Work flow tasks with digital data often do not need a person of any kind. For instance making reminder calls, reactivating non-compliant patients, sending bills or getting insurance information can be done in the cloud as an e-service.
For example; your office computer has the digital information. That is a patient name, an appointment date, a scheduled treatment, the insurer and plan number. An e-service extracts the pertinent information from your local computer, contacts the appropriate insurance computer through the Internet and extracts the pertinent data from the insurance computer. That is; is this patient covered for this treatment and what is the coverage?
The e-service, like Dentrix eCentral, will then go back to your local office computer and download the information. The e-service can even insert the data in the proper charts and appointments. So every day you can look ahead to the next day or several days in advance and know who and what is covered with no staff time, 800 numbers or music on hold.
Action Run is an online e-service that contacts and re-activates non-responsive patients.
The service examines records and discovers patients who have not been seen in a couple of years or who may have uncompleted treatment plans and sends custom tailored messages to those people
The computer tracks the responses and learns what works and what doesn’t and modifies its search and response tactics as a result. This is a type of artificial intelligence called a self-learning system. And like most e-services it is automatic, all your office staff needs to do is answer the phone when the patient calls to schedule.
With e-services dental team members are free to interact with patients, building a strong relationship based practice. What allows them to build these relationships is technology and the Internet using e-services. Rather than being impersonal and dehumanizing (as it is often portrayed) good technology and e-services actually strengthen relationship.
