Doing your best to stay on top of patient care includes obtaining a completed dental consent form prior to treatment. A dental consent form carries significant weight in so many aspects.
From the protection of the provider, to ensuring patient understanding, there are multifold benefits of a dental consent form. We’ll discuss 6 of these benefits to help you unfold their importance.
Informed Decision
One benefit of a dental consent form is that it allows patients to make an informed choice about their treatment.
A patient’s voluntary decision to accept treatment, known as informed consent, is based on their knowledge and clarity of the nature of their diagnosis, relevant risks and benefits of the proposed treatment, alternative options, and the potential outcomes of receiving no treatment.
Quality of Care
Another benefit of a dental consent form is that the patient becomes better aware of expectations, and can move forward to receive the best quality of care they deserve.
Without obtaining consent from the patient, the provider remains in limbo, unable to carry out the necessary treatment, and while in this state, the patient’s health may decline. To provide the patient with care needed, dental consent forms play a huge role.
Communication
The third benefit of a dental consent form is the channel it provides for clearer communication between the provider and the patient. A more transparent picture is conveyed in written format via a dental consent form.
Dental practices cannot rely solely on the verbal transfer of information. A key component of conveying information to patients is communicating in a way that’s documented and maintained for reference.
Coordination of Care
An overlooked benefit of a dental consent form is the ability it gives providers to collaborate together in better management and care for the patient.
With a patient’s consent, multiple specialists and providers can evaluate pertinent information, like medications, lab results, exam reports, medical history, and cohesively approach the treatment regimen in a way that is most beneficial and safest for the patient.
Legal Protection
A well-known benefit of a dental consent form is the legal protection it gives the provider. Without a doubt, if treatment was carried out without proper consent from the patient, some serious turmoil could be at hand, especially if a complication occurred.
Most patients are well aware of the legal obligations from the provider’s end in obtaining consent, and can easily use any failure to comply against that provider. Ensuring a patient has given permission by signing a consent form is extremely critical prior to pursuing treatment.
Faster Service
Streamlining with digital dental consent forms is an advancement that enables your office to move forward faster with scheduling, ordering, and implementing the necessary aspects to carry out the involved treatment. Digitizing the entire process of obtaining a patient’s consent has worked wonders for thousands of dental practices.
Digital dental consent forms can be sent to patients via text/email for remote completion, e-signing, and submission. The submitted and approved forms integrate into your practice management system (Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Dentrix, and Dolphin), sparing your front office the headaches of paperwork, missing or illegible portions, scanning, and shredding.
Conclusion
The benefits of a dental consent form are many. Knowing them, along with the implications of neglecting proper consent protocol is vital for your practice. Thousands of dental practices have been able to accelerate and simplify the process of obtaining consent from patients by streamlining with mConsent’s digital forms.
Find out how your dental practice can improve compliance and efficiency by going paperless with mConsent.
