West Davis Dental and Lovers Smile Improve Patient Communication with Automated Scheduling

The Problem

Both practices follow the same patient-driven philosophy. The staff’s goal is to answer all phone calls during work hours and never let calls roll over to voicemail. This is challenging, particularly for the West Davis office because it is so busy.

Both practices were using voicemail for after-hours calls and Local Med for online scheduling. Management did not want to use an answering service because the front desk staff is trained to handle patient calls a certain way. They knew they could not guarantee calls would be handled in the same manner by an answering service.

The management team was also uncomfortable with any solution that required patients to answer questions about insurance and provide other sensitive information up front. Their goal was to eliminate roadblocks and create a positive patient experience, and they felt that asking people for a lot of personal information made a negative impression.

Hygiene coordinators and the front office staff at both practices handle and manage appointments. So, the solution needed to be easy to implement as well as easy to learn.

Since research showed that more than 75% of patients want the option to schedule, cancel, and rebook appointments on-demand, Elisha Enoksen, Operations Manager for both practices, evaluated patient communication solutions that would enable both  practices to offer automated scheduling. She knew that allowing patients to schedule  and reschedule appointments themselves would lessen the workload for the staff at both practices and provide patients with a service they wanted.