Some dentists find it hard to view the dental practice as a business instead of a service. This may be because they see the need to help people rather than focusing totally on making a lucrative income. That may be a wonderful paradigm, but with that kind of attitude, you may find it difficult to manage, organize and promote your dental practice efficiently and effectively. The administrative chores of your dental office is performed by front office managers and they can help you in the effective operations of your dental office.
Here are some of the tips for front office managers to make the operations of your dental office as effective and efficient as possible:
Make Sure Everyone Has a Job Description
Every member of your front office team -- receptionists, A/R/A/P, Booking/Payment processing, calling/confirming appointments -- needs to have a job description. A job description is different than the details you post when you’re looking to hire. A job description tells an employee exactly what their responsibilities are and to whom they report directly. This includes daily tasks that need to be done in the operations of the practice. These duties and responsibilities may not be exclusive and may overlap with the duties and responsibilities of another office team member. This ensures that all the office duties are done.
As for your job description of “office manager,” the specific definition of this can vary from practice to practice depending on what the dentist or specialist wants or needs.
Hire more People
It can be difficult to convince dental practice owners to hire more staff. But if you’re seeing more than 20 patients in an eight-hour day, you need at least one other full-time person.
Regular Performance Evaluations
These are sometimes dreaded by employees and managers alike, but they really do need to be done. They become particularly important in the case of a dismissal of an employee who decides to sue for wrongful dismissal. You have to be able to prove that you had cause and employee evaluations will be part of your argument. Given people’s propensity to sue over every little perceived offense, do you really not want to have performance evaluations on file? A good performance evaluation program provides managers and dentists with information to be used in wage adjustment, promotions and job reassignments, contributes to employee’s job satisfaction and morale by showing interest in their progress, shows where an employee may need training or instruction, offers a forum where employees can discuss any job-related problems and suggest improvements, and set goals and performance standards for the next term.
Find Way to Reduce Practice Cash Output
Practices are always trying to keep up with the latest dental equipment, which costs money. So it’s great if the office manager can find ways of saving money. Perhaps buying things like printer cartridges online instead of from the more expensive office supply store. Purchasing business cards and other promos from an online printer.
Automated Payments
The most time-consuming headache of many dental offices is billing. Make sure you offer easy ways for your patients to pay their bill -- credit card, debit Bank Transfer. Also, learn to use your computer system to its full potential. If your practice isn’t doing so, it helps streamline things and makes it easier for the patient, if you can offer automatic submission of the insurance claim. Online payment after hours also can help streamline your billing.
Modern Communication Methods
Allow your patients the chance to book an appointment via email and confirm the appointment via text message or email. This can make a world of difference in people keeping their appointments. People can delete a voice message or think “I’ll call them back” and never do. People respond to a text message or email much faster than a telephone message. One of the advantages to the email option is as soon as the patient clicks “Accept” it appears on their calendar, which will provide pop-ups for them at certain intervals.
Follow Happenings in the Dental World
It’s important as a dental office manager to keep up-to-date on the latest technologies in dental care, dental office management, and payroll and insurance policies, which all will affect how you communicate with patients and manage their individual cases from the financial side. This will allow you to change insurance codes as needed.
To make your effective staff members happy, you should acquire a digital scheduling solution for them to make the management of the worker schedules easier. This will boost the morale of the office, and the employees because the staff members can access the information about their schedules.
Overall Practice Analysis
Just like employee performance reviews, the practice performance needs to be reviewed, too, through daily, weekly and monthly reports. If you don’t have an automated practice management system, you need to have one to streamline this process and print out the information you need. This may also include referral sources, particularly from clients who booked an appointment after clicking on an online ad or through your website.
The office team of dentist in Hollywood Florida Karen Gordon, DMD is ready to serve you with professional dental service.