It should come at no shock that the way we have been practicing dentistry and treating patients is adapting to new changes. With the advisory and regulations set in place by the ADA, CDC, OSHA, and our federal and local governments, change is imminent, and we must be willing to adapt to new protocols and workflows for the way we see and treat our patients. In times like these, it’s important to not only restructure the way we run our practices but the way we work and use our systems to aid and guide our teams and our patients,
If you use YAPI or are considering our services for use in the near future, this article will give you insights on how our software can guide and assist with aiding in new workflows all while helping you to primarily focus on your patients.
Use YAPI in Your Relaunch Plan
Whether you have reopened your doors or are in the process of reopening, you need to start letting your patients of the practice know your progress and what they can expect within the next few weeks to months when it comes to their treatments. While we still do not have all the answers ourselves, here are some ideas and suggestions to help you get started with the process and to help bridge current gaps you may be having with patient communication.
Send Quick eBlasts with YAPI
An eBlast is an effective tool for keeping all your patients in the loop about the status of your practice. YAPI offers a quick and easy eBlast feature that allows your team to import and send premade templates to your patients. You also have the ability to create and send your own emails. Our customer HelpCenter is preloaded with ready-to-send templates with an addition of new COVID-19 templates. Any user of YAPI can download a premade template, import the template into their YAPI Dashboard, customize small details, and then send it to their patients.
Any eBlast can be sent to all patients of the practice or filtered by patient status, gender, last visit, and more. You can even create and import an interest list from your PMS for more filterable options.
Mass Text Your Patients on The Schedule
Speaking of contacting patients, our online portal can help a great deal with the current headaches of getting patients rescheduled. As some states still have no reopen date, patients on upcoming schedules may need to be contacted. With YAPI POP, your practice online portal, you can mass text all patients on the schedule by appointment date. This is a lifesaver for any practice and can help your team take control over the schedules as you figure out your next steps.
Keep Using Your Digital Forms!
As you prepare to see your patients again, you will need to find subtle and kind ways to show them that you are taking all precautions to ensure that their health and safety are important to you.
During this time, you should still be using your digital and online forms. Patients who need to update medical histories or sign documents can and should still use your electronic forms in the office. Subtly show and let your patients know that you are cleaning the devices that everyone touches. Paperless forms are still far more hygienic and spread less germs than pen and paper. To read more about properly disinfecting paperless forms, you can read our previous article.
Send out a COVID-19 Screening Online Questionnaire
Both the ADA and CDC recommend that we prescreen each patient for COVID-19 before their appointment. With the aid of a new online questionnaire from YAPI, you can easily prescreen each patient and they can complete the questionnaire from their own computer or mobile device. This is the fastest and safest way to prescreen your patients. Our YAPI users can download our COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire from our customer HelpCenter. New practices looking to implement YAPI can get started with this new form right away.
Restructure Your Reminders with YAPI
With a convenient way for prescreening patients for COVID-19, you can go a step further by adjusting your automated appointment reminders with YAPI to aid further in your new workflow. You can also add directions to each reminder and provide additional instructions for patient arrival and check-in.
Attach Your COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire in Your Appointment Reminder Templates
The first step you should take in adjusting your reminders and recall is to attach a link to your text and email reminders for your patients to complete their COVID-19 Prescreeing Questionnaire. We suggest adding this to the initial reply-to message after the patient confirms the appointment.
[[FIRST]], your dental appointment is [[APPOINTMENTDATE]] at [[APPOINTMENTTIME]]. Text C to confirm and you will receive a screening questionnaire and additional instructions prior to your appointment. Call [[PHONE]] if conflict. Tap for more [[LINK]].
(Patient texts “C” to confirm their appointment.)
Thank you, please complete this COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire before you arrive for your visit: link goes here
Change Your Same-day Appointment Reminders to Include Instructions for Check-in
With a same-day reminder text, you can let your patients know about your changes and the new process for checking in. Here is just one example of how the wording on this reminder could be changed.
[[FIRST]], your dental appointment is at [[APPOINTMENTTIME]]. Please complete the COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire if you have not already by clicking this link: link goes here Please text us from your parked vehicle once you have arrived safely for further instructions, thank you. [[PRACTICE]]
Once the patient texts you that they have arrived, a notification will appear on your YAPI dashboard, notifying your team.
With just a few adjustments to your appointment reminders, YAPI can aid you along the way in creating better workflows while sending your patients clear instructions.
Continually Nurture Your Patients and Take Advantage of Our Dental Technology
Taking advantage of eBlasts, using the online portal, and adjusting your appointment reminders and reply-to messages will help your practice significantly as you begin to acclimate to a new workflow, create new systems for your practice, and adjust your patient flow management.
YAPI will continue to provide you with the tools you’ll need not only for everyday practice needs but for continually navigating through nuances and bottlenecks you may face in your practice. Here are just a few other suggestions of features that you should be taking full advantage of, especially during these times.
- Intra-office Messaging: Quickly communicate with your team with our built-in office messaging system. Not only does this help to prevent interruptions during patient care, but this is also the time to be communicating with your teammates at a safe distance and will help your team with conducting less up close face to face conversations. Take advantage of using quick messages for fast and convenient communication with your teammates.
- The Practice Dashboard: The YAPI Practice Dashboard is a bird’s eye view of your dental practice, showing you important actionable patient data. Not only does your dashboard provide you visual alerts about your patients, you can also create and customize alerts. Your practice has many options when it comes to creating COVID-19 related alerts. For example: For patients who have completed their COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire, you could create a custom visual alert that is applied on the dashboard.
- InstaReview: Give your happy patients the ability to review you online. You should still be taking the time to ask for online reviews. Don’t snooze on the reviews because the longer your practice goes without collecting reviews, the less searchable and marketable your practice will be online. Now is the time to encourage your patients to share their experiences on your office’s safety and cleanliness. This will help to ease the minds of overly concerned patients that are searching online for dental care but still hesitant about coming in.
We hope that you can see the great advantages that can come with using YAPI, especially during these times. If you are currently looking to implement YAPI in your practice, we invite you to schedule a demo so you can get a quick overview of all the products and features we have to offer you.
If you are a current customer and would like to implement the ideas and suggestions we gave throughout the article, please visit our customer HelpCenter for these new materials and please click on the hyperlinks throughout this article for the resources mentioned.
Warm Regards,
The YAPI Marketing Team
