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ADSTRA Cloud Paperless Dental Software Solution

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For over 20 years, ADSTRA Dental Software has been a leading provider of paperless dental software. During this time, ADSTRA was selected by Lockheed Martin Canada to supply the paperless dental software component for the Canadian Department of National Defence’s state-of-the-art health care system.

To satisfy their users’ needs to access the same database from multiple locations, ADSTRA developed their cloud solution in 2015 which combined their three successful modules: ADSTRA Management, Clinical and Imaging, creating ADSTRA Cloud.

Choosing to partner with Microsoft Azure, the industry leader in cloud solutions ensured that ADSTRA Cloud would provide the highest standard for a safe and secure cloud-based paperless dental software solution.

ADSTRA Paperless Dental Software Cloud

ADSTRA’s one-stop solution also has the advantage of scalability offering an ideal paperless dental software set-up for small and large offices alike, and useful to either single or multi-location practices.

The three main components work seamlessly to encompass all computer needs based on the area of responsibility for each staff member.

ADSTRA Management provides the ability to run the administrative aspect of your dental practice smoothly and without the need for paper documents. Appointments, Financial Records, Patient Communication, Insurance Claims and even SMS Reminders are just a click away.

ADSTRA Imaging is flexible and scalable – capable of working with a variety of dental imaging devices providing a solution that is sure to meet your imaging needs. The various dental treatment infographics that are included in ADSTRA Imaging can be effectively used to improve patient knowledge and understanding of treatments, and increase case acceptances. Moreover, reports for referring dentists can be created with just a few clicks, increasing your overall efficiency and effectiveness.

ADSTRA Clinical allows charting patients’ examinations, odontograms and perio exams and recording dental treatments and treatment plans. Templates can be easily used within ADSTRA Clinical, minimizing the need for manual input. In addition, new exams start with the patients’ previous chart, simplifying the process with only new conditions needing to be charted. Furthermore, ADSTRA Clinical works seamlessly with ADSTRA Management and ADSTRA Imaging: users can view images from ADSTRA Imaging side-by-side with patient’s appointments from ADSTRA Management.

ADSTRA Dental Software provides the optimal cloud-based paperless dental software solution for your dental practice software needs by combining the capabilities of the three main ADSTRA Dental Software modules with the safety and security of Microsoft managed servers hosted on the Microsoft Azure platform.

Implement the ADSTRA cloud-based paperless solution in your dental practice, and experience all the benefits it has to offer.

How Marketing Reminders Can Help Build and Solidify Patient Relationships

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Nowadays there is a plethora of ways to drum up new patients for your dental clinic. Advertising through traditional media, as well as social media, is definitely a tried and true avenue to promote your services and attract new customers, but did you know that you have several tools right there within your ADSTRA Dental Software that can be utilized to generate new patients, as well as solidify relationships with current ones?

By keeping a constant line of communication open between your dental clinic and your patients – you are able to retain your patients trust and loyalty, thus creating an opportunity for them to refer your dental clinic to others. There are tools within ADSTRA Dental Software that not only offer you ways to communicate and build the relationships you have with your existing patients, but also offer the capabilities to perform administrative tasks.

How ADSTRA Dental Software Marketing Reminders Can Help Build and Solidify Patient Relationships

Communication is key to building relationships with prospects and customers, and one of the most effective ways to do this is through email marketing.

Through the Marketing Reminders within ADSTRA Dental Software, there are many different ways to communicate with both prospects and current patients.

Referrals are one of the best ways to generate new patients, so you should never overlook the power of a thank you email. By reaching out and thanking your current patients for referring your dental clinic to their friends and family – this builds their trust in your dental practice and shows your appreciation for their loyalty.

Welcome packages are a great way to establish the relationship with your new patient and give them a breakdown of your expectations. With your ADSTRA Dental Software, you can send a personalized note, tell them about any current promotions the dental clinic may have running, explain your cancellation policy, or even just take that opportunity to introduce them to the team working at your dental clinic.

In this day and age, many people will have their cell phones within arms reach at all times. The days of having to pick up a phone to call and confirm appointments are long gone. Now your dental clinics appointment confirmations and recalls can be set up to be sent automatically through email, or even SMS, with your ADSTRA Dental Software. With the click of a button, you’ll free up hours of time for your front desk staff, that can be spent growing your dental clinic and bringing in new patients.

This day only comes around once a year, so sending out birthday wishes is another way to communicate and engage with your patients. These friendly emails are appreciated by patients and may even serve as a gentle reminder that it’s time for them to book another cleaning!

Often, you’ll create a dental treatment plan with your patients while they are in the room with you. You can then utilize your ADSTRA Dental Software to send out a follow-up email highlighting this treatment plan and reminding the patient when their appointment is, or that they need to schedule an appointment. Within your ADSTRA Dental Software you can run a report and generate a list of all the patients in need of a follow-up, and send them all (a separate) email.

Keeping in contact with your patients is just one way to ensure they stay loyal to your dental clinic. Developing a long-lasting relationship with your patients will not only increase the level of trust they have with you and your dental clinic, but will also be a source of generating new patients (and thus generating more revenue) for your dental clinic.

Contact us at ADSTRA Dental Software to see how we can help you build and solidify your relationships with your patients.

5 Ways To Use Marketing Reminders Within Your Dental Software

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Today, we have many tools from with which we can acquire new patients. Through social media or via various advertising tools, it is very easy to promote new services to attract new customers. Professionals also have access to several tools that allow them to stay close to their customers.

To help you retain your patient’s loyalty ADSTRA Dental Software has a great tool that not only allows you to stay in contact with your patients, but it will also facilitate the work with respect to certain administrative tasks.

