This team member is responsible for helping our providers keep the schedules full! They mostly make phone calls in attempts to follow up with patients that either left the office unscheduled or canceled their appointment later on.
One way they help fill the schedule is by making follow up calls on unscheduled treatment. You will see in the next section how and why we do follow up calls, but this is important so that patients know that their care is most important.
Since this team member’s primary role is to make calls to patients, they are also responsible for contacting patients in regards to gathering more dental insurance information. Sometimes a patient will accidentally give us wrong information for their insurance. An outgoing team member will check an insurance verification list daily to see if they need to contact a patient to gather different types of information. We have an insurance team that is remote, one of their responsibilities is to verify insurances prior to all appointments. When they come back from a verification call and the representative of that insurance says they are not able to find that specific patient, they will change the status of the insurance verification.
Above you can see the first 4 patients on the list did not need a verification (they were seen in the last month and they had a verification then). And then you can see that they completed one verification so all the information the Business Team gathered during our first phone call was accurate. Then you see a patient that still needs a verification and you can see the associated remote team member that is assigned to do that, Mark. Lastly, you can see that we need more details for a patient. The remote team is requesting that our team, specifically the patient care center, call or text the patient requesting more information from the patient.
Traditionally, our first step is to initiate a text. We have a few text scripts that you can choose from. You can find a list of our text scripts on the Info@minthillsmiles.dentist google drive, it is labled, ‘Text Scripts New’. As an example, we would send the patient listed above,
“Good afternoon! This is Abagail with Mint Hill Smiles. We need more detailed insurance information to be able to locate your policy and retrieve the benefits. Please respond to this text with an image of the front and back of your card or email the images to: info@minthillsmiles.dentist”
This initiates a phone call with more questions from the patient or they will send the information we requested. We will text/ call these patients three times until they get notified that their appointment is canceled. That text is:
‘Good afternoon! Our office attempted to contact you in regards to your upcoming appointment. We need more detailed information in order to locate your insurance policy. We have canceled your appointment. Please reach out to provide us with active insurance information or place a credit card on file to reschedule your appointment. Thank you!’
And then the patient will probably call to ask why they can not come in. We would only need their accurate information and then you can see if that appointment time and date is still open.
Another type of call we make is follow up calls after treatment. A lot of the team does these calls, they are typically done 1 week after said procedure. For example, our Hygienists call after gum treatment to see how they are feeling after that treatment and maybe suggest some ways to help with gum irritation or pain. We make follow up calls for after a crown is delivered. Since we mill most crowns the same day as the prep and it is in the office, we call to make sure that the patient is happy and not experiencing any pain. Typically, if a patient is still experiencing pain, we would get them in with the same Doctor that did the procedure and schedule them for a complimentary bite adjustment. Usually, that is what is needed. If the crown is a little taller or off from the original bite, it can cause some chewing pain. That is an easy fix and only takes 30 minutes of the patient’s and Doctor’s time.
