What Online Forms Mean for You
All good patient management and dental software are designed to direct your practice towards making your practice more efficient. Online forms are no exception. In this blog post, we share a guide to choosing and evaluating the best online forms for your practice.
Are you looking to switch from paper forms to online forms? Have you been working with online forms for a while, but aren’t sure if you’ve found the one that best suits your practice?
Then this guide is for you! Let’s explore the ins and outs of online forms, and how they can benefit your practice.
Online Forms: An Overview
What do we mean by an online form?
Simply put, an online form is something that your patient fills out over the Internet – rather than on paper, in your office. Online forms come in a broad range of types.
The types of online forms include:
- Generic online forms. These can be a fairly wide range of online forms. Generally, however, they are submitted by email preceding an appointment. You are then able to store these online forms in your office’s cloud or on your hard drive.
- Forms specific to your business. Many practices will choose to develop their own, proprietary forms. This is usually done by a web developer, employed by the practice, who creates custom forms for that practice.
- Forms that connect to dental software. This is a versatile online form because it can connect with whatever patient management software your practice might already have. This can feed directly into that software, and be saved there.
- Online forms as add-ons. Just like it sounds, online forms can also come as add-ons to our current patient management software. These are especially useful if you already have software that works well for your practice.
No matter what type it is, choosing an online form that works well for your practice is essential!
Benefits of Choosing the Right Online Form Tool
The main benefit of an online forms tool is that it saves time!
This is true for both your practice and your patients.
For your patients, they can fill out the form in the comfort of their own home, on their own time. They also don’t have to arrive for appointments early just to fill out a form. Sending an online form indicates that you, as a practice, understand that your patient’s time is valuable.
And as for your practice?
Using an online forms tool saves your staff a ton of clerical work. Specifically, online forms remove the need for:
- manually inputting all the information from paper forms into your practice’s database
- filing the paper forms according to the system you have in place
- reminding patients to fill out forms when they come in
- locating a form that has been misplaced
- and so much more!
Once you find the online forms tool that’s right for your practice, you will begin to see the time-saving benefits for your practice!
Navigating Your Online Forms Choices
There are a lot of online forms tools out there. It can be hard to know what to pick!
First and foremost, you must ensure your online forms tool is HIPAA compliant. Luckily, most online forms comply with this!
Generally speaking, you can find a solid online forms tool for anywhere from $60 to $100 per month. Some online forms tools require you to may both per month and per form.
In addition, the majority of online tools offer not only HIPAA compliance but also:
- A custom form builder to meet all your practice’s needs
- Pre-set templates for ease of use
- E-signatures
- The ability to send via both email and SMS
- The majority are also web-mobile friendly!
- A review module, so you can see the results of the online form
Depending on the provider of the form, you can also make use of the following features:
- Custom branding, in line with your practice’s logo and another branding
- Photos of your patients
- Digitization of paper forms
- A QR code check-in
- Reusable components from certain forms
- The ability to finish the form in the office, if you would prefer
- Integration into your patient management software
Evaluating the best online forms tool for your practice will depend very much on your needs. If you have patients of several different ages, having the versatility of sending the form by both email and SMS message is important. Your older patients will be more used to email – your younger patients, text! This brings up other important questions to ask. For example, is your staff comfortable navigating between multiple software platforms?
The team at Intiveo has been interested in contributing to this dynamic-only forms market for some time. And of course, we have something a little different to offer.
Intiveo Online Forms: A Sneak Peak
At Intiveo, we are always striving to provide added value to our clients. That’s why we started developing an online forms add-on.
This is a truly all-in-one solution.
What the Intiveo team saw was that sending, tracking, and managing patient forms and information was time-consuming. This process involved a lot of manual efforts and paper waste. Tracking down and reminding patients before an appointment added to this time-consuming process. We knew that dental practices wanted to simplify, to save time.
That’s why we built Intiveo Forms, to help you manage all of your patient forms and information in one place. Our goal is to help you save time and money – and show you a great return on your investment!
Stay tuned for more about the Intiveo Forms Add-On. We’re excited to offer more details in our next blog!
Online Forms: Taking Your Business to the Next Level
You want to make your practice more efficient. With good patient management software, this is possible. When you invest in an online forms tool, you lean into that efficiency. It enables your staff to shift their time. They stop time on time-consuming manual tasks and follow up over and over with patients. Instead, your staff spends time on what matters: delivering great oral health care outcomes.
That’s why we decided to develop an Intiveo Forms Add-On! We are excited to contribute to this innovative field, by providing you with customizable, easy-to-use forms that truly serve your dental practice. More to come in our next blog post!
