How to be an Efficient Dental Practice with Paperless Dental Forms

In this day and age, almost everything is available at the touch of a button. Whether it’s shopping online, paying bills digitally, or filling out forms remotely, Smartphones, computers, and software development have truly opened the door of opportunity in how we go about daily operations.

When it comes to your Dental practice, consider yourself at the peak of opportunity in acquiring these advancements. We’ll go over how you can leverage technology to take your dental practice to the next level.

Paperless Advancements

Is your office still using paper intake forms? If so, you’re well aware of the drawbacks for staff, patients, and doctors. Your front office staff routinely feels the burnout from missing files, printing, organizing, scanning, manually inputting data, shredding, etc. It’s a tedious, ongoing process with no end in sight.

On top of this, patients dread having to complete a stack of forms. From the doctor’s end, manual data entry errors are a nightmare that can lead to serious mishaps.

Paperless advancements, like online intake forms have finally put an end to the headaches of paper forms. We’ll go over 5 ways paperless dental forms have revolutionized dental practices and the patient’s dental journey. 

Convenience

What is one of the topmost qualities that patients are looking for in a dental experience? You guessed it - Convenience. 

Paperless dental forms give patients the convenience they’re looking for by allowing them to self-complete intake forms on their sofa, or at work, using their own device. They can capture their ID, insurance card, photo, medication list, and other documents for direct upload.

Once they e-sign and submit, your dental office receives the forms for approval, and directly integrates them into your practice management system (Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Dentrix, Dolphin). A seamless intake process is exactly what paperless dental forms provide. 

Most Efficient Process

Efficiency also tops the list of important factors in the dental journey. Who really enjoys waiting 30 minutes or more just to be called in for an exam? An efficient dental office is far more likely to succeed in retaining patients and surpassing satisfaction, than one that runs behind schedule.

With paperless dental forms, your office will save 20 minutes per patient and cut down waiting room time by a phenomenal 80%. Your patients will finally be able to say goodbye to waiting room time, and your staff will be ecstatic about the 35% reduction in documentation time. All around, paperless forms create efficiency for you, your staff, and patients.

Cost-Saver

Weighing out the cost of hiring additional front office staff to manage paperwork vs embracing an automated administrative system leads to eye-popping numbers. Dental practices that have switched to paperless forms have reported annual savings of $60,000.

That’s a phenomenal figure to consider, as going paperless serves as your administrative right hand, and eliminates the need for paper-related supplies. Once your intake process is streamlined, you’ll no longer need to print out forms, scan information, make copies, worry about ink cartridges, clipboards, shredding, or storage for files.

Paperless software takes the headache out of administrative work, saving you tens of thousands of dollars each year.

Top Security

Maintaining a strong hold on HIPAA compliance and data security should be of utmost importance for every dental practice. With paper-based systems it becomes a struggle due to many factors. The sheer quantity of patient forms needing to be managed can become a burden to keep track of.

Lost files, exposed data, improper disposal, and unauthorized access are all noncompliance issues  that paper-based offices struggle with. Paperless dental forms resolve this issue by securely storing all data electronically with end-to-end encryption.

No shredding of documents is ever needed, and only authorized staff can access data via a secured passcode system. With paperless processes, you can rest assured that patient information is fully secured.

Environmentally Friendly

Going green has become the most common trend that brings about positive change for our planet. A paperless dental practice does wonders for helping save trees, maintaining the Earth, and serving as an exemplary model for other practices.

By switching to paperless dental forms, your office will become well-respected by patients, colleagues, and the community. You’ll feel good about your role in being environmentally friendly, and your bottom line will grow exponentially at the same time.

Conclusion

You deserve to be ahead of the game in efficient operations. There’s a sure way to get there that thousands of dental practices have already discovered. Paperless forms have been a game changer and continue to rain down benefit after benefit for providers, patients, and front office staff.

From patients enjoying the convenience of remote form completion, along with almost nil waiting room time, to staff being relieved of 35% of documentation time, you can’t beat the countless advantages of going paperless.

mConsent’s paperless forms have revolutionized 5000+ practices, in addition to the dental journey for 3.7 Million patients. Find out how your dental practice can skyrocket efficiency with mConsent’s paperless forms.