How to Keep Your Dental Practice Running Smoothly While You Recharge

You’ve earned it, the time away from the office to recharge, reset, and soak up some sunshine. With the right automation in place, you don’t have to bring your practice worries along for the ride.  

Instead, you can relax knowing your front office tools are working hard behind the scenes to keep schedules full and patients happy. You’ve already built a solid system that works well when you’re at the practice, but with a few additional ideas, you can make it work even better when you’re away. Here are five automation tips that make it possible for your practice to hum along, no matter where you’re unwinding.

1. Stay Connected with Patients Using Campaigns

Patient communication never takes a vacation, but that doesn’t mean you need to worry about it while you’re away. Since it can take up to seven touchpoints for someone to act, automated campaigns come in handy. Pre-schedule essentials like treatment plan follow-ups, newsletters, welcome packets, and seasonal promos. If your system has pre-built templates, you can set these up in minutes and rest easy knowing your patients are still hearing from you and are motivated to schedule an appointment.  

Pre-vacation tip:
Send automated campaigns to patients based on their communication preferences (email, text, phone, or a combination of them) so they’re more likely to see and engage with them.  

2. Put an AI Assistant on Call 24/7

Your day can easily get derailed by rescheduling patients, chasing forms, or answering the same questions repeatedly. An AI-powered assistant can take over the busy work so your team can focus on patients, and you can truly unplug. With an AI assistant, your practice is “always open.” Patients can book, reschedule and cancel appointments with the AI Assistant guiding them through with human-like tone and quality, even answering their questions on the fly. Some practices save up to 3-4 workdays each month by adding an AI Assistant to their team.

Pre-vacation tip:
Keep a detailed FAQ document handy to train your AI Assistant on it. The more details she has, the more confidently she can answer, giving your patients a positive experience across your website, phone, and text while you’re gone.

3. Cut Insurance Verifications from Hours to Seconds

On average, it takes practice teams about 24-minutes per patient to verify insurance using manual processes. Multiply that across a busy week and it’s a huge time drain. With an automated insurance verification tool, the process runs in the background instantly verifying insurance in seconds, so you don’t have to waste time on the phone waiting and logging in and out of provider portals. We’re talking 80% of the time it takes to verify benefits, gone.

Pre-vacation tip:
If you offer online scheduling, add an insurance info section for patients to fill out when booking. Your verification tool can run it automatically, giving your team and patients clarity before the appointment on what’s covered, and leaving everyone impressed with how smooth things run.

4. Collect Patient Forms Before They Walk In

No one wants a bottleneck at check-in especially when you’re not there to help untangle it. With online forms, you can bundle and send intake packets ahead of appointments so patients can fill them out from anywhere, at their own pace. Pre-built templates make it easy, or you can upload your own. When patients arrive, everything’s already in place.

Pre-vacation tip:
Before you send your intake forms to returning patients, pre-fill information that’s available so patients have less details to complete and you’re more likely to get completed forms back.  

5. Automated Collections: Keep Cash Flowing Smoothly

Sending collection reminders is one of the easiest things to automate and improves your chances of getting paid on time. The key to automating your collection reminders is that you have to send multiple ones, so patients see them. 74% of providers say it takes more than one statement to collect outstanding balances. You can set up automated payment reminders at 30, 60, and 90 days so you’re worrying about overdue balances when you’re on vacation.  

Pre-vacation tip:
Always include a direct payment link in your automated reminders so patients can pay on the spot from their phone. It’s a modern experience that many of your patients are used to and much simpler for you.  

Your team deserves true time off, and so do you. With these automations in place, you can feel confident your practice is running smoothly while you’re away. So go ahead! Book the trip, pack that suitcase, set your OOO message and silence those notifications. Your front office team and tools have got this. After all, you’re not really on vacation if you’re still thinking about work.