Your Dentrix clinical note not only is your legal documentation for patient visits, but it is also a great communication tool for the team. During my conversation with Claire a couple of weeks ago, we talked a lot about intraoffice communication and how to “close the loop” between the front and the back. In today’s article, I want to focus on the clinical notes and how your team can use this central spot for answering two very important questions.
- What happened today?
- What’s next?
These two questions are the most important pieces of information your admin team needs to check out the patient after today’s visit. Many offices use a paper Route Slip for the checkout and this can be a great communication tool. However, it will get shredded at the end of the day, so it is not a long-term solution. Also, you might have an instant messaging system (such as Yapi or Blue Note) to message your admin team with information. However, this is only good in the moment and not a long-term solution.
What I want you to think about is what happens after today. What happens if the patient walks out the door without scheduling or you need to lookup what the next visit is? The clinical note, in my opinion, is the best central place for the admin team to find this information.
Now, most admin team members are not comfortable with playing in the Dentrix Patient Chart sandbox … and that’s okay because I am going to make it really easy for you. In fact, I am going to make it easy for the clinical team and the admin team to enter information and find information.
First, build into your clinical note template two things:
- Completed today:
- NV HYG and NV DR: (these can be on separate lines)
These two lines of information answer the two questions your admin team need to balance and collect for today’s visit and what to schedule next. You can add these two lines of information at the top of your clinical note or put the completed today at the top and the NV at the bottom, whatever works best for you.
Next, the admin team just needs to create a habit of looking in the clinical note each time they are checking out a patient or scheduling to find the information they need and not guessing or assuming. When you are better prepared on the front end, there will be fewer mistakes and less time spent researching for information.
Please share this article with your colleagues, study clubs, friends and other dental industry experts. I appreciate your gift of sharing 🙂
