Automating processes to improve practice efficiency Part 1

Successfully implementing a marketing plan is becoming more and more of a necessity when you are a dental practice owner. How can you automate some of these processes to help you save time, and are there any ways that your dental software can help you out?

Pre-patient leads

What about people who are on your radar, but that are not yet patients? Some practice’s call these pre-patient leads.

Imagine if you used another marketing software to store those patients in and arrange for your marketing materials (letters, emails etc.) to automatically send to them. Examples of this could include Mailchimp or Infusionsoft.

Then imagine that the Marketing system can successfully share information with your dental practice management software, and automatically share data between the two.

As Dentally is a cloud-based system, we are able to share aspects of specified data between apps. This means that you can use Marketing software to generate new interest, and then integrate the information into Dentally when they book an appointment. This gives you greater control during your patient generation efforts.

We have discussed a way you can better segment your patients and add them to a marketing campaign in the past, which you can see here. It's a great way that your dental software and marketing software can integrate with one another.

Patient recalls

For me personally, I think the best way to arrange your recalls is by cost-effectiveness. Why spend money when you don’t have to? For patients who are due to return in the next month, you could arrange to send an email through your dental software asking they get in contact. When they do, you spend 0p on the recall process.

If you have no response over email, then moving to the next cheap option – sending an SMS could work wonders. We have published research previously demonstrating how SMS messaging generate both quicker response times and more successful outcomes. A patient booking from an SMS message costs your practice 6p + VAT. Within Dentally you can send numerous SMS messages to the patients of your choice, with the simple click of a button.

Lastly you can look to arrange sending letters if the above doesn’t work. This is significantly more expensive, although by recalling the patients for 6p or less before, the number of letter you have to send will be significantly less. Within Dentally the whole process except hitting send is automated, so you can gain the best of both worlds – control over exactly what goes out, with minimal time and effort.

What automatic processes do you use in your practice? Has your dental software helped? What have you found that works best?