Now Available: The Internal Referral Management System, a Powerful Tool for Group Practices
Planet DDS is excited to announce the launch of a new and exciting feature for Denticon users: the Internal Referral Management System. Denticon is the first practice management solution to offer such a robust and fully integrated system. The new feature is sure to become a powerful tool for multi-location and multi-specialty dental practices of all sizes to manage patient referrals within their organizations.
DSO Challenges with Internal Referrals
Let’s say a new patient walks into your office. After seeing the patient and reviewing their X-rays, you decide to refer him to a periodontist. You belong to a very large DSO with many specialists, including periodontists.
There’s a new treatment coordinator in your practice, and she isn’t familiar with all the specialists in your group yet. Your patient says he’s busy and hopes you can find a periodontist not too far from where he lives. Extra time is wasted trying to find a periodontist near your patient. Or worse, the patient is referred to an outside specialist.
Traditionally, many practices fax or even mail a referral. In some cases, a coordinator may even hand the patient a referral slip and rely on them to make an appointment with the specialist. All of this wastes time and creates extra work for your staff and your patients.
In an even less secure example, some practices even have patients hand-deliver documents and X-rays to the specialist’s office. All said, the lengthy process can take several days and is very impractical for everyone involved. Lastly, with these outdated referral practices, there is no easy way to track the referral or receive status updates from the specialist’s office.
Better Referral Management with Denticon
In the above scenario, Denticon’s Internal Referral Management System radically improves the efficiency of the referral process. Now, you can manage internal referrals with just a few clicks.
Your treatment coordinator can easily search for periodontists in your group, based on how close they are to your patient’s home address. They can even view the specialist’s calendar and schedule an appointment on their calendar in real-time. To keep patient information secure, she can also send x-rays and other PHI securely within Denticon to the specialist’s office.
Once the referral is sent to the specialist’s office, their office will be able to view the incoming referral and securely view the patient’s records.
To further improve the patient experience, your treatment coordinator can even view the specialist’s fee schedules within their group so they can create a comprehensive treatment plan for your patient.
“This is such a robust solution to be able to find specialists, view their fee schedules, and set an appointment for your patient before they leave your office,” explained Gregory Duchon, Product Manager at Planet DDS. “It’s a win-win because it saves time for your staff and your patients receive better service.”
Minimizing Revenue Leakage in DSOs
Another benefit of using the Internal Referral Management System is being able to minimize revenue leakage. This feature ensures that practices are referring patients to specialists within their organization as much as possible.
Let’s say your organization is a large DSO with 50+ offices. Ideally, all your treatment coordinators know every specialist in the group, but that’s not always the case. With the Internal Referral Management System, your staff can quickly locate a periodontist down the road from a patient, whether they are new to the organization or not.
“We designed this feature specifically to help users refer treatment to specialists inside their organization,” said Duchon. “Especially for multi-location, multi-specialty enterprise clients, this is an invaluable tool to increase revenue by keeping patients within your group.”
Advanced Referral Management with Denticon
Denticon’s new Internal Referral Management System improves and streamlines communications among providers, reduces operational inefficiencies, and enhances the patient experience.
“We heard our clients’ frustrations with the referral process, and we’re really excited to roll out this new feature to help make their lives easier. The Internal Referral Management System will help dental offices manage referrals securely and efficiently,” said Chae Kim, Senior Vice President of Product at Planet DDS.
If you’re a current client, get ready to save time and money every time you use this new feature to refer clients within your organization and track referrals. Track all of your internal referrals from now on!
If you’re not a current Denticon subscriber and want to learn more about our referral management system and how Denticon’s comprehensive platform can help your practice, contact us today.