The Dental Phone of the Future

There are more communication tools available for the Dental Industry than ever before. Besides the telephone there are now email applications, text message services, and others.

All of these tools are very helpful but can sometimes be hard to manage because there are just so many of them. It can be very difficult to stay on top of all the communications tools when they are all separate applications.

Here is a quick example of how a typical dental office works and some of the problems they often run into. Although not all offices are the same, I'm guessing that this situation I'm about to give holds true for most offices.

Julie makes a phone call to an overdue patient who has an appointment for the following week. The patient has just switched their insurance provider and Julie wants to remind them to bring their new insurance card when they come in for their visit.

Unfortunately the patient doesn't answer the call so Julie leaves a message to call her back at their earliest convenience. Julie continues with her tasks for the day and leaves for a few minutes to pick her kids up from school.

While Julie is out of the office the patient she had tried to call earlier gets her message and calls into the office to return her phone call. The office assistant, Sallie, answers the patient's phone call.

The patient tells Sallie that she received a phone call from the office earlier that day and was just calling them back. Sallie isn't aware that Julie needs the patient to bring in their insurance card so Sallie simply reminds the patient of their upcoming appointment and thanks them for being such a great patient.

The next week, when the patient comes in for their appointment, they don't bring their insurance card because they didn't know the office needed it. Without the insurance card the office staff has some trouble with checking the patient in and it takes an extra 20 minutes with the patient before their treatment starts.

Situations like this happen fairly often in dental offices because of the many communication tools that are used and the number of people managing these tools. Glitches like this example can irritate patients, take your staff's time away from other responsibilities and cost your practice time and revenues.

Instead of the above situation, imagine a phone system in your dental practice that connects all of your communication tools into one. Imagine everything working together so the situation sounds like this instead.

Julie logs into her computer and searches for the name of the overdue patient she needs to call. The patient's name pops up and Julie clicks it to place the call and open the patient's profile.

The phone automatically turns on and the call is placed while the profile opens. Although the patient doesn't answer, Julie leaves her a message for the patients and after ending the phone call, adds a note to the patients profile about the phone call saying that the patient has switched insurance providers and needs to bring in her insurance card.

Fifteen minutes after Julie leaves to pick her kids up from school the patient returns her phone call. When the phone starts to ring a caller-ID screen pops up on Sallie's computer and she clicks the answer button to take the call.

The phone automatically turns on and connects while the patient's profile pops up onto her screen. The Patient explains that they are returning the offices phone call so Sallie checks the notes section and sees the note that Julie had left.

Sallie tells the patient to bring in their insurance card when they come in for their appointment and thanks them for being such a great patients. After ending the phone call she schedules a text message in the patient's profile to be sent out the morning before the patient's appointment to remind the patient once more to bring their card.

She then adds another note to the patient's profile that the patient has been reminded to bring in their insurance card and that a text message has been scheduled to go out the morning of the appointment.

The next week the patient receives the text message the morning of their appointment, they bring in their insurance card, and everything goes great during their visit. The cleaning takes place on time and the patient is finished and on their way in the appointed amount of time.

Isn't this how an office should work; all of the communication in an office working together to make things function more efficiently and provide better service for the patients? It just makes more sense.