Give Your Scanner a Break
Does your front office have a basket over flowing with papers with a sign on it that reads "TO BE SCANNED?" No one in the office wants to touch it because it is one of those tedious tasks that no one wants to do ... so it just grows and grows. I know how you feel and many practices I work with say that
scanning is one of the biggest pain points they deal with every day.
Let's look at how we could cut that pile of paper in half ... but first let's look at what's in that pile and how we can deal with it in the electronic world. Some examples of what ends up in that pile of "TO BE SCANNED" paper are . . .
- Letters from specialists
- Treatment plan estimates
- Insurance EOBs and pre-estimates
- New patient forms
- Health history updates
- Consent forms
- Letters to/from patients
We can't really do much with the paper that comes in through the mail because it is already in a paper form. There is not much we can do other than scan it. What I would recommend is reaching out to the people who are sending you paper and see if you can receive electronic correspondence or (even better) see if they can send the letter as an attachment to an email.
NOTE: Make sure you are using a HIPAA-compliant email service when you are sending protected patient information.
There are two in-house ways you can eliminate the scanning without adding any additional cost or third-party service.
- "Send to the Dentrix Document Center" is the easiest, most efficient way to get a document into the Document Center without scanning. This can be used for anything you receive in an email, off a website (insurance breakdowns, EOBs, etc.) or as an attachment. You can also send all your treatment plan estimates to the Document Center using this feature and then have the patient sign in the Document Center using an electronic signature device. If your referring doctors are still sending their follow up letter in the mail, you can implement a secure way for them to send it to you via email and now you can send it to the Document Center without scanning. CLICK HERE for instructions on how this works.
- Start using the Dentrix Questionnaire module for all in-house forms, including health history updates, all treatment consent forms, financial arrangement forms and updates to your HIPAA acknowledgement. You can use the Questionnaire Module without adding any expense for electronic services ... all you will need is a signature pad. You can print out your consent forms and have them laminated so the patient can read them in a paper form. After that, have the patient sign in the Questionnaire or just pull the form up on your monitor for him or her to read. It is so easy. CLICK HERE to learn how to create a new form.
Give your team a break . . . give your scanner a break and save time.
Use this time to do more productive things like fill your schedule and improve your collections.
Dayna Johnson - The Dentrix Office Manager
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