More than three decades of working hands-on with orthodontic teams has shown me that Dolphin Management practices benefi t from the consulting process much more than their non-Dolphin counterparts. It might be helpful to explore why this is true. On a global level, Dolphin Management supports good decision making and tight managerial systems. However, it is the nitty-gritty of how data is stored and accessed that is the key.
APPOINTMENT TYPES AND SCHEDULING
I recently consulted on a non-Dolphin practice in the Pacifi c Northwest. We started by listing all their procedure codes (aka “Appointment Types” in Dolphin lingo). The list was an amalgamation of terms used by the previous orthodontist and edited by the current one. It wasn’t based on the schedule, nor was it numerical. It was a random list that I referred to as “alphabet soup.” When one of the codes was requested, the scheduling coordinators didn’t have anywhere to put the patient because the 15-minute schedule was fi lled with 15-minute appointments. To make an appointment to Remove Appliance & Bond Additional, they had to fi gure out how to string together three of the 15-minute appointments. Scheduling was a nightmare.
When we built a true Doctor Time schedule and wanted to implement it into their software, we had to print the patients who were scheduled for the next 6 months (reams of paper), then cancel the templates from the days and lay in the new templates. Using the printouts for reference, all the patients had to have their appointment cancelled and rescheduled with the new three-digit type code. No drag and drop here!
PATIENT STATUSES AND TRACKING
Tracking patients was also a challenge. The status list had maybe 30 statuses, many of which seemed to be duplicates. No one knew in which status to place a patient, rendering the reports meaningless. Eventually, we did a cleanup and realized they had more than 700 patients in Start Needed, many of whom had not been followed up on after the Initial Exam. In addition, they had almost 1,000 children in Growth Guidance or Phase II Pending that were not followed up on because either they didn’t have a Recall − or the recall month and year had passed, so there was no way to easily bring these people up and contact them.
Dolphin Sample – Hummingbird Report – Growth Guidance – Obs Recall Due or Past Due for Recall
When we discussed treatment plans, they explained that they hadn’t made them because you could only reference the visits, not actually use the information to populate the treatment card during each visit. They said someone in support had suggested to them that maybe they could integrate the treatment plans with the treatment card, but because the support people keep changing, there was no one knowledgeable enough to actually help them.
4 theWAVE
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