How ADSTRA Clinical Can Help Your Practice Grow
Anyone who has seen a prescription from their doctor, or hand-written dental charts while at their dental appointment can agree – these are some of the most difficult notes to read, unless you are the one who wrote them. When it comes to dental charts, for the most part, dental offices will attempt to implement standard notations, which results in varying degrees of success. In small dental clinics, over time staff members will become familiar with each practitioner’s writing style, however – what happens when there is a turnover in staff? Your dental clinic is back to square one, struggling to read the dental charts.
Within ADSTRA Dental Software, there is the ADSTRA Clinical module. In ADSTRA Clinical, the standard symbols used are clear and easy to read for everyone. This makes it easier for any provider or staff member to read the dental charts and notes created for all patients.
One of the main features within ADSTRA Clinical is the ability to view a patient’s progress over time. The information from the most recent charts can be carried forward on each subsequent chart in their file. Multiple charts can even be opened at the same time, allowing pockets and recessions to be represented graphically within ADSTRA Clinical.
Users are able to set their own preferences for general charts, periodontal charts, restoration materials, connection between procedures, and tools within ADSTRA Clinical. Working seamlessly with ADSTRA Management – ADSTRA Clinical allows dental providers to create dental treatment plans, and dental treatment plan charts, that are automatically linked to the treatment and treatment plan logs of each patient.
Here are just a few of the other features available within ADSTRA Clinical:
- Dental charts can be created for examinations, completed treatment, and planned treatment.
- The endodontic charting includes tools for mapping root canal treatments and conditions of treated root canals.
- The periodontal charting includes management of measurements for pocket depths, suppuration, plaque and bleeding, gingival recession, furcation, mobility, and MAG.
- A number of reports, or the whole chart as you see it on your screen, can be printed.
- Clinical Notes that are signature protected, with customizable templates and a medical spell-checker.
ADSTRA Clinical not only helps you standardize your clinical charts, which cuts down on the learning curve for new hires, as well as the time spent deciphering each practitioner’s notes – but it is also a crucial step towards making your dental clinic paperless. By being able to define exam templates and incorporate them into their patient’s charts, ADSTRA Clinical also offers dental providers an easy to use, and read, solution to creating your paperless dental clinic.
ADSTRA Clinical, combined with the other modules in the ADSTRA Dental Software suite of products, is the ideal solution to helping your practice grow, increase revenue, and be the most successful that it can be.
Getting a Bigger Bang for your Buck with your Dental Software
“There’s gold in them thar hills, boys” is a phrase attributed to one of Mark Twain’s characters. In California during its “Gold Rush” period, Twain kept hearing a story from the miners who had come from Georgia. It seems in an attempt to keep the miners in Georgia an assayer of the Dahlonega Mint in Dahlonega, Georgia stood in the town square and proclaimed “Why go to California? In that ridge (as he pointed to the hills surrounding Dahlonega) lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There’s millions in it.” Now, whether Twain used a writer’s license and deliberately changed the original quote or it was misquoted to him from the beginning makes no difference to the topic at hand. Both, Twain’s quote and the origins for it apply in getting more out of your dental software.
Beneath the routine day to day tasks of billing, scheduling appointments and providing daily reports, lies informational gold. This information allows your office to provide your patients with superior service which in turn strengthens your relationship with them. Stronger relationships mean more referrals and an increase in revenue. Your software should be able to track these referrals and remind you to thank your patients for them. Even better your software should offer you a means to send out these thank you notes either by mail or e-mail.
Other ways that your dental software can help automate your office and help provide better service thereby increasing your revenue:
- Following up on uncompleted treatment and unscheduled treatments for which predeterminations have been completed
- Tracking and reminding the front desk personnel of cancelled appointments which have not been rescheduled
- Providing reminders of recall appointments whether scheduled or not
- Confirmation of upcoming appointments either by phone, email or text message
- Tracking insurance benefits so as to be in a position to provide treatment reminders at appropriate times for your patients’ financial benefit
- Keeping track of patients with open treatment plans but no appointments
- Generating a list of patients with balances over 60 days old
- Sending welcome packages to new patients and birthday wishes to existing ones
- Sorting patients’ names by relevant information such as employer, date of last treatment, or type of treatment required
In addition to providing you with more revenue through tracking and providing reminders for cancelled and missed appointments, unscheduled recall and predeterminations, as well as increased patient referral, integration of your dental software will reduce administrative errors and provide greater management control with fewer front desk hours.
There is an axiom in software development called the 90/10 rule and it stands for 90% of any software users will only ever use 10% of the software’s capabilities. Although the percentage may vary from software to software, I have found this axiom to be quite true. Even in software as specialized as dental software, I have noticed that most offices do not take full advantage of most of what their dental software has to offer. After learning the basics of entering patient information, billing and booking appointments they get caught up in the day to day operations. They will not take the time to look into other ways that the software can help them not only manage their current patients but get new ones.
Remember to look for the potential untapped value that your software can bring to your dental practice, and find the gold laying just beneath the surface.
