A couple years ago we had no clear system for organizing our reminders. The doctor could verbally leave a task for a busy scheduling coordinator and it might slip from her memory. Or a scheduling coordinator could mention something to a busy doctor, and it might slip from his memory. We wanted to call the patient and we forgot about it. A Pandora box of inefficiencies and lost communication.
We looked at couple places to coordinate our reminders. There is this tiny button “Note” in the left corner of Appointment Book. I didn’t even know it existed until the doctor told me “I left you the task there”. No way I could remember to check it consistently. Dentrix also has an Office Journal feature to leave tasks for fellow office colleagues. We tried it. It didn’t work either.
There are many cool collaboration tools online. You can also experiment with Google calendar. But let me share the system we successfully use in our office for quite some time already. It is very easy and accessible by everyone in the office. It is our Appointment Book.
Appointment Book is always open on every computer. We created an extra Operatory in the Appointment Book just for the reminders. We then created a fake patient "Office, Office". To leave a task or reminder, you just need to schedule an appointment for the patient "Office, Office" with the person you want to leave a reminder for. Since in Dentrix you can schedule appointments with clinical staff only, we had to give clinical rights for non-clinical personnel (front, office manager).
The outcome? It is easy to locate your personal reminders by looking for your personal color in the "Reminders" column. It is easy to assign or reassign a task for each other. It is easy to track what’s done and what’s not and move it to a more convenient date. And the most important, it is easy to follow up on our promises to patients and to each other.