The phones start ringing before the doors even open. It’s 9 am and someone already called in sick, there’s a request for a double-book appointment switch and three patients are waiting on line. The front desk staff who made it into the office is busy checking in patients, collecting copays and answering questions about whether an insurance plan covers the treatment being received today.
This isn’t a negative day in the life of a dental office. This is Tuesday, for most practices.
The burden of dental office scheduling has reached a tipping point. What once was manageable with one or two front desk staff members now operates on a constant struggle to keep up with phone inquiries, paperwork and patient needs. Everyone is either overworked to the point of barely keeping their heads above water or staffing is so low that patients are frustrated at the attention (or lack thereof) they receive.
Yet, some dental offices are operating on the same number of patients but none of their staff experience the weekly burnout crisis that so many others do.
What’s The Problem With Patient Scheduling?
On paper, patient scheduling seems like a great task to assign. Penciling in names on a daily planner and checking them off as they come in should be easily done.
Yet in reality, every appointment requires someone to verify insurance coverage prior to arrival. Someone needs to text out confirmations or call those who are due for appointments as reminders. Then needs to take their call in the middle of the day when they request to reschedule because they’re feeling sick. And then again after they’ve been held over at work and need to change their 2pm appointment to a later time.
For dental offices, rescheduling happens all the time. A person has a cavity filled but needs another appointment (and reschedules that one too). A patient calls at 3:30 because they’re scheduled for a cleaning but now have a dental emergency that needs treatment sooner.
The person fielding these calls not only needs to understand how much time each procedure will take (30 minute vs 90 minute), who has a balance that needs addressing before more treatment, and if the hygienist wants back-to-back cleanings or a break in-between.
Yet many practices think the answer is staffing. Hire more front desk team members to handle the call volume and scheduling. Yet adding more bodies doesn’t automatically make the situation better, it makes it worse. It exacerbates the problem by spreading the craziness amongst more people. Not to mention that every year it’s becoming harder and harder for practices to find qualified candidates who can manage this rate of burnout.
Where Staff Burnout Is Actually Coming From
Staff aren’t burned out because they’re overworked. They’re burned out because they’re interrupted constantly.
Front desk staff can’t stay on task long enough to get something done. They check in a patient only to have someone walk up at the same time asking for billing clarification. They ask if they can put them on hold but before they can collect payment, someone rings in asking if they take their insurance.
They bounce from checking in a patient, to providing billing clarification, over to line two to tell someone they’re not in the office right now.
The only way this compounded re-tasking makes sense is if there are extra hands on deck – but there aren’t. The lunch hour makes it worse when everyone wants to call during their lunch breaks but every practice tries to give its employees some sort of relief by not staffing during this hour unless it’s too expensive.
There’s frustration amongst office staff because they’re missing opportunities to provide adequate customer service; all while by 3:00, they don’t recognize anyone anymore because they’ve been up and down and all around without time to even pay attention.
When two o’clock hits, they’re making mistakes they never would have made previously – forgetting no (or yes) copays were collected, double booking slots, forgetting notes about how a particular patient prefers not to speak while getting worked on.
Where Staffing Needs Are Changing
Dental offices are changing who needs to be present in their offices.
The current model places everyone at desks within the same room so that there’s some semblance of communication and responsiveness, except for when it’s shattered every five minutes when phones ring with patients looking for attention. But when it comes to the necessity of greeting patients, providing forms, offering walks through different procedures – surely there’s someone who doesn’t also need to be there on hold taking care of confirmation calls for next week who needs to be present at that moment too.
Thus, some dental practices are turning to virtual front desk support for dentists so that phone lines and scheduling software can be procured with remote workers while in-office staff can maintain those who are physically there.
It creates clear delineation, remote staff answer constant phone calls and manage the computer-related work while staff present can actually focus on the patients present.
The stress level difference is immediate. Those who are in-office aren’t getting pulled in five million directions at once, they’re tasked with tending to what’s in front of them. They recognize faces, start asking why someone is looking concerned or worried, and start up conversations rather than quick acknowledgments when they’re hurried off to manage phones ringing and slides not working.
How Remote Scheduling Works
It’s actually easier than it sounds. Remote schedulers sign into the same software for practice management as those in-house do. They can access schedules, see what’s going on for patients (with HIPAA compliance) and make adjustments right there and then.
When patients call, remote staff answers just as an in-house receptionist would do. They verify what’s available, book their appointments, access their information through software, as if they’re talking directly without any delay.
