Selecting Dental Office Software

Selecting dental office software to reach your goals

Understanding the 5 categories of dental office software and the 10 questions to ask yourself to find what you need

For many practices, dental office software provides a foundation for day-to-day operations and makes everything more efficient, from scheduling and billing to charting and treatment plans.

Whether you love your software, would love to replace it, or simply would like it to have a few more features to reduce manual processes, periodically assessing your needs against what’s available in the software marketplace is worthwhile. Maybe you’ll find you want to stick with what you’ve got. Or maybe you’ll discover that replacing or appending your current software would provide an outstanding opportunity to streamline workflows, enhance the patient experience or boost profitability.

A good place to start is by learning about the five main categories of dental office software programs and how they benefit your practice. Then consider 10 questions that can help you find the best solution to meet your needs and goals.

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1. Practice management software

The right practice management software provides a foundation for your practice’s operations. It allows you to put all of your patient data and digital images onto one system, consolidate records and create paperless workflows. Then you can conduct traditionally time-consuming manual tasks – such as scheduling, charting and reporting – with new ease and speed.

How it benefits your practice
Practice management software allows you to establish effective and efficient workflows, improve patient experiences and add integrations for continuous operational and clinical improvements. Your team and patients alike benefit from a more seamless experience whether they’re seeking quick answers to patient questions, making appointments or considering insurance coverage.
 
Critical core functions:
  • Scheduling – Track, manage and fill appointments more quickly and easily.
  • Charting – Create and view a comprehensive record of patient care.
  • Treatment planning – Efficiently access and create treatment plans and estimate insurance coverage.
  • Billing – Quickly and easily reference a patient’s account balance, process insurance, and accept patient payments to provide a higher level of customer service.
  • Reporting – Save time with automated reports and measure business performance with built-in dashboards.

2. Revenue cycle management software

Revenue cycle management solutions streamline functions like credit card payments, patient statement generation and insurance processing.

How it benefits your practice:
With the right tools, you can request and receive payments from patients and insurance payers with new speed. You can accelerate your time to cash with improved collections processes and reduce manual work for your team.
 
Critical core functions:
  • Electronic claims and attachments – Submit insurance claims and attachments electronically to save time and receive payments more quickly.
  • Real-time insurance eligibility – Get immediate, real-time patient benefit information. Have more informed and timely conversations with patients regarding their insurance.
  • Electronic remittance advice – Save time and improve insurance payment accuracy with ERAs.
  • Electronic statements – Email statements to patients right from your software or leverage a clearinghouse to print, stuff, stamp and mail statements to patients.
  • Credit card payment processing – Make payment collections more convenient for patients while eliminating double entry, costly errors and reconciliation times.
  • Electronic prescriptions – Securely submit electronic prescriptions directly to pharmacies.

3. Patient engagement software

These solutions include marketing, communications and patient-experience tools that support patient acquisition, retention and ongoing communication with patients in between visits.

How it benefits your practice:
Patient engagement solutions help you strengthen relationships, improve the patient experience and attract new patients. They also can save you time and money by simplifying and automating everyday tasks, reducing phone time and eliminating snail mail.
 
Critical core functions:
  • Automated recall and appointment reminders – Encourage patient retention and reduce no-shows by sending automatic reminders to patients.
  • Online scheduling – Give your patients a way to schedule appointments at their convenience and reduce staff time spent scheduling appointments by phone.
  • Online forms – Offer patients a touchless experience and the ability to fill out forms ahead of their visits.
  • Two-way texts – Streamline communications and reduce time on the phone by sending and receiving text messages within the software.

4. Practice analytics software

Practice analytics tools enable advanced practices to dig deeper into performance insights to make more strategic business decisions and to identify hidden revenue.

How it benefits your practice:
One benefit of using dental office software is that you eventually have a treasure trove of data that can be analyzed for insights to help you fill your schedule, improve patient care, increase profitability and more. The right practice analytics software helps you do this with speed and ease.
 
Critical core functions:
  • Integrates with your practice management software.
  • Identifies risks and growth opportunities.
  • Digs into deep insights to uncover hidden revenue and business opportunities.

5. Security and compliance software

This software helps you maintain HIPAA compliance and keep patient and practice data safe. Services range from 24-hour monitoring backup services to HIPAA-compliant communication channels to secure patient data encryption and recovery.

How it benefits your practice:
You can rest assured that your practice and patient data is safe and secure, and your office is up to date on HIPAA compliance.
 
Critical core functions:
  • Server duplication and backup
  • HIPAA-compliant communication channels
  • Secure patient data encryption and recovery
  • Online safety data sheets

10 questions to ask yourself when you’re considering dental office software

The following questions can help guide you to the right software solutions to meet your practice needs and goals.

1. What are your practice goals?
2. How do you want to improve your practice? What do you need help with?
3. What software do you already have? What do you like or dislike about it?
4. Is there something that your software can’t do that you would like it to?
5. What activities and tasks soak up a lot of your team’s time? Can they be automated to save time with software?
6. Do you have multiple locations? Do you want them to share data and patient records?
7. Do you want 24/7 remote access to data for you and your team?
8. Will a given software solution integrate with software that you already have or software you plan to get?
9. Is the software you’re considering easy to use so your team can easily adopt it?
10. Will your team get the training and support they need to optimize the dental office software programs? This is key to getting the most out of your investment.

Want to share data across locations or remotely?

Consider Fuse
Do you have multiple locations that you want to connect with one dental office software? Do you or your team have a need to have 24/7 remote access to data? If you answered yes to either question, you may want to check out cloud-based Fuse practice management software. With Fuse, every patient, schedule and report are connected. Not only is it intuitive to use, but it also allows you to easily unlock insights to improve processes and identify business opportunities.
Explore Fuse

Look for software that comes with support

Whether you’re a startup bringing on all new software, an established private practice, or a regional DSO, having the right dental office software can enhance your abilities to improve efficiencies, enhance the patient experience and increase profitability.

Once you determine what your software needs are, it’s wise to not only look for functionality that supports your goals, but for software that can be easily adopted by your team and that is well supported from conversion to optimization to ongoing use. This will set you up for success in making the most of your investment and realizing your goals.

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