Scheduling: Dental assisting

Have you ever had an appointment with your health care provider and once you arrived, you just had to wait? You might feel like you're wasting your time or you may start to feel anxious or frustrated.

You might even lose confidence in the quality of care you'll receive. As a dental assistant, you know effective patient scheduling is essential to a successful dental practice.

You'll use principles of effective patient scheduling to reduce patient waiting times, improve patient satisfaction. And enhance the dental team's efficiency and productivity.

Now there are some general scheduling guidelines that help with scheduling and patient flow in your dental office. First, you'll ensure the types of patients seen each day are balanced throughout the work day.

This supports the dental team by helping them to complete the day's work with satisfaction and with undue hurry or stress.

It's also a good practice to avoid scheduling complex patient cases close together and to factor in time needed to clean and disinfect the treatment area between patients.

You'll also use your knowledge of how long a typical appointment takes so you can book the appropriate amount of time. Also remember to include efficient use of the dentist's downtime, which can happen while waiting for an anesthetic to take effect after injection.

Awareness of downtime provides the opportunity for the dental team to accomplish productive work like checking on another patient or returning phone calls while the dental assistant remains with the patient for safety.

Lastly, remember to let your patients know the average time their appointment will take. This will help manage the patient's expectations and increase satisfaction in the care they receive.

Finally, more information is better when it comes to patient scheduling, and this includes insurance information and patient information such as medical and dental history, current prescriptions, and treatment needs.

For new patients, your office may choose to send forms for the patient to fill out electronically before the visit or ask the patient to arrive 15 minutes early to complete the forms.

Now that we've talked about some general scheduling guidelines, let's review the different types of dental appointments you'll be scheduling.

Common types include appointments for recall patients, patients needing restorative treatments like fillings, crowns, and implants, new patients, emergency visits, and pediatric patients.

Recall appointments are for established patients who are scheduled for recurring oral health maintenance appointments. These appointments are focused on preventative care, including periodic X-rays, prophylactic treatment with a dental hygienist, periodontal assessment, examination by the dentist, review of oral hygiene principles, and an update of any changes in the patient's medical or dental health.

These appointments generally take 45 to 60 minutes, though more time is often needed for patients with more complex dental health needs.

The time you'll book for patients needing restorative treatments will depend on the type of work needed. For example, a single tooth filling can take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, while a patient needing a crown, which is a tooth-shaped cap that covers a damaged tooth, will need to be scheduled for a series of appointments of varying length.

It's best practice to schedule these recurring appointments on the same day and time each week to help the patient remember.

When it comes to new patients, more information is better for scheduling, and this includes insurance information and patient information such as medical and dental history, current prescriptions, and treatment needs.

Your office may choose to send forms for the patient to fill out electronically before the visit or ask the patient to arrive 15 minutes early to complete the forms in the dental office.

Appointments for new patients should be scheduled as soon as possible after they request an appointment. These appointments require additional time so the dentist and hygienist can review the new patient information and perform the initial exam.

Emergencies such as significant tooth pain are a priority to schedule. It's important to build some buffer time into the daily schedule for emergencies to allow these patients to be seen with minimal disruption to the rest of the daily schedule.

Finally, if your practice sees pediatric patients, keep in mind that these appointments are often impacted by the school day and academic calendar.

So having available times after school or during school breaks is ideal for school-age children. For younger children, scheduling appointments in the morning is best since they are typically well rested, more relaxed, and tend to be less anxious in a strange environment.

Now it's fair to say that life can get in the way of a perfect schedule. Your dental practice will likely deal with late arrivals, no shows, emergencies, and procedures that take longer than planned.

When a patient hasn't arrived within 10 minutes of their appointment, it's a good idea to contact them to see if they can still be seen in their remaining appointment time.

Late arrivals should be accommodated whenever possible. However, for patients with a pattern of late arrivals, it's appropriate to gently remind them that their behavior impacts not only their own appointment but other patients as well.

Sometimes unexpected things can cause a patient to miss an appointment with little notice. This is a no-show event that is documented in the dental record as a broken appointment.

In the event of a no show, you can try to fill these broken appointments by keeping a list of patients who can be called for an appointment with short notice.

This list should be kept up to date with name, contact details, and treatment needed to ensure you are offering the time available to an appropriate patient.

Now there are some communication methods you can use to help minimize the impact of scheduling issues on daily dental operations.

These include the use of reminder calls, cards, emails, or texts before a scheduled appointment, and then confirming the scheduled appointments 1 to 2 days prior to the appointment date.

This gives the patient the opportunity to reschedule if needed. Scheduling recall patients for their next appointment before they leave the office is an effective way to support patient follow-through.

Most patients are recalled every 6 months while others will be scheduled every 3 or 4 months depending on their treatment needs.

As a dental assistant, you can positively impact the workflow and productivity in your dental office by using efficient scheduling practices.

Regularly reviewing and identifying areas to improve your dental office's scheduling practices can also effectively manage your office's resources, support financial success, reduce wait times, and promote patient satisfaction with the care they receive.

All right, as a quick recap, as a dental assistant, your knowledge of effective patient scheduling is essential to a successful dental practice.

You'll use principles of effective patient scheduling to coordinate appointments for patients with a variety of dental health needs, manage schedule disruptions, and communicate with patients.

Your efforts to efficiently schedule patient appointments can positively impact your patient's experience and increase the dental team's efficiency and