Tips for creating a more effective patient clinical readiness plan in your practice using the available tools in Dentrix Enterprise.
How is your current patient clinical workflow functioning? Have you done a status check recently to ensure that you are providing patient care that meets your organization’s high standards and that each team member understands their role within the process?
Your goal as an organization is to provide the best patient care possible, from scheduling the patient appointment to treating them at your clinic, and all the tasks in-between. In this blog post, we are sharing basic concepts and helpful tips from Jessica Napiza, Software Training Manager with Henry Schein One. She defines patient clinical readiness as the series of steps or actions that are performed either before or during a patient’s visit.
Dentrix Enterprise provides you with the clinical tools to help you establish an effective patient clinical readiness plan, document personalized patient treatment, and support your dental team as they make important clinical decisions. Here we discuss four key concepts that any organization can introduce to their workflow to keep your patient clinical readiness plan running smoothly.
1. Keep Up with Patient Recare
Keeping patients up to date on their dental care is important, and it’s a great way to keep your schedule full and productive. Knowing when a patient is due for a specific service can be time-consuming, and there is a good chance that some broken appointments or unscheduled continuing care appointments have fallen through the cracks. Using the Continuing Care List is an easy way to find patients who are overdue for care and contact them for a recare appointment. You can also use the Scheduling Assistant to view unscheduled and ASAP appointments, unscheduled treatment plans, unscheduled treatment requests, and overdue recare appointments.
To learn more about patient recare, see the following Dentrix Enterprise tip blog articles:
- Key Reports to Check the Health of Your Organization
- Checking Insurance Eligibility
- Quickly Fill Your Schedule with the Scheduling Assistant
2. Update Patient Medical Alerts
During the initial months of the COVID-19 outbreak, you may have treated a few emergency patients, but you probably provided very little routine recare. Now that you are starting to see patients regularly again, it’s important to document any changes to their medical history so you can update problems, allergies, and medical alerts (PAM) information. One of the easiest places for your team to access and review a patient’s health history is from the Medical Alerts and Health Assessment tabs in the More Information window. Dentrix Enterprise also provides easy ways to view a patient’s medical alert history, and you can document any medical changes by creating updated medical alerts.
To learn more about medical alerts, see the following Dentrix Enterprise Help topic:
3. Increase Team Communication by Reviewing Treatment Plans
Communication between teams and being able to access information about patient treatment is key to staying on top of patient clinical readiness. Often when a patient is being scheduled, details about the patient’s treatment plan come up during the scheduling phone call. When the patient comes in for their appointment, it’s common for the clinician to sit with the patient and discuss any concerns, pain levels, and recommended treatment. This makes documentation very important so that each member of the dental team is up to speed on the patient’s individual treatment plan.
To learn more about treatment plans, see the following Dentrix Enterprise tip blog articles:
- Following Up on Your Unscheduled Treatment Plans
- Finding Patients with Unscheduled Treatment and Unused Benefits
- Assigning Visits to Treatment Plans
4. Manage Treatment Requests
How can the entire team support the clinical workflow with treatment requests? One simple way to help streamline the process is to review the treatment plan during the scheduling phone call. Another way to help keep things streamlined is to get rid of the sticky notes and patient requests written down on scratch paper. Instead, use the Treatment Request Manager to track and follow up on recommended patient care.
Want more tips on how to streamline your patient care workflow? Listen to the Podcast!
Listen to Patient Clinical Readiness on the Dental Deep Dive podcast featuring a conversation with Jessica Napiza, Software Training Manager with Henry Schein One. In the podcast, Jessica recommends these four key components along with specific steps you can use today to implement a more streamlined clinical readiness workflow in your clinic, elevating the patient care in your organization.
