What is it about dental health history forms that make them much more than just another paper form to fill out? In this blog, we'll discuss the important information you can extract and use to help you in multiple ways to scale up the patient’s visit.

Read Also: Essential Elements of a Medical History Form

Recognition

Patients don’t always understand the interlinking components between genetics, pre-existing conditions, dental treatment plans, and so forth. As a practitioner, you’re fully aware of how frequently one intertwines with the other, making your approach to dental care specifically tailored for each patient.

A completed dental health history form gives you the needed information about a patient's history, symptoms, medical conditions, prior treatments, medications, family health history, and so much more – enabling you to put the pieces of the puzzle together to recognize the whole story behind the patient’s symptoms, diagnosis, and proposed treatment plan.

Important Questions

Are you confident in knowing which questions are critical to ask patients? Having a solid understanding of the patient’s background will lighten that load of being able to decipher what important information remains unknown – that you’ll want to ask about.

A completed dental health history form gives you, the provider, insight into what could be causative factors of a patient's symptoms, or condition. Having that key in your hands makes it easier to present vital questions that will narrow down factors leading to a proper understanding of the diagnosis, treatment plan, and expected follow up plan.

Better Transparency

What do patients want and expect from providers? Transparency in communication rates at the top of the list of patient expectations. Patients want to know the following:

• Level of concern
• Diagnosis
• Treatment
• Prognosis
• Follow up care

To hit these key points on the mark, you’ll need to have a sound knowledge foundation of the patient’s symptoms, previous and current medical status, genetic predisposition, contraindications, medications, and a number of other factors – all of which are attainable via a dental health history form.

Without the essential background elements to determine the level of concern, diagnosis, treatment plan, prognosis, and follow up care – it becomes nearly impossible to provide the accurate information that the patient is looking for. 

Coordination of care

Often the need arises to either refer a patient out for specialized care or to co-manage with another professional in providing the best care possible for the patient. For this to work smoothly without gaps in understanding, it’s critical to have complete and accurate patient information noted and conveyed to the other professional(s).

The patient’s completed dental health history form may serve as a primary source for this information transfer. 

Simplify the Process

Paper dental health history forms have more frequently been replaced with digital access for patient completion, e-signing, transfer to the provider, integration, and updating as needed. Digital dental forms have countless benefits for both patients and providers that make them a popular option:

• Cuts down 35% of documentation time
• Gives front desk staff autonomy via automation of administrative tasks
• Saves practices ~$60K annually
• Reduces 80% waiting room time
• Saves ~20 min/patient
• Eliminates printing, scanning, manual data entry errors, shredding, illegible handwriting, missing fields, etc
• Remote patient completion and e-signing of forms
• Capture ID, insurance card, photo, and medication list from home
• Integration with Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Dentrix, and Dolphin
• Cloud-based compatibility with other practice management software

Digital dental health history forms have become an effective tool for speeding up the intake process for patients, providers, and staff.

Read Also: Why is a Medical History form useful in the Dental Office?

Conclusion

Dental health history forms provide a plethora of benefits for dental practices – from empowering providers with a better foundation for delivery of quality care, to allowing patients to receive more accurate information about their status.

Dental health history forms also facilitate collaboration with other healthcare professionals. Digitizing your dental forms has proven to save practices time and money, in addition to giving patients the convenience of self-service options they love.

mConsent’s digital forms have revolutionized intake processes for 5000+ practices, streamlining operations for an optimal patient experience. Find out how mConsent can make your dental practice paperless.