Marketing Reminders allows you to establish a process to help develop your dental clinic while increasing the loyalty of your patients. Whether to welcome a patient or to keep track of appointments, Marketing Reminders allows you to create lists of patients by specific criteria and send personalized notes by email or postcard to your patients.

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Here are 5 good reasons to contact your patients:

1 – Welcome Package

Say hello to your new patients by sending them a personalized note, explaining to them the appointment cancellation policy, your current promotions or just take the opportunity to introduce the team working at the clinic. This is the perfect opportunity to give a good first impression!

2 – Thank You for Referrals

It is always nice when people recognize the excellent service we offer. When a patient refers you to a family member or friend, why not respond with appreciation for this sign of confidence. A thank you is always greatly appreciated.

3 – Birthday Wishes

Isn’t it nice to have everyone thinking of us during this day that happens only once a year? Why not be a part of those wishing your patients a great day on this special occasion. Isn’t it nice to know that our dentist is thinking of us?

4 – Confirmations and Recalls

Nowadays, people are easier to reach by email or SMS. Why not kill two birds with one stone? By sending your appointment confirmations and reminder messages by email, you facilitate the task of receiving responses and increase patients’ attendance.

5 – Appointment Follow-ups

For patients whose latest treatments may require a follow-up, send them a reminder.  With ADSTRA Dental Software – access all patients in need of a follow-up, then with one click send them an email reminding them to call you and schedule an appointment when it suits them better.

It goes without saying that staying in touch with your patients will increase the trust of your patients and develop a long-term relationship with them.

ADSTRA Dental Software is the perfect solution to help you maintain that relationship.

Getting a Bigger Bang for your Buck with your Dental Software

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“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.

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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.

How Using Microsoft Word Templates Can Allow You To See More Patients

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Writing consultation reports can be a time consuming, daunting task. Most reports are done using Microsoft Word and when using Microsoft Word templates to write them the task becomes every so slightly less onerous. Going a step further, imaging software that has a user-centric design and deep level integration with Microsoft Word can make report writing a breeze. In the case of dentists, this allows them to save time in the writing of referrals or reports so that they may see and spend more time with their patients.

Microsoft Word templates are a great tool for any type of document that has a standard format and is needed often. Microsoft Word templates will have predefined page layouts, fonts, margins and styles. They can have recommended sections or required text as well as content controls such as a predefined drop-down list or a special logo. You can Google and find thousands of different types of templates already created for Microsoft Word.

But what most people don’t know is – how easy it is to create their own Microsoft Word templates.

Microsoft Word Templates

Getting Started with Microsoft Word Templates

The best way to start, is to analyse which documents are created most often, and if there are sections of the document that are always similar in content and/or format. They are good candidates for becoming a template for use in the future. Once you find one, open it in Microsoft Word, go to the File menu and choose the option Save As. Give it an appropriate name and change the Save As type to Document Template.

Congratulations! You have just created your first template if you have never done it before.

Well not exactly, what you’ll want to do next is get rid of all the parts of the document that aren’t always the same, leaving you spaces to fill in as you need for each unique case. You could have areas of empty space that you type into or drop-down boxes with fixed selections or even check boxes. Many great how-to articles can be found on the Internet, on Microsoft’s own Office site or videos on YouTube. Just remember to look for ones that are using the same version of Microsoft Word as the one that you are using, as features both old and new and ways of adding them to the template can change with each version of Microsoft Word.

Would it not be great if you could open a patient file in your dental imaging software, and quickly associate both the patient information and images needed for a particular report or referral in a ready to send document? ADSTRA Imaging does have this ability.

Microsoft Word Templates and ADSTRA Imaging

By directly interfacing with Microsoft Word templates, ADSTRA Imaging allows you to create or modify templates that will import all relevant information like patient name, date of birth, provider’s name, practice name, and practice address, and it will also import specified patient images from ADSTRA Imaging directly into the Microsoft Word templates eliminating even more typing and importing of images into reports or referrals.

This is easily done through ADSTRA Imaging, on the Menu under File there is the Word Template option. This then gives you the option to open a Predefined template, Create New template, or Edit an existing template. The first option is the simplest because all that needs to be done is have the patient for the report selected in ADSTRA Imaging, open and highlight the desired images used in the document, and select the correct template. The only thing left to do is to make any adjustments in the document that are unique to this patient. The second and third options are similar. One allows you to create a new Microsoft Word template from scratch or from an already existing template. The other allows you to edit or modify an already created Microsoft Word template.

The only difference when creating or editing Microsoft Word templates when opened through ADSTRA Imaging, is the availability of a container toolbar that allows you to place the predefined elements that will be received from ADSTRA Imaging into the Microsoft Word templates.

As an example, you have a document that normally requires two images that are coming from a patient file in ADSTRA Imaging. You create the remainder of the template as per normal but, to indicate where the first image will be placed on the document, you click on the Image Container button on the container toolbar. A little window will open indicating the image number one and will have options for you to select for orientation and what image properties you would like to include with the image. Once you click OK, a template with two boxes will appear. The top box is the area where the image will go and the bottom box will be the area that will display any image properties that you selected. Both boxes can be dragged and resized anywhere on your template. You then repeat the above process for the second image. Once completed, whenever you select two images in ADSTRA Imaging and open this template, your document will have the two selected images placed and sized exactly as you wanted when you created the template.

Using Microsoft Word templates through ADSTRA Imaging is extremely beneficial to busy clinicians as it significantly increases the efficiency of preparing consultation reports. A little time spent upfront in creating a template for a document needed often should pay dividends many times over, thus allowing dental providers to spend less time writing referral reports and more time to seeing their patients.