All you Wanted to know about Maximizing your Patient Intake Process

How do you think your patient intake process fares with the most successful dental practices in the US? Knowing what works for them is a sure way to set your practice in the right direction, to cut down overhead costs, create happy patients, and speed the flow of front office processes.

Patient Intake Forms

Paper intake forms are a thing of the past for top dental practices. Digital intake forms have become recognized for their ability to speed up the intake process, improve data accuracy, and reduce stress.

Digital Intake forms surpass paper forms in 12 key ways:

1. Cuts down 35% of documentation time
2. Reduces 80% waiting room time
3. Ave of $60K+ in annual savings for practices with 20 patients/day
4. Saves ~20  min per patient and improves office productivity 
5. Text or email forms to patients for remote self-completion
6. Patients e-sign and submit completed forms before the visit
7. Direct integration of forms into Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Dentrix, Dolphin
8. Eliminates printing, scanning, shredding, and clipboards
9. No more manual data entry errors
10. Slows the spread of viral transmission
11. Gives front office staff freedom from mundane work
12. Boosts patient satisfaction

What happens during a Typical Patient Intake Process?

Traditional patient intake processes are draining for both your front office and patients.  Here’s a breakdown of the time-consuming process patients and staff typically go through with manual work for each new patient: 1) Front Office:

• Schedules appointments via phone
• Phone call reminders
• Prints out forms
• Organizes clipboards
• Manages sign-in form
• Multi-tasks with answering phone calls
• Records appointments in scheduling book

2) Patient completes  5+ paper forms:

• Consent forms
• Registration form
• Medical History form
• Privacy Policy
• Financial Policy
• Provide ID, Insurance Card, Medication List

3) Front Office:

• Manually enters the patient’s info into the computer
• Asks patients to fill in missing signatures and info
• Scans all documents
• Calls insurance to verify eligibility if not done previously
• Answers patients questions – which are usually many

How much time do you think the above process typically takes a dental office? Most practices will tell you it can easily amount to a 30 minute process, if not more.

Improving the Patient Intake Process

By investing in digital patient intake forms thousands of practices have gone from chaotic to stress-free. How so?

Check out how a digital intake process flows:

1. Patients self-schedule appointment online
2. 2-Way SMS channel if appointments need to be rescheduled
3. Automated appointment reminders sent to patient via SMS/Email
4. Digital intake forms sent to patients with the appt reminder
5. Patients capture ID, Insurance Card, Medication list and submit with forms online
6. Provider receives completed forms, E-signatures, and all requested documents. Once approved, all will integrate into the provider’s PMS (Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Dolphin).
7. Fast Insurance Verification Software provides Eligibility reports in 10 sec or less (with 180+ integrated payers)

No More:

• Phone call scheduling
• Appointment reminders via phone 
• Lengthy insurance verifications
• Paper forms
• Long waits
• Manually entering data
• Missing signatures 
• Printing, Scanning, Clipboards, or Shredding
• Unsatisfied patients
• Stressed out staff

Dental offices who realized the tremendous savings and advantages of going paperless have been forever changed. “We’re saving up to 7 hours a week spent on data entry as well as saving on the overhead costs of hiring another admin, which overall saves us $65,000 a year.” exclaims Mary Jo, Office Manager at Lift Dental who has fallen in love with the digital intake process.

Why Make the Switch to Digital Sooner rather than Later

Improving your patient intake process should be a top priority if you’re interested in optimizing your patients’ experience, de-stressing your front office, and skyrocketing your bottom line. The sooner you make the transformation to a paperless office, the greater your potential of building a solid patient base with a stellar reputation.  Digital intake processes have revolutionized the way dental practices operate, saving hours daily, dropping overhead and administrative costs, and creating happy staff/patients.

Conclusion

Cutting edge technology via a digital intake process places your practice above competitors by a long haul. Optimize your operations with Paperless Intake Forms, Fast Insurance Verification, Automated Appointment Reminders, 2-Way SMS, Online Patient Scheduling, and more. Over 5000 practices have successfully made the transition to becoming top-of-the-line in efficiency and productivity with mConsent software. Clients have rated it as a top innovative solution, providing all the features needed to streamline front office operations. Learn how mConsent can make your dental practice paperless.