From the patient’s perspective, and those practices that are handling remote systems – the difference lies primarily when you hang up the phone: instead of having an answer by waiting 3 minutes for attention from an overwhelmed front desk staff – all operators are essentially on deck all at once.
For instance, outbound confirmation calls are more likely handled by remote staff. Insurance verification requests prior to appointments are often fielded by remote schedulers as well as most incoming scheduling calls – with incoming staff handling those appointments already there – payment transactions and anything that’s face-to-face specific.
Remote schedulers can also serve during lunch hour without any person inside needing their break, and if someone calls at 12:15 because they’re looking to schedule, they get a person ready who can do it right away instead of leaving a message or waiting until someone’s finished eating.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
This is where the math gets interesting.
The majority of markets currently project that hiring a full-time front desk employee ranges between $35,000-$45,000 when you account for base salary, benefits, payroll taxes and PTO, and this is assuming standard business hours working all five weekdays – they get no time extra.
Remote solutions charge significantly less with reduced costs per hour – including eliminating benefits from the equation altogether, as well as scalable positions based on need.
The pain is strong when practices realize they wouldn’t need someone’s help on Tuesdays but desperately would by Wednesdays. If Mondays are super busy but Thursdays tend to be less so – coverage can match those patterns instead of paying for full-time coverage for all shifts even if care is low volume.
Furthermore, what doesn’t happen makes a larger financial impact, fewer errors compiling a schedule means fewer gaps within one’s day; better phone coverage means fewer unanswered calls from new patients; reduced turnover means fewer hiring costs and training expenses.
One mid-size practice found that they were losing $4,000/month just from turning off new patient inquiries during busy times – they would call once but couldn’t get through so they’d go elsewhere. That alone covered their remote solution.
What This Means For Staff
Transitioning takes time – but it eventually balances out among expectations.
Those who need control over every part of scheduling sometimes don’t want to give up that power, but in reality, it’s less about visibility and more about streamlined coverage – and once everyone realizes how it works within a few weeks, this concern fades into satisfaction.
Team mentality is necessary here – remote schedulers need access to training documents that those in-house have access to; both need relationship strategies so that those who’ve never met remote schedulers don’t dismiss them as outsiders at any point in time.
Practices that support such intentional change rarely have issues where remote and in-house team members work but don’t communicate well together.
But what absolutely changes, for the better, is the atmosphere of the office.
When overwhelmed people aren’t constantly pulled into five different directions, everything about courtesy goes up, they’re more patient with those who are nervous; they’re more thorough with intake paperwork; they’re less likely to rush through check-ins because they have time instead of stacked appointments every other minute because phones don’t give anyone else a second break either.
What Patients Notice
Patients notice when things go more smoothly, even if they don’t know what works better behind the curtain.
They prefer getting through on one call instead of third; they enjoy getting an appointment reminder instead of five minutes before it begins; they value speaking with someone who’s not rolling their eyes as they juggle three other things at once.
The practices who’ve made this switch have had better results regarding any complaints associated with phone service while online reviews concern easy scheduling, which suggest stronger appointment acceptance rates since patients can get on the phone with someone when they’re prepared instead of contending with voicemail hell.
It’s easier to schedule people when there’s someone readily available to help them through since no one else is being helped out, in an emergency situation where they need immediate assistance, everything becomes realigned where someone who’s waiting for an answer is satisfied because another patient doesn’t require immediate attention anymore anyway.
How To Keep It Going
The practices that get the most value from remote scheduling implement it as a permanent structural change – not as a temporary fix.
They integrate it into operating procedures from the start, from documenting scheduling policies clearly so remote communication differs from on-site policies mandated by people not doing onsite hearings compared to those off-screen/taking notes every day, and implementing necessary practice management software and electronic communication systems effectively allowed through documentation means success weekly review of call volume/scheduling helps assess patterns that would otherwise get staffed overtime for no reason (never mind all shifts) if manual staffing didn’t work out.
The result is front desk operations that can deal with changes without stressors or staffing costs proportionally increasing. When patient volume increases, practices can adjust their virtual support hours without going through another painful hiring process/devastating interviews/crazy questions about numbers needed based on increased work required.
Retention supports these changes since staff aren’t burning out every six months, and practice owners can see improvement in quality-of-worklife since all team members experience success and satisfaction from shifting toward accommodating those with realistic expectations – all creating better experiences not just within practices but also within practical attentions given daily hours Owners learn their life needn’t be overburdened.
Thanks for stopping by!
Magda
xoxo