Improve Dental Front Office Efficiency & Productivity
Improve dental front office efficiency and you also improve productivity. It sound so simple! It really isn’t as hard as you might think. You might be thinking that it is going to take a miracle to organize your day at the dental front office. Are you feeling tired? How about stressed out? Does it seem like you just can’t breathe? And maybe things just aren’t getting done!
You can change it all today! I can’t change it for you. But I can definitely share some tools with you to help to make it happen!
Weekly Management Systems
Weekly Management Systems will guide you day by day and show you how to get it all done! There are some other things you can implement to improve the organizational systems at your dental front office. And a key piece of your miracle, is going to be my Weekly Management Systems.
The dental office front desk can feel like a circus at times. Maybe even a 3-ring circus! With different acts going on in different parts of the office. Somehow, we’ve got to bring it all together. We want a strong hygiene schedule every day! We want our collection numbers to surpass our goals. And we especially want to go home at the end of the day feeling we accomplished something great!
You are great! And you can totally re-organize your day. You can feel like you are on top of the world. You can do anything! Let’s get started and get you on your way!
Improve Dental Front Office Efficiency: Step 1
All dental front office systems are integrated within my Weekly Management System. They are all tied in together in an efficient, productive and manageable way. I can show you how to break it all down and make it all come together in such a simple way! You will wonder why you didn’t think of this yourself. And your daily dental office life will improve.
Improve Dental Front Office Efficiency: Step 2
Customize your dental front desk systems. Make a detailed list of each individual task to be performed monthly at your dental front office.
For example:
- Patient Billing Statements
- Hygiene Reactivation
- Call On Unpaid Insurance Claims
- Inactivate Patients Who Are No Longer Active
- Review Credit Balance Report
- Contact Patients With Overdue Balances
Review Your List
Your monthly task list might be a little different. Positions vary. Offices vary. Take the time to make a great list that suits you! But I now have a question for you to consider about your monthly task list.
Are each of these individual monthly tasks consistently being completed each and every month? Could there be claims on the insurance ageing report that never get called on? But maybe you will try to do it next month? How is your hygiene reactivation and recare system working?
Would you like a way to complete each and every task in full every single month? Weekly Management Systems take monthly tasks and turn them into daily and weekly tasks. The trick then becomes to complete special daily assignments.
Improve Dental Front Office Efficiency: Step 3
To increase dental front desk efficiency & productivity, turn that monthly list into a daily & weekly task list! So, now let’s take another look at the monthly tasks list.
Begin at the top of your list, and take the very first item. Think about that item, and decide if it can be done more than once a month and when that task should be done.
The first item on my list is “patient billing statements”. If this is an item that you have on your list, let’s consider moving that over to the daily tasks list! Yes.. I really mean that!
Think about how much easier it would be to send patient billing statements every day, rather than once a month! It would also create a more regular cash flow into the office. You would set up your defaults in such a way that patient statements were received by individual patients only once per month, but you can send statements every single business day!
Hygiene Reactivation System
The second item on my monthly tasks list is “hygiene reactivation”. How can we best break that down and do it daily? I have developed a system that breaks the entire list of unscheduled hygiene patients down into 4 groups. This is all outlined for you in my Weekly Management Systems!
There are 4 weeks in a month. So each week, you could take one group and contact those patients in that week. Perhaps even set a day that you make those calls. Mark it in your calendar which days you will call which group of overdue hygiene patients. For example, you would call on Thursdays. Your special assignment for each Thursday would be to call unscheduled hygiene patients.
Accounts Receivable
The next item on the monthly tasks list is “call on unpaid insurance claims”. We can do just the same there here as we did with the unscheduled hygiene patients. Let’s break it down into sections:
1. Claims over 120 days 2. And Claims over 90 days 3. Then Claims over 60 days 4. Finally Claims over 30 days
Again, there are 4 weeks in a month.
Break it All Down
So, for example, you could work on all claims over 120 days the first week of the month. And maybe you want to work on your claims on Wednesday morning. (If you don’t have much of an insurance ageing report at all, you could just run the report each Wednesday morning to see what needs your attention too!)
You make a note in your calendar on the first Wed morning of the month to call on all claims over 120 days.
Then you make a note the second Wednesday morning to call on all insurance claims pending over 90 days. The third Wednesday of the month, you make a note to call on all pending insurance claims over 60 days, and the last Wednesday morning of the month, you could schedule yourself to call on all pending insurance claims over 30 days.
Continue organizing all of the monthly tasks in your list in this manner. Mark your calendar with the dates and times you will complete the tasks and watch your monthly task list disappear! You might have a task that is only done once per month, such as closing the month. That is obviously just fine.
Improve Dental Front Office Efficiency: Step 4
Take Action To Achieve Dental Front Desk Efficiency & Productivity
Put Your New Plan Into Action! You’ve created your list and your schedule. Work to complete your special assignments early on in your day. I recommend taking care of any appointment confirmations you might have to do early in your day. Get your schedule for the next 2 days set. Then take on whatever special assignment you have for the day soon after. Try to get it one before you break for lunch!
It might take you 90 days to feel like you have a solid system in place. The important piece is to just keep at it. You only fail if you totally give up. Honestly, you might even feel like you have created more work or more confusion in the beginning. I promise it will get easier as you get better!
The best part about improving dental front office efficiency, is the way it will make you feel! Sure, you’ll find it easier to meet production and collection goals. But better yet, you will feel accomplished, empowered, and will love checking things off your “to do” list!
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