The Dentist’s Guide to Managing Dental Appointments

dental appointments

Your patients want to feel like they are important and valued in your dental practice. But when they can’t get through to speak to someone directly for their dental appointments or concerns, they are more likely to go somewhere else.

Studies have shown that 87% of new patients who call a dental practice to make their dental appointments do not call back. This is because they are put on hold, directed to an answering machine, or automated service menu. That’s a big chunk of potential income for your dental practice walking away.

COMPARE PRICES

How can you bridge the gap to keep your patients happy your dental appointments schedule full? A dental answering service. Dental answering services can offer your dental practice many benefits.

If you are interested in finding out more about dental answering services, keep reading for more information.

Managing Dental Appointments

Advertising your practice is only one part of the equation for a successful dental practice. Without good management of appointments, your patients will leave your practice for another one.

Calls On-Hold

Dental practices with an understaffed reception may not be able to answer all of the calls that come in and are forced to put many of the calls on hold. When a patient has difficulty getting through on the phone, they can become easily frustrated.

Offices that put their calls on a standard message service for their lunch hour will also lose out. Patients take their own lunch breaks to call for dental appointments.

During peak hours, right after a dental office opens or right before a dental office closes for the day. During lunch hours, a single receptionist may have difficulty fielding these calls alone. This will create a backlog of patients on hold who will not want to wait and just hang up.

No-Show Appointments

Canceling and rescheduling appointments can be frustrating when a patient needs to call the dental office. If they can’t get through on the phone, they will miss the appointment altogether. This will result in a no-show.

No-shows could also result from a patient forgetting that they had an appointment on a particular date and time.

Office appointment reminder calls can be an important tool for patient outreach. They make sure that patients keep their regular appointments or reschedule them with enough notice. Without the appropriate office staff to make these calls, your appointment books will be vacant.

Missed appointments can hurt your dental practice. It is valuable time that could have been filled with other dental appointments.

Off-Hours and Emergency Appointments

Dental emergencies can occur at any time. If a patient is experiencing a dental issue off-hours or over the weekend, they want to know they can be seen as soon as possible.

Patients who cannot get through to their dental office on the weekend, over the holidays, or after a certain time of day will go somewhere else that can accommodate their needs.

Benefits of Dental Answering Services

Dental answering services can provide your dental practice with many benefits. With a dental answering service, calls can be routed to a call answering center. Specially trained agents can address the concerns of the patient on your behalf.

Answer Common Questions

Call answering services know all about the terminology of dental offices, oral surgeons, orthodontists, periodontists, and more.

They are even trained in how to answer common questions regarding major insurance companies and their coverage for dental procedures and treatments. You can customize your service so that every phone call is answered and how to handle each situation.

Scheduling Appointments

Dental answering services can field calls about scheduling or rescheduling dental appointments. As well as sending out appointment calls, emails, or text reminders to patients with upcoming dental appointments.

When patients are able to call at any time to schedule, cancel, or reschedule appointments, there will be fewer no-show appointments. With more notice, there is also the ability to find another patient to fill that slot and keep the schedule full.

Increased Patient Satisfaction

Someone will be there to answer calls and provide patient outreach anytime, day or night, on weekends and holidays. When you utilize dental answering services, you are giving your existing patients and prospective new patients 24-hour access, 7 days a week.

With increased patient outreach, your patients will experience a higher rate of satisfaction. This, in turn, will result in more word-of-mouth referrals from your patients to their friends, family members, and co-workers.

You can also encourage patients to leave positive reviews on Google and Yelp if they are satisfied with the service they received.

Organized Message Keeping

Call answering services keep detailed recordings of their messages in a HIPPA compliant system for up to a year. This means that you can have detailed records of your messages from patients who have called the service. You can be certain that the information is accurate too.

Dental offices can access these records in a secure database. This prevents messages from being lost or buried in the shuffle of day-to-day office working. Patient records and calling information can stay organized and safe.

Quick Turnaround Time

Use dental answering services to schedule dental appointments and address other concerns. Your patients receive prompt service and answers to their questions in minutes, not hours or days.

It shows that you care about your patients and their well-being. This level of attentiveness will lead to greater rates of patient retention later on.

Dental Answering Services for Your Office

Scheduling dental appointments can be a hassle that takes up most of your time in the office. Your day is busy but you want to know that everything is running smoothly in the office so you can focus on patient care. Medical Call Service can help.

Medical Call Service provides referrals for medical and dental answering services. With dental answering services, your patients are transferred to a real live telephone operator, not a machine or an automated call answering menu. This makes patient outreach a top priority in your office.