Filling Holes in Your Summer Schedule

Now that it’s summer, it can be a perfect time to take advantage of the fact that some of your patients, such as school-age children, college students, and teachers may have more free time to schedule dental appointments. You can use this as an opportunity to fill last-minute cancellations in your schedule and increase production by seeing those patients who may have outstanding treatment.

The best report to use to find patients who are school age is the Patient Report (by Filters) which can be found under Letters and Custom Lists in the Office Manager. This is a very useful report in Dentrix because you can customize the filters you set to find specific groups of patients.

For example, you could use the Birthday filter and enter a range of birthdates to find patients between the ages of five and eighteen. Then you could use the Continuing Care filter to find patients who are currently due and overdue for prophys.

By combining these two filters, you could find school-age children due for continuing care. Once generated, you can open the report in the List Manager and use it to contact those patients to schedule their continuing care appointments.

Next, you could clear the Continuing Care filter and use the Procedures filter. Include all procedure codes and be sure to check the box to search for Treatment Plan procedures. This will generate a list of school-age children with outstanding treatment plans.

You can then view this report in the List Manager and contact those patients (or their parents) to schedule appointments for those procedures or treatment plans.

Bonus Tip: When generating these lists of patients, include the patient’s next appointment in the data fields. That way you could easily see if the patient is already scheduled before you contact them.

To find teachers who may be due for continuing care or have outstanding treatment, you can use the same report, but instead of using the Birthday filter, use the Employer filter. If you’ve entered the school name or school district as their employer, you will be able to easily locate any teachers who may be due for an appointment for continuing care or outstanding procedures.

The summer months can be the opportune time to schedule some patients like school-age children and teachers for appointments. By scheduling their appointments now, they won’t have to miss school or work, which can be much more convenient for them. This can also be beneficial for your practice as it can help you fill last-minute cancellations and increase production.