practice, these tasks you might not think too much about because they are so small, such as a sticky note here or there. So, I think it’s time to focus and really delve into the importance of each of those seemingly small tasks to the complete satisfaction of each of your patients.
Comfort notes
All of these details, though seemingly small, are crucial to your patient’s experience, and it is how you and your team address them that can make or break that experience. But how important are these notes really?
Well, it is these notes that help you to fully accommodate each patient effectively. Some patients like it when the chair isn’t reclined all the way back. Some are sensitive to certain types of fluoride, and some, like me, have a hypersensitive gag reflex. All of these details, though small, are incredibly important to your patient’s experience and therefore to your practice’s bottom line.
Additional notes
Of course, it’s important to make sure your patients are comfortable in the chair during a procedure, but what about their preferences when they are not in the chair? Some patients prefer to be called in the late afternoon rather than the morning or on a particular day or days of the week. Some would prefer coming with their spouse or their child. What about their preferred name?
Believe it or not, these preferences are important, too. Just like comfort notes, additional notes to accommodate your patients are crucial and will be rewarded with patient loyalty. But these notes are so minute you might not even think about them. Don’t worry because your team is there, being meticulous about any and all details that will help better the patient experience.
Medications and medical alerts
What do your patients take daily? Have they taken anything recently? Do they have allergies, severe or otherwise? Are they unable to be put under with certain anesthetics?
Who is jotting this all down so you don’t forget? The answer is simple. Your incredible team always has your back.
Recall and appointment reminders
What about those recall and appointment reminders? Who is taking care of them?
Those superheroes behind the desk don’t just record these dates and times but also work to make sure that none of these potential appointments fall through the cracks? How? Sometimes they are on the phone all day or they are sending out postcards or emails to your patients. With kids going back to school soon, they too will want to schedule an exam and cleaning. The front-end staff make sure that none of those patients miss an opportunity to see you by keeping track, being prepared, and always keeping in touch. They provide the kind of attention and care your patients deserve, and little things like that encourage them to come back.
Insurance information
This part is widely known to be time-consuming, stressful and frustrating. But your incredible front-end staff, they get it done. After discussing this part of the job with many Office Managers and Receptionists, it has been made clear to me that this is one of the most difficult parts of the job, and if they have no software to assist, it can be made that much harder.
Conclusion
The Dental Office Managers, the Dental Receptionists, and the Dental Assistants contribute by recording these small but important notes in order to better the experience of the patients by working as a cohesive team, and it is important to remember just how critical they are to the success of the practice. Never take these people on your team or these notes, as little as they are, for granted for they are what help to encourage patient retention and patient loyalty.
To be fair, quite a few Dentists do this behind-the-scenes work, too and some Dental Professionals do all the work of both onstage and behind-the-scenes, and for that, they are their own superheroes. So to those jacks-of-all-trades, I have to ask, does your office have a proper practice management software, does it have any kind of practice management software? If not, it is definitely time to reward yourself.
And if you work with a team and don’t have the proper software or even no software at all, be their superhero and choose a software that can significantly minimize their stress as well as their paper usage.
Click the link below and see what Maxident can do for you and your team today!
