How To Pick a Dental Office Communication System for Your Practice

The convenience of paying bills, filling out forms, and replying to messages on a phone or computer is hard to beat. A dental office communication system, which enables your team to share information effortlessly with colleagues and contact patients, can give you an edge over the competition. 

With so many dental practice management software options, how do you select the right one for your practice? Below, the Weave team highlights the benefits of modern communication solutions and provides tips for choosing the best dental office and patient communication system.

Benefits of Modernizing Dental Office Communication

Dental office communication software provides tools that enable your team to provide better patient care. Instead of tracking down a team member to give them a message, you can save time sending a message on the office communication platform. 

It’s easier to share information about patients quickly, allowing you to answer their questions, address their concerns, or offer treatment while they’re still in the office. For example, a patient might ask the desk staff how much dental implants would cost and how the procedure works. 

Without instant messaging, the staff member might have to leave the patient waiting while they run to find the answer. With messaging software, they can send the question to the team immediately and get a response in minutes or seconds. 

The following are a few of the benefits dental practice communication systems can provide for your practice:

• Enhance patient experience
• Boost team productivity
• Increase patient retention
• Improve scheduling and billing

Efficient communication improves patient satisfaction, leading to fewer canceled appointments, easier scheduling, and faster billing. Your staff can send automatic reminders for appointments and payments to patients via text message, making it easier to get confirmations from those who avoid phone calls or don’t check their emails often. 

Important Considerations When Choosing an Office Communication System

A dental practice management system typically has functions like scheduling, payments, forms, and security, enabling you to provide convenient online features while keeping personal information safe. Since communication software is all online, your staff can read or send messages from anywhere, supporting hybrid work situations and contact between multiple locations. 

Improving Patient and Team Communication

Texts have a 98% open rate, and 70% of clinics prefer to send a text for appointment reminders (to read more about modern dental office communication, read our ebook). Patient communication software allows you to text a patient with an appointment reminder, payment request, or birthday message, leading to fewer no-shows and overdue balances. If you miss a call from a patient, you can send an automatic text asking them how you can help. 

Making communication with your practice convenient and accessible can turn a potential patient into a loyal patient. You can customize your messages to reflect the personality of your dental office, helping you strengthen your patient relationships and retain your existing patients, who provide most of your revenue.

Your employees will also be able to provide better customer service. Team chat allows your staff to do the following:

• Ask questions
• Message specific coworkers
• Notify when a new patient arrives
• Make a team-wide announcement 

This lightning-fast communication will make your office look efficient and well-organized from the patients’ perspectives and improve overall productivity. 

HIPAA Compliance, Confidentiality, and Security

When dealing with patient medical information, ensuring that your communication platform is HIPAA-compliant is vital. Sending patient information via text messaging is generally not compliant with HIPAA, but most dental communication software uses the required security protocols to make the messaging platform HIPAA-compliant. 

Since it’s a secure platform, you can also share documents and use digital forms to gather medical information from patients. You can send forms to patients before their scheduled appointment so they can take their time filling them out. You’ll save money on paper and spend less time inputting data from physical forms.  

Integration with Current Systems, Phones, and Tools

Business communication platforms take the systems you’re familiar with and put them in one place, simplifying your essential tasks like scheduling, billing, and sending reminders. Your dental office phone system becomes an innovative tool that shows you pertinent patient information whenever they call, such as the following:

• Patient name
• Scheduled appointments
• Overdue payments
• Notes about the patient

You can change your phone settings, such as voicemail and phone tree menus, through the platform on your desktop or mobile device. These apps typically have in-depth call analytics that shows total calls, missed calls, and call volume. Easy access to phone reports gives you quick insights and helps you improve your practice’s patient communication.

With online scheduling, your administrative staff has to answer fewer phone calls and give more attention to the patients in the office. When you approve the request, the online platform can automatically create an appointment in your practice management system, such as Open Dental.

Usability for the Hybrid Workplace

Hybrid workplaces are becoming the norm even in the dental industry, meaning that certain employees work at home some days and in the office the rest of the time. Online dental practice communication software allows employees to answer calls, get messages, and access patient information from anywhere. 

Even if the dentist or owner is out of the office, they can receive messages from their team members or access the information they need. They can also receive notifications whenever a patient leaves a review and respond immediately. 

Individual Practice, Multi-location, or Both

Intra-office communication software can also support multi-location practices, enabling employees in separate locations to fill each other’s appointments, answer each other’s calls, and route calls to another office. With centralized dentistry data and administration tools, a multi-location practice can share the workload, resulting in fewer missed calls, fewer no-shows, and more positive reviews from satisfied patients.

Build Stronger Connections With Weave

Weave is a dental office communication system that allows you to manage phones, texts, scheduling, reviews, payments, and more all on one platform. Thousands of dental practices use Weave to improve intra-office communication, increase revenue, and boost patient satisfaction. Our platform combines your systems into one easy-to-use app that you can use from any desktop or mobile device. 

To find out how our innovative business communication tools can grow your dental office, get the Weave demo or contact us at 833-572-2139.