5 Workflows Dental Practices Should Integrate Into Their PMS

Most dental practices juggle between 4-8 tools to keep their front office running. So, you’re used to switching between different systems to get work done and making sure every patient gets the individualized dental care they need. But there comes a point when it's worth stepping back to examine what workflows could be better integrated, particularly if it’s impacting your efficiency, focus, and causing patient data issues. One way to do that is by ensuring you’re integrating as many workflows into your practice management system (PMS) as possible. Out of all the tasks on your to-do list, integrating your workflows may not feel like a priority when you leave a never-ending task list looming over your head, but how often are you leaving work with that same list still on your mind? Have you thought about automating some of those tasks?

Consider these stats:

With a strong PMS integration, you’re creating a superior practice experience for both your front office team and your patients. Here are five essential workflows to integrate:  

1. Online Forms

The first workflow to integrate into your PMS are intake forms. Not automating or finetuning this process can lead to keying errors, compliance issues, and miscommunication between you and the patient.

With your existing online forms solution, you should have a way to automatically writeback forms to your PMS. This includes writing back data elements to the patients’ profile and/or storing the PDFs in the PMS document library. Additionally, your online forms solution should have a feature where you can auto-sync any submitted patient forms to your PMS. Some of the forms you can integrate to your PMS include patient information, health history, insurance forms, and custom forms unique to your practice.  

Keep these benefits in mind:  

• Reduce errors: Minimize the risk of keying in incorrect information.
• Save time: Spend less time on manual data entry and more time focusing on patient care.
• More consistency: Maintain uniform data for better care and HIPAA compliance.

2. Online Scheduling

If your practice uses online scheduling, then consider integrating this workflow into your PMS too. Without the integration, you won’t have a 360-degree view of your schedule so it’s harder to maintain a current view of upcoming patient appointments and what scheduling gaps you might have.

With online scheduling, you can integrate the settings you configure, incoming appointments, new patient appointments, and more into your PMS. Since calling and scheduling appointments is one of the top tasks you do regularly, there is a time-savings that comes with integrating it.  

Keep these benefits in mind:

• Improved visibility: Ensure that every patient is accounted for and is slotted into the schedule where they want (and where you want). ‍
• Greater efficiency: Reduce the time spent switching between systems. ‍
• Better responsiveness: Quickly respond to patient inquiries with an accurate, up-to-date schedule. ‍
• Keep a full schedule: Know where you have scheduling gaps and quickly fill those spots.

3. Insurance Verification

Not having the correct, up-to-date information in your PMS can cause confusion with patients and give them a poor practice experience. While some patients understand because mistakes happen, some will consider leaving a practice if they’re quoted the wrong information.  

This is why integrating this workflow into your PMS matters. It ensures data consistency and allows you to have the right insurance information on file for patients. It also saves your practice time from having to key in information. Some patient engagement tools allow you to sync insurance forms to your PMS library, while other tools writeback insurance data elements to the patients’ profiles. If your practice has an insurance verification tool, see if you’re able to integrate it into your PMS.  

Keep these benefits in mind:

• More consistency: Maintain uniform data across your systems.
• Greater efficiency: Save up to 80% of the time spent on manual insurance verification.
• Better patient care: Provide patients with accurate cost estimates and reduce their financial concerns.  
  

RevenueWell offers two versions of an insurance verification tool. Both versions sync the insurance forms to your PMS by storing them in the document libraries.  

4. Treatment Plan Follow Up

The industry average for case acceptance hovers around 45%, but the benchmark is over 65% so there’s room to improve for many practices. As you know, acceptance plays a significant role in practice growth, so you must stay engaged with your patients. Treatment plan follow up is an effective way to influence case acceptance and help your patients prioritize their oral health.  

Sending patients targeted communications based on treatments you discussed is an effective way to improve case acceptance rates. To ensure you’re having the most up-to-date patient information in your PMS makes it possible to send targeted follow ups about proposed, performed, and unperformed services, and include payment options to ease cost concerns. You can have confidence knowing that you’re sending patients the right messages at the right times through the right channel to help them prioritize their oral health.  

Keep these benefits in mind:

• Better patient engagement: Help patients stay on top of their oral health with timely reminders and helpful content.
• Improved case acceptance: Improve acceptance rates by 10% or more with targeted follow-ups  
• Greater efficiency: Automate follow-ups to reduce manual workload.
  

5. Payments

75% of providers use manual processes and paper for collections, which impacts both your patients and your team. Even though it’s beneficial to make it easy for patients to pay for care, don’t forget to think about how you manage the process behind the scenes. This is another time-consuming process that can be integrated by posting payment information to the ledger in your PMS. This also helps you maintain PCI compliance and simplify your financial workflow all while giving you insight into how much patients owe and whether they’ve paid for care or not.  

Keep these benefits in mind:

• Reduce errors: Minimize the risk of manual entry mistakes.
• Efficiency: Speed up the payment process with automation.
• Faster collections: Reduce the speed of collection by up to 14 days.  

Enhancing your workflows frees up your team’s ability to focus on more fulfilling activities that directly impact the patient’s experience. It also gives you opportunities to upskill in your role when you’re not being held back by routine tasks. And for the patients? They get the quality of care your practice aims to provide.  

RevenueWell’s Marketing Platform integrates with many PMSs, including but not limited to, Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, OpenDental, Eaglesoft, and more. While the integration depth does vary by PMS, RevenueWell’s solutions help dental practices improve efficiency and deliver superior patient experiences. If you’re interested in seeing how our features integrate with a PMS, schedule a demo today.