Dental Billing Software for Your Practice
Any dental practice will tell you that the biggest challenge in the day to day running of their business is keeping track of medical billing records on a day to day basis. In order to run a successful practice, you need a dental billing software package that is intuitive to use, and easily adaptable to the way your practice operates. This means that the software should be able to integrate with whatever other software you currently have in place, including imaging and clinical charting programs.
Before you choose billing software for your dental practice, you need to define the criteria that must be covered for the software to perform the way it is needed. One of the biggest places many billing software packages fall apart is in user training and support. This means that more often than not, the software package is never used to its fullest potential, because your staff have little understanding of how to operate it properly. With the busy schedule that most dental surgeries have, you want to have access to user manuals, training and support that makes the transition to your new software an easy process, rather than figuring out the basics under pressure and not becoming familiar with the intricacies of the program. Ideally, you should have access to video training, hardcopy user manuals, procedural documents and ongoing phone and email support.
Any dental software that you implement should be intuitive and easy to use. The most important part of your business is patient care, and the data entry and record keeping, although being necessary to your clinics success, should not take precedence over that core function. You need your dental software to work for your business, and not the other way around. Therefore, you should be given interface options such as drop down boxes that look up previously entered data, and there should be a logical flow of steps that guides you through each function within the system.
If you have a medium sized or large practice, then you may have multiple people accessing the software at the same time. Furthermore, each user of the system may require varying levels of access to sensitive information. In order to control this security aspect, it’s important to have a system that stores various levels of user groups and access privileges, along with usernames and passwords that can be entered in at an administrator’s level. As your staff change, and indeed your business needs, the software should provide the ability to archive employee records, while still providing access to historical records. Ideally you will also want to be able to store staff contact and salary details all in the one place, making employment management and streamlined process.
As you already know, your patients are the backbone of your dental practice, and as such, they should also be the central focus of any good dental billing software. Each patient details screen should not only allow you to enter in general contact details for that patient, but it should also provide you with a historical record of billing details for that particular patient. You should be able to see, at a glance, any outstanding bills as well as previously paid bills from the one location. For administrative purposes, when a patient calls for an appointment, it should be a simple process to find all their related data within the system, if they are a return patient, or to enter in their details if they have never visited your practice before.
SaralDent is a software package specifically designed with dental clinics in mind. There are three different options available; SaralDent, SaralDent Plus (with Imaging capabilities) and SaralDent Enterprise (within imaging capabilities and advanced reporting options). These packages are $300, $400 and $500, giving you greater control over the functionality you need, which means that you are not paying for options that you will not use. The graphical user interface provides the user with the ability to chart treatment planning, progress of dental work and a graphical overview of all the patience previous dental work. There are many other options available in the standard package, including appointment planning, flexible patient communication options and many different reporting functionalities.
DentiMax is a feature rich application that promises to fully integrate the min functions within your practice, including a payment ledger that allows you to track patient billing information and insurance payments, an appointment scheduling section, ensuring a smooth flow of bookings and appointments with the ability to graphically move appointments around as needed, electronic insurance claims, and many advanced reporting options. This software also comes in three different versions, with pricing ranging from $499 to $2,242 for a single user licence and $1,799 to $3,944 for a network licence that allows up to 8 users to access the software simultaneously.
Curve Dental provides the user with an online option for keeping track of your practice. This means that your patients data is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection, giving you much more freedom than an installation package that must be set up and maintained on your office computers. You also benefit from not having to have specialised hardware requirements for your dental billing software, if you have an Internet connection and a browser, then you are good to go. The interface is specifically designed with the end user in mind. It sports an extremely clean and user friendly experience for your administration team. Your data and your patients privacy is guaranteed, as Curve Dental provides encryption and a built in backup plan for your important information.
Dentrix has over 20 years experience in the dental software field, and their packages have been installed on tens of thousands of clinics computers around the country. Appointment scheduling is a breeze with Dentrix, as it’s interface allows drag and drop functionality to move patients into available time slots with the minimum of fuss. Their unique recall functionality ensures that your patients are reminded of necessary return visits as they approach. Their billing module integrates insurance and statements, and provides a quick checkout functionality that streamlines the operation of your front desk.
Remember that your data and patient information is the lifeblood of your dental practice. Do not be persuaded to settle for free dental billing software that is not backed up by the necessary support and backup functionality that is of supreme importance for your business. Create a checklist of the functionality that you need and then start requesting demonstrations of the software before finally deciding on the package that is right for your needs.
