The end-to-end patient experience part 2

This is the second part in our series on the end-to-end patient experience. You can check out the first one here. Today we'll be discussing your website and payment

Website

Your website should be designed to feed visitors, your potential patients, a carefully selected hierarchy of information in order to deliver the best user experience possible.

An informative website and good website design will improve brand awareness while also helping retain customers and of course, generating new business. You also have to keep in mind that a Dental Practice must stay within strict medical criteria too.

In many ways the patient journey can be considered to begin when a patient arrives on your website. You must take into a number of considerations when thinking about what sort of information can go on your website.

Can your dental software integrate with your website? Does it allow them to book online? This can be a great time saving for a busy reception but each practice must decide if online booking suits them. A dental website must also include basic contact information as well as basic treatment prices. If you are a specialist practice you should also ensure that you make that clear so as to attract the correct customers.

There is a lot of advice on website design which you can take advantage of on the web.

Payment

Payment for treatment is often fraught with difficulties. A lot of practitioners find the payment transaction awkward so how do you take payment while keeping the transaction professional and continuing the great payment care from your practice.

A lot of practices entrust this to the reception. If you have a personable and friendly reception staff then you will not need to do much work but what if you're a smaller practice with a busy reception? Dental software is starting to allow you to take payment through the dental software system. This can cut a significant amount of time down that the patient spends at the reception desk.

To ensure the best experience when it comes to payment you should ensure that the reception desk know whether the patient is NHS, private or has a dental payment plan and exactly what treatment the patient had. That's way they will know how much the patient owes.