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How Marketing Reminders Can Help Build and Solidify Patient Relationships

Nowadays there is a plethora of ways to drum up new patients for your dental clinic. Advertising through traditional media, as well as social media, is definitely a tried and true avenue to promote your services and attract new customers, but did you know that you have several tools right there within your ADSTRA Dental Software that can be utilized to generate new patients, as well as solidify relationships with current ones?

By keeping a constant line of communication open between your dental clinic and your patients – you are able to retain your patients trust and loyalty, thus creating an opportunity for them to refer your dental clinic to others. There are tools within ADSTRA Dental Software that not only offer you ways to communicate and build the relationships you have with your existing patients, but also offer the capabilities to perform administrative tasks.

How ADSTRA Dental Software Marketing Reminders Can Help Build and Solidify Patient Relationships

Communication is key to building relationships with prospects and customers, and one of the most effective ways to do this is through email marketing.

Through the Marketing Reminders within ADSTRA Dental Software, there are many different ways to communicate with both prospects and current patients.

Referrals are one of the best ways to generate new patients, so you should never overlook the power of a thank you email. By reaching out and thanking your current patients for referring your dental clinic to their friends and family – this builds their trust in your dental practice and shows your appreciation for their loyalty.

Welcome packages are a great way to establish the relationship with your new patient and give them a breakdown of your expectations. With your ADSTRA Dental Software, you can send a personalized note, tell them about any current promotions the dental clinic may have running, explain your cancellation policy, or even just take that opportunity to introduce them to the team working at your dental clinic.

In this day and age, many people will have their cell phones within arms reach at all times. The days of having to pick up a phone to call and confirm appointments are long gone. Now your dental clinics appointment confirmations and recalls can be set up to be sent automatically through email, or even SMS, with your ADSTRA Dental Software. With the click of a button, you’ll free up hours of time for your front desk staff, that can be spent growing your dental clinic and bringing in new patients.

This day only comes around once a year, so sending out birthday wishes is another way to communicate and engage with your patients. These friendly emails are appreciated by patients and may even serve as a gentle reminder that it’s time for them to book another cleaning!

Often, you’ll create a dental treatment plan with your patients while they are in the room with you. You can then utilize your ADSTRA Dental Software to send out a follow-up email highlighting this treatment plan and reminding the patient when their appointment is, or that they need to schedule an appointment. Within your ADSTRA Dental Software you can run a report and generate a list of all the patients in need of a follow-up, and send them all (a separate) email.

Keeping in contact with your patients is just one way to ensure they stay loyal to your dental clinic. Developing a long-lasting relationship with your patients will not only increase the level of trust they have with you and your dental clinic, but will also be a source of generating new patients (and thus generating more revenue) for your dental clinic.

Contact us at ADSTRA Dental Software to see how we can help you build and solidify your relationships with your patients.

How Using Microsoft Word Templates Can Allow You To See More Patients

Writing consultation reports can be a time consuming, daunting task. Most reports are done using Microsoft Word and when using Microsoft Word templates to write them the task becomes every so slightly less onerous. Going a step further, imaging software that has a user-centric design and deep level integration with Microsoft Word can make report writing a breeze. In the case of dentists, this allows them to save time in the writing of referrals or reports so that they may see and spend more time with their patients.

Microsoft Word templates are a great tool for any type of document that has a standard format and is needed often. Microsoft Word templates will have predefined page layouts, fonts, margins and styles. They can have recommended sections or required text as well as content controls such as a predefined drop-down list or a special logo. You can Google and find thousands of different types of templates already created for Microsoft Word.

But what most people don’t know is – how easy it is to create their own Microsoft Word templates.

Microsoft Word Templates

Getting Started with Microsoft Word Templates

The best way to start, is to analyse which documents are created most often, and if there are sections of the document that are always similar in content and/or format. They are good candidates for becoming a template for use in the future. Once you find one, open it in Microsoft Word, go to the File menu and choose the option Save As. Give it an appropriate name and change the Save As type to Document Template.

Congratulations! You have just created your first template if you have never done it before.

Well not exactly, what you’ll want to do next is get rid of all the parts of the document that aren’t always the same, leaving you spaces to fill in as you need for each unique case. You could have areas of empty space that you type into or drop-down boxes with fixed selections or even check boxes. Many great how-to articles can be found on the Internet, on Microsoft’s own Office site or videos on YouTube. Just remember to look for ones that are using the same version of Microsoft Word as the one that you are using, as features both old and new and ways of adding them to the template can change with each version of Microsoft Word.

Would it not be great if you could open a patient file in your dental imaging software, and quickly associate both the patient information and images needed for a particular report or referral in a ready to send document? ADSTRA Imaging does have this ability.

Microsoft Word Templates and ADSTRA Imaging

By directly interfacing with Microsoft Word templates, ADSTRA Imaging allows you to create or modify templates that will import all relevant information like patient name, date of birth, provider’s name, practice name, and practice address, and it will also import specified patient images from ADSTRA Imaging directly into the Microsoft Word templates eliminating even more typing and importing of images into reports or referrals.

This is easily done through ADSTRA Imaging, on the Menu under File there is the Word Template option. This then gives you the option to open a Predefined template, Create New template, or Edit an existing template. The first option is the simplest because all that needs to be done is have the patient for the report selected in ADSTRA Imaging, open and highlight the desired images used in the document, and select the correct template. The only thing left to do is to make any adjustments in the document that are unique to this patient. The second and third options are similar. One allows you to create a new Microsoft Word template from scratch or from an already existing template. The other allows you to edit or modify an already created Microsoft Word template.

The only difference when creating or editing Microsoft Word templates when opened through ADSTRA Imaging, is the availability of a container toolbar that allows you to place the predefined elements that will be received from ADSTRA Imaging into the Microsoft Word templates.

As an example, you have a document that normally requires two images that are coming from a patient file in ADSTRA Imaging. You create the remainder of the template as per normal but, to indicate where the first image will be placed on the document, you click on the Image Container button on the container toolbar. A little window will open indicating the image number one and will have options for you to select for orientation and what image properties you would like to include with the image. Once you click OK, a template with two boxes will appear. The top box is the area where the image will go and the bottom box will be the area that will display any image properties that you selected. Both boxes can be dragged and resized anywhere on your template. You then repeat the above process for the second image. Once completed, whenever you select two images in ADSTRA Imaging and open this template, your document will have the two selected images placed and sized exactly as you wanted when you created the template.

Using Microsoft Word templates through ADSTRA Imaging is extremely beneficial to busy clinicians as it significantly increases the efficiency of preparing consultation reports. A little time spent upfront in creating a template for a document needed often should pay dividends many times over, thus allowing dental providers to spend less time writing referral reports and more time to seeing their patients.