As your practice grows beyond just a single office, it gets tougher to stay fully connected with your patients — or so it may seem. You can’t be in two places at once, and the complexity of running multiple locations can get in the way of keeping your patients engaged.
Fortunately, our modern age has given us many ways to cultivate patient engagement using digital tools and automation. These can be a lifeline for practices struggling to reduce administrative overload, improve consistency across locations, and make sure the patient experience is convenient and positive.
With a digital foundation supporting patient engagement and revenue collection, the once-daunting barriers to running a multi-location practice will start to fall away. Let’s see why.
How Patient Engagement Concerns in Multi-Location Practices Hinder Growth
Expanding your dental practice brings both opportunities and challenges. When you’re understaffed, or your operations aren’t efficient, then the challenges begin to dwarf the opportunities.
- Inconsistent communication between offices. You work hard to create consistency across offices, but there can be mixed messages, scheduling mishaps, and inconsistent patient care despite your best efforts. To combat fragmented communication, a unified communication platform like Oryx that gives each office full access to patient records can make a huge difference.
- Error-prone scheduling methods. No-shows will always be something dental offices must reckon with, but frustrations skyrocket when everything is done manually. Revenue loss frequently results from scheduling errors and no-shows.
- Administrative overload and data management concerns. Dental paperwork, form management, and billing are a lot for humans to handle without the assistance of technology — and they can make scaling up unthinkable. Automation can ease this administrative burden.
Growth can only happen when your office is ready — not when it’s mired in disorganized or inaccurate paperwork. If you’re understaffed, or your front desk employees are having trouble with communications and scheduling, it may be time to seek out a solution that can automate some things and minimize human error.
Expanding Your Office’s Reach with a Cloud-Based, Digital Solution for Patient Engagement
Cloud-based technology lets your office staff easily access patient data and schedule an appointment for any office, AT any office. This simultaneously simplifies work for your front desk while enhancing patient satisfaction. (Everyone loves it when things are easy!)
Let’s explore a few of the engagement-enhancing tools that Oryx has to offer.
- Online Appointment Scheduling. Yes, we know that some people are committed to always doing things over the phone. But a growing share of patients would MUCH rather use a convenient online scheduling tool. Oryx simplifies the booking process with convenient features like share availability, family appointment booking, and easy website integration.
- Secure Patient Portal & Documentation Management. Oryx’s safe, intuitive portal lets patients view and manage their forms, statements, payments, and reports — all in one place that even your most paperwork-averse patients can find their way around.
- Pre-Appointment Online Forms. Are your new patients surprised to not have to come in 20 minutes early? That’s because they can complete and sign their medical and dental history forms from home!
- Online Statements and Payment Integration. Nobody likes being hit with unexpected costs. Oryx’s patient engagement features give everyone seamless access to financial information and secure digital payment options so there are no surprises. Automation in billing also improves cash flow and reduces administrative burdens.
- Personalized Patient Reports. A big part of engagement is education. Use Oryx’s simplified risk assessments and personalized reports to help people understand their oral health and treatment plans. This enhances trust and boosts case acceptance.
- Centralized Patient Communication Center. You may have multiple offices, but you can have a single, fully coordinated stream of communication. Oryx combats the communication fragmentation challenge by helping you manage your email inbox and two-way texting.
- Automated Appointment Reminders. Reminders are critical for getting people in the door, particularly when the appointment was made months ago. But your office staff shouldn’t be sending these out manually. Instead, reduce no-shows with automated reminders via text, email, and even VoIP-powered calls.
- Impactful, Easy-to-Manage Marketing Campaigns. Oryx makes it easy to create segmented audiences for your email marketing campaigns. For instance, if you have a subset of patients who have expressed interest in teeth whitening, Oryx can help you send them an email next time you’re running a promotion.
How Automation Drives Profitability
When patients walk into your office, they expect to be greeted by a smiling staff member ready to check them in — not someone who is stuck on the phone with several other people on hold. The latter scenario can be a major turn-off to new patients, and in the age of automated patient engagement tools, there’s no reason for it to be a reality anymore.
Beyond simply creating a welcoming environment, however, automation also dramatically accelerates your revenue collection with integrated online payments and automated billing and collection sequences. The business-minded dentist will see a much more promising environment for expanding the practice when the benefits of these technical features kick in.
Automation can also increase case acceptance. Clear, consistent, and personalized communication helps patients make informed treatment decisions. Additionally, automated financial options can remove financial barriers and make it easier for them to proceed with treatment.
Finally, automated patient engagement tools reduce your workforce needs and operational costs. When each patient interaction takes 5-10+ minutes of a front desk employee’s time, that adds up, and pretty soon you find you need several people covering the desk. But with repetitive types of interactions automated, you can have a smaller number of people performing higher-value interactions.
Implementation Strategies for Dental Practices
No matter how great the benefits, there’s always a bit of a learning curve and short-term effort required to get automation up and running. You’ll need to have a solid understanding of how things currently function in your office and where automation can really make a difference.
The first step in implementing a platform like Oryx is to assess your current workflows. Identify any bottlenecks in patient communication, scheduling, and billing and target these first. Then, you will probably want to start with a pilot program, followed by comprehensive staff training. This makes the rollout manageable.
Once you’re taking full advantage of your automated system, congratulations! Now it’s time to measure the impact. Good KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to look at include the reduction in no-shows, the increase in payment collection speed, and the growth in overall patient satisfaction.
Getting the Green Light to Grow Your Practice
Automated patient engagement tools like those that Oryx offers are the basis upon which you can get your dental practice ready for future growth. With features that drive operational efficiency, boost profitability, and improve patient satisfaction, you’ll find yourself going from feeling maxed-out to being open to new patients and perhaps a new office.
If you’d like to learn more about Oryx or get a hands-on evaluation, schedule a live demo now.
