Schedule better, for more happy patients.

Aside from doing great work on their teeth, patients greatly appreciate respect of their time.

Making sure that their appointments are secure, that they start on time and go for as long as you said they would without feeling rushed, make for happy customers willing to speak well of you.

And of course, efficiency is your productivity. The more efficient your practice, the more profitable it is.

So how do we do this?

Up-front communication

If your prospective patients could have all of the information they need to decide to come in, then they would spend less time in indecision, and just get on an make a booking.

Information like what you specialise in, whether you are a family dentist or cater to busy business-people.

Online booking systems allow great efficiency as well, as patients can see when sessions are available. They can then request it for themselves, saving the time of your receptionist in answering the phone and describing availabilities to all who call.

This is one of the benefits of Smilo.ai. It allows the prospective patient to read up all the information they are interested in, confer with the dentist, and make a booking.

Patients with other medical concerns or medications can also let their dentist know what they need to ahead of coming in. That information will be available to you, and can be updated by themselves without filling in forms in your waiting room and handing it to your front desk.

Triage your patients’ needs

Sometimes the only contact that your patient has with your practice is with your receptionist.

In which case, I hope they are well trained to hear the difference between a minor concern and an emergency. With the difference in how different people react to their own medical concerns, it is hard to tell one from the other.

When your receptionist can tell that they have an urgent case on their hands, they can make an appropriate emergency booking. If the procedure is not urgent but likely to be complicated and need extra time, they can find a bigger time-slot to fit them in.

This makes your practice’s efficiency dependent upon the expertise of your receptionist, and puts them under quite a lot of pressure.

To take some of that pressure off, Smilo will let your patients message their photos and analysis directly to you, so that you can make decisions on what they need, how urgently, and how much time will be involved.

You can then message them back directly to let them know this, and when they agree your receptionist will have access to all of this information and be able to slot the patient in exactly according to your assessment of their needs.

Reminders

Humans tend to be forgetful, unreliable, and need constant reminders of their own schedule to turn up on time.

Common nowadays is the SMS reminder to let them know about their upcoming appointment. This has improved patient punctuality considerably, and reduced the number of uninformed no-shows.

Smilo’s two-way communication system between your patient and your office can improve it even more, as it opens the opportunity for small updates from your patients such as ‘I’m going to be a little late’, cancellations, or last-minute schedule adjustments.

Know your patients

If you know who is coming in, then you can allow more or less time for them accordingly.

Perhaps a patient is habitually late, in which case you can adjust the time allowed to accommodate rather than let everyone else be late.

Or some patients could be nervous or anxious, and you need a bit more time getting them relaxed enough before you can work.

All of these personality habits can be kept as records on Smilo so that you are forewarned about their quirks, and can schedule around them.

Single appointments

When people book in for a general checkup, you might discover work that they didn’t know needed to be done.

With a well-organised schedule, you might not have time to extend their session to include the second procedure. Nor might they, and they also might not have mentally budgeted for the extra cost, leaving them a bit disgruntled.

Fortunately, when your patients have the Smilo app, they can submit to you Smilo’s analysis of their teeth so that you can see what you need to do for the patient ahead of time.

This means you can message them to let them know what you propose to do, how much it will cost, and you can book them in for a single session long enough to perform all of the procedures agreed to up front.

The result is that you will be much more able to fill your schedule efficiently, to better work on time without stress, and your customer will be so much happier with your service in that it could happen in one session with all fees already agreed to.

Call us today to know more Smilo can improve the efficiency of your dental practice.