Are you maximising patient attendance utilising all of your practice management software tools?

Across the UK, dental practices are being challenged by the new guidance to operate their practice successfully whilst having to adapt to working through restrictions imposed by the pandemic; inevitably limiting how many patients can be seen per day.

The outcome of this is less availability for dental appointments, which has in turn likely contributed to a rise in calls to the NHS 111 service and increased activity through NHS Online. NHS Digital reported 5,236 call triages and 5,773 online journeys on 18th January  2021, which – although not at the peak of usage – still requires significant resources. In dentistry, the GDC found that a third of people surveyed had a dental appointment cancelled or postponed during the first national lockdown when practices were forced to close. Perhaps even more worryingly, though the majority of people understood that emergency dental services were still available, over half of those who experienced pain or dental problems during lockdown chose to wait for the restrictions to end before seeking help. Many dentists are continuing to report last minute cancellations due to the coronavirus, with patients having to self-isolate or just feeling like they don’t want to leave the house at this uncertain time.

Careful supervision of your appointment diary is needed to ensure your dental business remains productive. Our portfolio of dental practice management software, both CS R4+ and our true-cloud platform, Sensei Cloud, both offer functions that support maximising patient attendance.

Waiting lists
To decrease the burden on the NHS service and to enable you to manage short-term cancellations efficiently, both systems have the waiting list function. When a patient calls and needs an appointment, you may not be able to see them as soon as they would like.

Regardless of whether they make an appointment or not, you can still enrol your patient onto the waiting list – meaning that when cancellations are made, you can offer free slots to those who need them most. When a short notice cancellation is then made, you can instantly view and connect with patients waiting for appointments to ensure you keep your practice as viable as possible.

See the videos below for details on how to find the waiting lists in both systems:

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CS R4+ practice management software Sensei Cloud pratice management platform

SMS text reminders
The use of SMS reminders to communicate with your patients is vital to keep them up to date with what is happening at the practice or to remind them of upcoming appointments. Many practices are also utilising SMS to communicate with patients about their arrival at the practice, letting them know when they should enter for their appointment – like a virtual waiting room.

Emails
Whilst patients are commonly working from home, email messaging can be just as effective. Why not email your database and provide them with confidence to keep appointments wherever possible.

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CS R4+ remote forms
Keeping patient contact to a minimum in practice is important. It has been confirmed by the NHS that patients do not have to sign any forms at this time during a practice visit, to avoid cross contamination.

Whilst forms are not needing to be signed, certainly forms need completing. Remote forms is an add-on service for CS R4+ that enables you to send any form ahead of a patient visiting the practice, for them to complete at home ahead of their appointment.

As standard, the solution comes with a COVID-19 screening form, medical history form and FP17 PR. All completed forms are instantly imported back into R4+. To date, over 500,000 forms have been processed using the remote forms service.

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Patient forms for Sensei Cloud
New this month, patient forms offer the ability to send a link directly to your patients for completion prior to appointments.

Postponed patients
Easily identify and catch up with overdue visits for your patients that have missed or had their appointment delayed due to the pandemic, using the reports available within your practice management solution.

CS R4+ DNA report
Identify and reconnect with patients that were cancelled, DNA, postponed or ‘were not brought’.

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Sensei Cloud
Pending list, cancelled, broken or failed appointments and drive rebooking.

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The Digital Stream UK Carestream Dental Blog Administrator
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