Maximizing Your Practice Management Software

Your practice management software is at the core of everything that runs through your dental office.  It helps your team accomplish daily tasks efficiently and keeps things running smoothly, but is it working as hard as it can be?  You have probably heard the phrase garbage in, garbage out.  This, unfortunately, is the reality of many dental practices’ software.  Without a systemized process that is followed by every team member it doesn’t take long for the information in the system to become unorganized and redundant. 

Many dentists underestimate the value of the dental insurance information in the practice management software.  It can have a direct effect on treatment acceptance, accounts receivables, overall patient experience and write off amounts.  Having a clean, organized data center of insurance information can be the difference between running at maximum efficiency or not.  It can help your dental practice:

• Provide accurate patient estimate information, set up financial arrangements, and schedule the patient ALL before they leave the office
• Analyze write off amounts for each insurance company
• Evaluate which insurance companies to contract with
• Market to employees of local businesses
• Communicate with all patients on a specific insurance plan to provide updates or changes
  

The good news is that it is never too late to get your insurance data back on track.  You just need to dedicate the time and resources to implement a data clean up process.   This is something that can be done internally or can easily be outsourced on a project basis.  Once it is cleaned up, it is essential to train all team members on the office protocol for entering information into the software to continue to keep the data clean and efficient.