Online Dental Scheduling: How To Increase Appointment Volume At Your Practice

Can your patients go directly to your website and book an appointment without shuffling back and forth to the dental office or making multiple calls to the front desk?

Many dental practices still use legacy systems that require patients to make a phone call or visit the office in person to schedule their appointments. This raises inconvenience on the patients’ side and may make them hesitant to schedule their next appointment with your practice. If you are not going online with dental scheduling, you miss many opportunities to acquire and retain patients in your dental practice.

In today’s digital era, patients expect to make fast online decisions to save time and book dental appointments online. As an aspiring dentist or dental practice, you need to be responding to this transition in patient behavior, enabling new and existing patients to book appointments with your practice anytime, anywhere.

In this article, you’ll learn about the importance and benefits of online appointment scheduling systems for dentists, their workflows, and the best options for dental practices to consider.

What is online appointment scheduling?

Dental appointment scheduling software is a digital business tool that allows your patients to schedule, extend, reschedule, and cancel appointments easily through an online application. Whenever your patients need to make an appointment, they can visit your practice’s website, social media pages, or other places the software is supported, and schedule an appointment for the available date and time.

You can set your office hours and enter dates and time slots when your staff are available in the software. The online scheduling software also prevents double booking and over-booking and provides you the flexibility to block up time slots when certain services may be unavailable.

Other perks of online appointment scheduling software:

• Keeps your practice’s calendar up to date

• Accommodates emergency bookings

• Reschedule patients on short notice

• Rearrange calendars to manage no-shows

• Reduce no-shows and cancellations

• Workstations can be accessed anytime, anywhere

• Customization for unique practice needs

• 24/7 Customer Support

Importance of online appointment scheduling

According to a recent study, 44% of patients prefer online scheduling and paperless onboarding to the unwanted hassles associated with scheduling via telephone or in-person visits. Smart online appointment scheduling software allows your patients to connect with your practice wherever they are – online, on their mobile devices.

Combining AI planning expertise, appointment scheduling software eliminates the repetitive and monotonous work associated with managing appointments and gives you more time to focus on growing your dental practice. Switching to dental scheduling software, you can bring in various features that redefine how your practice dealt with appointments in the past.

1. Schedule staff responsibilities

Besides scheduling patient appointments, online scheduling software can also manage your staff schedules, flexibly planning your staff timings to keep them satisfied and managed efficiently.

2. Schedule exceptions in time

You might always have exceptions to your fixed schedule and want to adjust a specific date. That’s where the scheduling exceptions feature becomes an essential factor. It allows you to override your schedule for a short term, whenever necessary.

3. Customize registration forms

With online scheduling software, you can control the information your customers enter on the registration form to make appointments, including the fields that are required and optional.

4. Disallow cancellations within a time frame

Online schedulers allow you to set a time frame for patients to self-cancel. For that matter, you can disallow same-day or last-minute cancellations to maintain the optimal utilization of your resources.

Workflows to automate appointment scheduling software

According to a recent study, 50% of practices reported having a tough time scheduling appointments with practices, and 75% found it annoying to get voicemail at the time of scheduling. Online appointment scheduling tools allow your patients to connect with your dental practice 24/7 and make appointments from the channels they’re already on – mobile, web, social, or even from a Google search.

1. Integrating the online scheduling software to your existing practice website for your website visitors to come and place an appointment at their convenience.

2. From the multiple locations available for your dental practice, your patients can select a location that is closer and more convenient for them.

3. From the menu shown, your patients can select the time for their appointment from the fixed schedule you have updated in the software. They can also select the reason for booking an appointment, available specialties within your dental practice, and the dental providers that they would like to consult with.

4. Selecting the above details, your patient will be directed to another page where they can cross-check the details they have chosen, along with a digital form to enter their personal information. Your patients can fill in the required fields set by your dental practice and schedule an appointment.

5. After scheduling an appointment, your patients will receive a confirmation email with their reason for visit, location, time slot booked, and the provider whom they want to consult with. Once they double-check the appointment details, patients can confirm their appointment with your dental practice.

6. Once a patient books their appointment online, you will get their details updated on your scheduler dashboard.

How to choose the right dental scheduling software?

Now that you have understood how online appointment scheduling works let’s walk through some of the benefits and features to look for while selecting dental scheduling software for dental practices.

HIPAA Compliance

• Patient data is kept safe, on and off transmission, abiding by HIPAA regulations.

Convenience

• Patients can schedule an appointment anytime, anywhere.

• Your team can spend less time scheduling appointments, making them more productive.

Flexibility

• Patients can choose their appointment time that fits their schedule without back-and-forth communication.

• You can specify when your providers are available to maintain a downtime schedule.

Ease of use

• Schedule an appointment with just a few clicks, no phone call is needed.

• Online scheduling software saves time and eliminates accidental double booking.

Appointment Reminders

• Patients can get reminded about their appointments via text, email, or phone call.

• Your staff will spend less time sending and following up on appointment reminders.

PMS Integration

• Future-proof dental scheduling software is integrated seamlessly into your practice management software.

Cost efficiency

• The price of using traditional scheduling is very high compared to online dental scheduling.

The best dental scheduling software for your practice

CareStack is an all-in-one cloud-based dental practice management software for growing multi-location practices, DSOs, and solo practices to manage your clinical and administrative needs. At CareStack, we work with dentists around the country to help them increase their new patient appointments and overall patient satisfaction as they invest in dental scheduling software for their practices. With numerous features, CareStack helps dentists to manage their daily appointments, anytime, anywhere.

Key Features: CareStack’s Dental Scheduling Software

• Built for multi-location and solo practices

• Patient records are stored in a centralized database

• Automated appointment reminders

• 24/7 world-class support

• Sync with your practice calendar

• Integration with your practice website

Book a demo with CareStack to integrate the amazing features within your practice website and experience for yourself the rapid increase in your appointment volume and practice profitability.