There are three or front office positions or functions. Call them what you want, but they break down as follows:   a) Receptionist, b) Scheduling coordinator, c) Accounts Manager d) Treatment Coordinator. In a small practice one employee does all the front office functions.  As a practice grows, two staff should be able to handle these functions up to 80-100K in production espcially if yousource all or part of your insurance processing.  The natural breakdown would be to combine the four functions as follows: In a bigger practice you might have one person for each position or some other combination that...

Should you cross train your staff? Cross training has its place when there is a temporary need. But under normal circumstances each employee should have specific responsibilities, otherwise you lose accountability. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with employees helping in an area outside their assigned responsibilities during peak periods or when another employee is absent. But staff need to stay focused on their specific assigned job and functions once the overload is handled.  

In previous articles in this series, we have explored some of the HIPAA rules and regulations that affect the everyday lives of dental practitioners. As most dentists are aware, the data that resides in your office is the most critical data you own: the patient records, schedule, documents, etc. are the lifeblood of your practice. The question is, what are you doing to protect that data? In my mind, there are three areas to concentrate on: 1. A firewall. This sounds easy, right? Just install a HIPAA-certified firewall and be done with it...except, no such animal exists. As a matter of fact,...

Keeping no shows and cancels at 10% or less comes down to having having a scheduler who takes 100% responsibility for ensuring your schedule is full which includes not being too dependent on automatic reminders. Your confirmation system should be tailored to each type of patient and have a personal touch. Anyone who contacts patients must know what they are doing and be an excellent communicator. Role playing with a script as a basic outline of specific types of calls is highly recommended. Here is my basic re-care confirmation protocol as well as what to do for NPs, operative and cancels/no...