Dental Consultant Advice: Basic Office Organization
Organization of a dental practice is, in essence, composed of ensuring you and your dental staff are trained on how to efficiently and effectively process:
a. New Patients
b. Returning Patients
c. Emergency Patients
When we work with a new client we evaluate where the weak links are in handling new, returning and emergency patients and then systematically strengthen each of the weak links through training.
The following functions are a few examples of where weak links are often discovered:
a. New Patient phone calls
b. Processing new patients
c. Financial arrangements
d. Patient retention
e. Scheduling
Often there are functions not even being done such as running an effective morning huddle or doing quality control (correction) of employees. Another key is to ensure that specific functions are assigned to specific staff so there is accountability and eliminating overlapping functions.
That is it in a nut shell. Get organized and see patient complaints decrease dramatically.