the coupon mailer 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 gift card the 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. Sadly, I find that most offices never use this useful Dentrix tool.
For more information, see“ Building relationships one referral at a time”( February 27, 2013) and“ Keep tight reins on your referred patients”( August 23, 2013).
Figure 3 Use this feature to search for all procedures that have been posted and not sent to insurance.
# 5 Sending to the Dentrix Document Center This Dentrix feature will save your team a ton of 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 many times larger than that of a file sent 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.
For more information, see“ A little known secret”( September 4, 2012).
# 6 Perfect Day Scheduling Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you could see your patients on time, complete 80 percent 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.
For more information, see“ What if every day could be a perfect day”( March 19, 2013) and“ The new patient experience... scheduling the appointment”( July 27, 2011).
# 7 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. 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 and the Daily Huddle Report.
For more information, see“ Let’ s do some goal setting”( December 2, 2014).
# 8 More Information Button Have you ever been on the phone with a mom who wants to know when her kids and husband are scheduled for their next appointments? Try the More Information button on the toolbar. You will fall in love with this super quick reference tool. You can find the More Information button on the toolbar of most Dentrix modules( Figure 1). When you select a patient anywhere in Dentrix, you will also see the More Information button in the lower left corner of the dialog box( Figure 2).
# 9 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? You can use the Create Batch Primary Dental Insurance Claims button on the Office Manager toolbar to open a dialog box where you can search for all procedures that have been posted and not sent to insurance( Figure 3). This Dentrix feature is like a 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, it will also help keep your accounts receivable out of the 90-day past due column.
For more information, see“ Are all your insurance claims going out?”( March 31, 2015).
# 10 Patient-Friendly Descriptions Do your patients often ask what a“ resin 2surf, post” or a“ Crownporc 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. As of Dentrix G6.1, it is even easier to use because you can edit these descriptions in the procedure code editor.
For more information, see“ No speak English, no worries”( July 22, 2013).
Have fun experimenting with these Dentrix features and increasing your office efficiency and customer service. If you have questions, drop me a line at dayna @ raedentalmanagement. com. I’ m happy to help.
LEARN MORE Dayna Johnson, founder and principal consultant of Rae Dental Management, helps dental offices improve patient care, increase collections, and reduce staff headaches by implementing efficient management systems. With 20 years of experience in the business and technical side of dental offices, Dayna’ s passion for efficient systems is grounded in both personal understanding and professional expertise. Dayna can be reached at dayna @ raedentalmanagement. com or visit her website at www. raedentalmanagement. com.
DAYNA JOHNSON Certified Dentrix Trainer