The OMS Practice: Where Great Things Happen
No dental office runs well without proper practice management. This is true also in OMS practice management! With important, specialized procedures, the OMS office can feel like a high-stakes environment for staff and patients alike. This is exactly what makes good practice management software so important!
In this blog, we’ll explore the top four features that no OMS practice should be without. Delivering great oral health outcomes is the most important goal of any OMS practice. To help achieve that goal choose dental software that truly allows your practice to excel. Plus, we’ll discuss how patient communication software fits into that picture!
Let’s jump into the top four features to have in your OMS practice software.
#1: Dental Imaging & X-Rays
Of course, utilizing diagnostic tools is integral to OMS practice management software! Excellent dental imaging software, integrated with your PMS, allows you to make diagnoses and examine test results easily. The advantages of dental imaging technology do not stop there; easily attach x-rays to emails, and more! This helps promote an uninterrupted workflow for your staff – and increases time savings!
Dental imaging software is also a great tool to utilize when communicating with your patients. With imaging and x-rays, the patient will – quite literally! – get a clear picture of their dental health. The ability to pull up an image to help with an explanation about the patient’s oral health is invaluable.
Dental imaging and x-rays are one of the most exciting parts of dental technology. Not only is it important to include it in your management software, but it is also important to maintain ‘open’ dental imaging software. This way, any major changes in dental imaging technology can be incorporated immediately into your existing software. As soon as any new, cutting-edge developments come along, you’re prepared!
Keep your OMS practice current with integrated dental imaging and x-ray software.
#2: Insurance Verification & Claim Management
Having a user-friendly way for patients to submit their insurance information is integral to good OMS practice management software. This is important for both patient and practice – especially since OMS procedures have big price tags!
Ensure that insurance can be verified quickly and easily with your practice management software. This improves the patient experience by allowing them to do direct billing. This will also guarantee that you get paid, allowing you to hit your bottom line and maintain your successful practice.
As noted by Maxillosoft, patients value this experience especially when it can be done digitally. Skipping tedious sessions of filling out paper forms will make a huge difference to them. As with other aspects of practice management, making the switch to digital will not only impress patients, it will show that you highly value how they experience your practice.
In fact, what we’ve seen as a growing trend over the last few years is that electronic claims truly save on staff time. In addition, it also reduced the incidence of error!
Facilitating a smooth, streamlined insurance process for both patient and practice is an important feature to include in your management software!
#3: Charting
Charting is an important part of any healthcare interaction. Keeping track of the patient’s care plan and health profile ensures care providers have the correct information. This is particularly important if more than one care provider is seeing the patient! Charting is also necessary for uses beyond the office, such as forensic tracing.
It’s an important part of the day-to-day for care providers. But keeping track of charting doesn’t have to be a headache!
Keeping track of patient charts has never been easier than in the digital age. Especially with a cloud-based system, your dental staff has access to the necessary patient charts from whatever device they are using. This facilitates updating patient charts on the go. It also facilitates accuracy: with cloud-based software, when one staff member updates a chart, this will update the entire system.
Plus, it’s kept completely secure through HIPAA compliance (and PIPEDA compliance, in Canada), ensuring that your practice’s liability is covered.
#4: Appointment Management
Managing appointments is an important part of any dental practice – but with OMS practices, this is especially true. The stakes are high with OMS appointments. Many OMS procedures require a lot of planning and preparation. They are often costly for the patient. The revenue from each procedure is important to the bottom line of the OMS practice itself. Ensuring that your practice has the software to keep track of appointments is key to success for both patients and staff! Choose an OMS practice software that includes a robust appointment management feature.
An appointment management feature should include:
- A user-friendly way to keep track of which appointment belongs to which patient
- The ability to easily and digitally remind patients of their upcoming appointments
- A scheduler that will integrate with your appointment reminder software
In addition, choosing an appointment reminder software that will work with your practice management software is key!
How Communication Software Fits In
A very fair question to ask is if your OMS patient management software has all these features, why bother with patient communication software?
The answer is simple: scope.
Patient management software is designed to manage the ins and outs of your day-to-day life at the office. It’s an integral tool. However, its scope does not include the full spectrum of patient communication needs. This is why patient communication software is so important.
With the OMS practice, the communication needs of your patients are complex. From consultation to the procedure, to returning the patient to their general practitioner, each stage of their journey requires a different communication step.
For example, think of the difference between preparing your patient for the consultation:
- Confirming the patient’s consultation date
- Sending out patient intake and medical history forms
- Scheduling reminders in advance of the consultation if the forms are not completed
- Sending wellness surveys, if required by your practice
- Scheduling appointment reminders for the consultation
In contrast with preparing them for a procedure:
- Ensuring that premedication instructions come at a meaningful time, such as in the 48 hours before the procedure itself
- Sending pre-procedure instructions in the way the patient has asked to be communicated with, such as by text or email
- Sending the appropriate appointment reminders for date, time, location of the practice, parking information, etc.
With patient communication software, these messaging cadences can be automated by your staff, saving staff time. This also vastly improves the patient experience! Patients are supported in coming to their appointment prepared and on time.
Choose the right patient communication software for your practice and watch it flourish!
What Intiveo Has to Offer
Of course, we’re a little biased – patient communication software is what we know best! Intiveo offers patient communication software that is focused on providing unique patient experiences. We offer software products tailored to the following practices:
- General dentistry
- OMS
- Periodontics
- Orthodontics
- Endodontics
- Pediatrics
Our add-ons include:
- Social Reviews
- Forms
Our OMS communication software focuses on the unique, complex needs of the OMS practice, creating time savings for your staff and improving your patients’ experience. It is designed to integrate seamlessly with your current dental software, allowing your staff to focus on providing great oral healthcare outcomes.
Curious to learn more about Intiveo? Book a meeting today!
Great Software for Your OMS Practice
In order to deliver great oral health outcomes, your OMS practice needs to be prepared with the right software. That’s why we identified these top four features to ensure your OMS practice software is the best that it can be:
- Dental imaging and x-rays
- Insurance verification and claims management
- Charting
- Appointment management
With these and other robust features in place, your practice can truly excel in providing patients with a great experience. Patient communication software can also contribute to the overall patient experience, creating user-friendly reminders and forms accessibility.
Good luck on your practice management journey!
