A full calendar at the dental office means your production is high — but keeping your calendar full is easier said than done. The perfect solution? Dental patient scheduling services.
“In a recent study by Accenture, 77% of patients surveyed felt the option to change, cancel, and schedule appointments online was an important feature.” –Dentistry Today
Yes, most patients expect — and value — online appointment scheduling. And in today’s busy marketplace, it’s a no-risk way to sharpen your competitive edge. Integrating easily with your practice management software, dental patient scheduling services make it simple for patients to book their own treatment, and for your team to stay organized.
Because the patient schedule is the heart of your dental office, your calendar needs to stay full to ensure cash is flowing, but it also must be organized for low wait times and few cancellations. When your schedule isn’t filled strategically, and long wait times and cancellations happen too often, they can cost your practice in goodwill and real money.
This article covers how patient scheduling services improve the efficiency and organization of your practice, while also increasing production, and providing your patients with a great dental experience.
What are patient scheduling services?
Online patient scheduling services typically use software that integrates with both your practice management system (PMS) and your website to allow patients to book their appointments without calling your office. For the sake of this article, we’ll be referring to our own scheduling service, which we know best.
DCS Patient Scheduling simplifies your appointment workflow while empowering your team to increase production and improve the patient experience.
Its core features include:
- Real-time availability: Direct integration with your office's PMS, so the online schedule displays up-to-the-minute appointment slot availability
- Customized branding: A fully customizable scheduling link that mirrors your office's branding to ensure a friendly, consistent look and feel for your patients
- Automatically charge for no-shows: Card-on-file option for charging cancellation fees, which promotes a near 100% show-up rate
- Complex schedule handling: Sophisticated management of block scheduling, calendar block outs, precise timing, and other intricate scheduling needs without double-booking
And here’s a rare feature that you’ll love: seamless integration for collecting insurance details to expedite the verification process, particularly when used alongside the DCS Insurance Verification service.
Read more: Welcome to DCS Dental Patient Scheduling! 3 things you need to know
What are the benefits of patient scheduling services?
Both you, as the dental business owner, and your dental team will reap several benefits from using dental patient online scheduling software.
Your team will see:
- A streamlined patient experience: Wait times will decrease due to your advanced scheduling system, enhancing your patients’ overall experience at your office and promising fewer complaints to your team.
- An office that’s more modern in its tech use: DCS Patient Scheduling is completely online and convenient for both your patients and your team — no more paper calendars and fewerf phone calls.
- A stress-free work environment: Our patient scheduling service accommodates complicated schedules by steering around anomalies, and also discourages missed appointments — the result is a more relaxed, productive, and patient-focused team.
- Hands-free communication: Patients receive important updates, such as appointment confirmations and rescheduling options, via email or text. This reduces routine communication between patients and your dental office, and allows your team to focus on patients who are in the office now.
The benefits you will see include:
- A fuller schedule: Our system makes it easy to fill your schedule and keep it full, therefore increasing production and revenue.
- Reduced no-shows: Automated reminders and confirmations, as well as the patients’ credit card details paired with office policies, help minimize cancellations and no-shows to ensure a more consistent flow of patients and revenue.
- Improved patient care: By reducing administrative tasks and optimizing scheduling processes, online dental patient scheduling services enable your dental team to focus more on providing high-quality patient care and treatment and focus less on time-consuming routine tasks.
When your schedule fills itself, you and your team can focus on the things that build your practice and your profits: Improving and growing your dental business, and providing an exceptional patient experience.
And speaking of patients…
Read more: More freedom with RCM services: 5 ways your dental team will invest their time
What do patients think about appointment scheduling online?
While both you and your dental team will benefit from patient scheduling services, your patients will certainly benefit, too.
You may recall from the start of this article that a recent study found that 77% of patients surveyed see online appointment scheduling as “an important feature.”
And no wonder, when you consider these benefits:
- Convenience: Patients can easily schedule appointments online at their preferred times, without the need for phone calls or visits to the office.
- Flexibility: Access to real-time appointment availability allows patients to choose appointments that best fit their schedules, and easily reschedule when needed.
- Reminders: Automated reminders via email and/or text help patients remember their appointments, reducing the likelihood of no-shows.
- Reduced wait times: Efficient scheduling systems can minimize wait times by optimizing appointment scheduling, eliminating double-booking, and reducing overbooking.
- Access to information: Patients can view and update their personal info and insurance details online, simplifying the early steps of your RCM process and ensuring accurate records.
Your patients will love this modern approach to running your office — the more convenient it is for them, the better. And this easy online scheduling system is user-friendly and available wherever patients visit your website, whether on mobile tablet, or desktop.
Related: Happy patients, happy practice: 3 ways to improve your dental patient experience
Transform your dental business with effortless online patient scheduling services
When you use online patient scheduling software, you see benefits for the administrative team, your patients, and yourself. Everyone wins!
Combining user-friendly convenience with strategic filling of your schedule will increase both patient satisfaction and your practice’s production.
Our comprehensive dental patient scheduling software is both cost-effective and advanced in the features it offers. In particular, the ability to collect insurance information when patients schedule their appointment is a feature you won’t find everywhere.
DCS Patient Scheduling is for all types and sizes of dental businesses — private practice, emerging groups, and DSO group practices. If you don’t yet have an online scheduling system, or the system you currently use lacks the features you want, give us a call.
Get the dental scheduling setup that makes your dental business more money: Book a free 30-minute call today.
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