By: Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD, Publisher, DentalTown Magazine

The message boards at www.DentalTown.com have turned out to be more exciting than anyone could have ever imagined. We started out in May of 1999 with a simple mandate—with www.DentalTown.com no dentist would ever have to practice solo again. That simple mandate has grown more complex than Brussels and D.C. combined.

Over 1000 new dentists join each month. Why? Because with DentalTown, general dentists practicing solo can now connect with over 29,000 other dentists and easily find answers about complex questions in endo, oral surgery, oral path, ortho, perio, pedo, and prosth.

On the DentalTown message boards, general dentists have found answers from bonding spiritual leaders like John Kanca and Nelson Gendusa. They have been able to mentally work out with front-runner endodontists like Fred Barnett and Barry Musikant. General dentists with an oral surgery mystery wrapped in an enigma have been able to turn to incredibly gifted oral surgeons such as Robert Arm, Mike Hoffman, and Jay Reznick for answers. When general dentists needed a premium pedodontist, they were able to ask Allen Pearson.

It has been so important and paramount for general dentists to be able to communicate with specialists that starting with this issue we have added 31,000 specialists to our DentalTown mailing list. We now mail to 142,830 dentists each month.

This is why I am asking all Townies to please take your specialist to lunch! Do you know how much more fun, exciting and informative the message boards and magazine are going to become once we get more specialists chiming in? Why should Fred and Barry have to answer every root canal question? When you can’t stop the bleeding wouldn’t it be nice if more oral surgeons could help out Robert, Mike and Jay? When you have a pulpotomy that has gone south for the winter, wouldn’t it be nice for more pedodontists to take calls for Allen? This will all happen if you take your specialists to lunch and turn them onto DentalTown. If every Townie could convert just one of their specialists into becoming a Townie, DentalTown would rock forever!

Did you know that from a demographic point of view Canada and California are twins? They both have about 30 million people and about the same number of dentists. Canada may not have Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger, but at least now it will get DentalTown Magazine. After enjoying posts on the boards from such fine Canadian class acts like Glenn A. van As and Mike Pilon, we decided we had to mail to the entire country.

Registering on the DentalTown website is EASY! See the next column for a step-by-step guide.

 

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Registering at DentalTown.com Click on the Login tab with your mouse. Scroll down the page a little to where it says, “Register With us Below.” Please assign yourself a Login Name by clicking on the Login Name box with your mouse and typing in what you'd like your username to be. This name will appear with all of your postings. (Remember no spaces are allowed in your Login Name. If you would like to use a space, you must use an underscore "_", this can be done by pressing shift on your keyboard as you press the hyphen key). The next step is to assign yourself a Password for security. (Remember that the password is case sensitive. We will send you an email after registration that will have your account information to store in a safe place). You will need to type your password in twice—once in the Password box and once in the Confirm Password box. Enter a valid email address in the Email box. To gain access to the website you will be asked to answer a Qualifying Question. This has been set up to ensure the security and privacy of our dental professionals on the message boards. Please also tell us what brought you to DentalTown by clicking on the little circle next to your choice with your mouse. Click Register at the bottom of the page.

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Today’s Dental Daily Audit Report

The most important thing you can do for your staff is implement systems into your practice and provide each employee with proper training/job descriptions. Once these systems are in place you must hold them accountable. Your staff will know what you expect from them and where they stand if you audit their performance on a regular basis. At Today’s Dental, my General Manager audits the previous day’s schedule to track over-counter collections to catch scheduling mistakes, absence of clinical notes, insurance not submitted, etc. This daily audit report may not be needed in smaller one-doctor offices where your spouse is the front office person/office manager. However, this system will be needed in larger, busier practices or multi-office practices. As with any management system, part or all can be implemented depending on the needs of your practice.

We use SoftDent dental software, which is owned by Kodak. Most of what is on our daily audit report you could extract from SoftDent on a daily or monthly basis. You can run a report showing new patients, unsubmitted insurance claims, daily collections and treatment room hours utilized. However, other mistakes cannot be caught unless you go through the schedule patient by patient. With this process, it is just as easy to record the over-counter collections, cancellations, and treatment room hours used.

SoftDent does not retain the daily schedule in the computer so a paper copy must be kept. Whether you have an office manager, your spouse, or you the dentist as the auditor, if you put this to use as part of your daily routine, you will know what is happening in the practice, what mistakes are being made, and be able to correct or obtain further training for those who need it. You not only track the treatment room hours utilized, over-counter collections for the day, and cancelled patients; you can also see by looking at each account if treatment was posted correctly, if the treatment plan was updated, if insurance was submitted, if clinical notes were entered, and if the proper amount was collected from each patient.

Below is an example of the daily audit report we use at Today’s Dental.

 

Let’s go through this process step by step.
1. Using the paper schedule from the prior day, look up each patient’s account. This is the time to double check that things were posted correctly in each account. Next, on the paper schedule, record the amount collected on the patient’s scheduled time. If for some reason the right amount was not collected you also make a note of the uncollected amount.

2. Next, count up all doctor and hygiene chair time used and record on the daily audit report in the appropriate boxes on row one.

3. To figure the treatment room hours utilized percentage in row two, divide the number of hours recorded in row one by the number of operatory chair hours available for that day. Doctor and hygiene chair time should be separated.

4. Add up all cancelled patients on the schedule (if you want to track this) and enter in row three.

5. Add up or run a report for total of new patients seen (if you want to track this) and enter in row four.

6. Now it’s time to figure your collection percentage for the day. This percentage should be 100%. Add up all over-counter collections (co-pays, patient portion, and finance company approvals) that should have been collected for the day. Enter this number on line one of the second box.

7. Subtract any amounts that should have been collected but were not from the total on line one. This amount is entered on line two.

8. On the last line you figure your collection percent for the day by dividing line two into line one. Again this percentage should be 100%.

This procedure should take less than 30 minutes for an 8 operatory practice. You will now have measurements on how your staff performed and where the problems, if any, are occurring.

If you have further questions regarding this audit process you can email me at howard@dentaltown.com and I will be happy to help you. If you would like a copy of the 59 forms we use at our Today’s Dental family practice, I will be happy to email them to you. Next month I will explain the Monthly Audit Report.