Family appointments have long been a central part of how Australian dental practices operate. Parents often book checkups for multiple children in one visit or bring the whole household in during school holidays. Clinically, this makes perfect sense. Administratively, it can create friction if you don’t have the right tools. Reception teams are suddenly managing multiple departures, claims, payments and future bookings at once, all while keeping the front desk moving smoothly.
Until now, many practices have also had to submit claims one family member at a time. This often means jumping between accounts, repeating identical steps and manually processing each claim while the family waits at the front desk. It’s slow, clunky and fragmented, and it increases the likelihood of mistakes during busy moments. That’s why an intuitive and efficient approach is becoming essential.
Introducing a more streamlined way to handle family claims
Dentally’s new family claiming experience is designed to remove this bottleneck by aligning claim processing with how you naturally work.
Instead of navigating to each family member’s account and submitting claims individually, you can now send a single electronic submission for the entire household – even when different practitioners have completed the treatment. The new interface is smoother, more modern and easier to use.
Family claiming is available for electronic HICAPS claims and works when all included patients are covered by the same health fund provider. During the claiming process, teams can also choose which terminal they want to use, giving reception staff flexibility to manage busy reception environments.
This update builds on Dentally’s existing family accounting workflows, which already allows practices to link family members, view their balances together and take combined payments. Now, with claiming and payments sitting together in one workflow, practices can manage the entire financial side of a family appointment from a single place.
And better yet, if one patient’s claim needs attention, it won’t hold up the rest. Quickly identify and resolve any errors, while all the unaffected claims progress as normal. This ensures you’re not slowed down by errors – something older systems often struggled with.
The result? A smoother workflow, reduced admin load and a noticeably calmer front desk experience.
Why family claiming matters for Australian dental practices
Family claiming isn’t just about saving time on a single task. It helps create a more predictable and patient-friendly experience across the entire appointment.
By reducing repetitive admin, practices win back valuable time during peak periods.
Small efficiencies can have a significant impact across a busy day. For appointments involving multiple family members, the improvement is immediate: fewer steps, less waiting, and a more streamlined checkout, leaving patients with a more positive impression of the practice.
New to Dentally? To learn more about how Dentally’s family claiming process could improve your practice’s efficiency, get in touch now to book a demo.
Ready to start submitting family claims? You can find more information about how to submit family claims in this help article.