This article, you will explore the common challenges dental practices encounter during the check-in process and provide practical solutions to streamline workflows, enhance patient experiences and practice efficiency.
The patient check-in process is a critical first touchpoint that shapes the entire dental visit experience. However, many practices still rely on outdated paper-based check-ins, leading to long wait times, cluttered paperwork, and inefficient workflows that create frustration for both patients and staff.
Recent surveys reveal that 83% of dental practices still rely on outdated manual check-ins, costing them time, money, and patient trust. Imagine how much your practice could grow if you eliminated long wait times, reduced no-shows, and improved patient satisfaction—all with one simple shift to digital check-ins. Is your current system helping you thrive, or holding you back?
Let us understand the 7 common challenges that your dental practices are suffering from and how digital check-ins address these issues.
Understanding Common Challenges in Patient Check-Ins
1. Long Wait Times: A Growing Challenge
Problem:
The manual check-in process often leaves patients waiting in long queues, and they get frustrated when they are asked to repeatedly fill out the same information. This manual outdated approach not only consumes valuable time but also extends their time in the waiting room, negatively impacting their experience.
Did you know?
A study conducted at the Public Hospital in Jimma Zone found that patients spent between 41 and 185 minutes simply waiting to receive care.
- Patients traveling from outside the hospital’s area are 1.93 times more likely to experience longer wait times compared to local patients.
- Visits on Mondays result in 2.64 times longer wait times than visits on Fridays.
- Patients arriving early in the morning face wait times that are 3.22 times longer than those arriving in the afternoon.
These statistics underscore the urgent need for efficient, digital check-in solutions to enhance patient flow and reduce wait times.
Solution:
Dental practices that use digital check-in allow patients to complete check-in from anywhere at their own convenience. Whether at home on their mobile phones or at the hospital’s kiosk/tablet, patients can check-in seamlessly. This approach eliminates the need for repetitive data entry, as patients can quickly fill out personal details via digital forms, while practices ensure data accuracy through streamlined verification.
As you have seen how long waits can challenge your practice along with its solution, let’s dive into the next hurdle: Repeating Details on Paper Forms.
2. Repeating Details on Paper Forms
Problem:
Patients dislike repeatedly providing the same details— such as name, date-of-birth, insurance information, medical history, and other details on multiple paper intake forms. This repetitive process not only frustrates patients but also increases the chances of errors in manual data entry, slowing down the overall check-in process.
Did you know?
J.P. Morgan Healthcare Payment trends reveal that 71% of healthcare providers still rely on paper forms and manual processes to collect patient payments. But 75% of consumers want to settle their medical bills online, as paper-based payments consume a lot of time for them.
The Solution:
Digital check-in eliminates the repetitive nature of manual processes at your dental practice. Patients can update their information once, either from the comfort of their home or at an in-office kiosk or tablet. This ensures data accuracy, reduces waiting times, and creates a seamless, frustration-free experience—benefiting both patients and staff.
CERTIFY Health’s Digital Check-in eliminates the repetitive nature of manual processes at your dental practice. Patients update their details once—whether from home or at an in-office kiosk or tablet—with seamless syncing across EHRs.
As you’ve explored how repetitive paper forms impact your practice and discovered solutions to streamline this process, let’s move to the next challenge: Lack of Data Validation.
3. Lack of Data Validation
Problem:
Every staff member must manually check and verify the patient’s information from paper forms. If this isn’t done promptly, they often need to follow up later, adding to their workload. With a high volume of patients, the front desk may occasionally miss verifying crucial details, leading to errors that can affect the patients not getting the right care and treatment. These inefficiencies cause a lot of risks comprising your patient’s safety.
Did you know?
A report from the Ponemon Institute clearly reveals that 86% of surveyed nurses and physicians have witnessed medical errors emerging from patient misidentification and lack of data validation. These errors have a direct impact on both patient safety and the financial health of practices. These errors disrupt workflow efficiency and add to operational costs.
Solution:
Digital check-in solutions address these challenges by automating the verification of patient information. CERTIFY Health offers features like digital intake forms, FaceCheck, integrated data validation, and real-time updates, staff can focus on delivering care instead of chasing paperwork. These tools ensure that patient records are accurate and up-to-date, safeguarding patient safety and improving workflow efficiency.
As we’ve addressed the risks posed by poor data validation, it’s time to dive into another common issue: Difficulty Updating Details.
4. Difficulty Updating Details
Problem:
Soon after patients complete their check-in forms, staff must manually enter all those details into your dental practice management system after data validation. This monotonous process consumes a lot of administrative time to verify and update tasks. Due to this, staff couldn’t support patients to assist them in getting necessary care and treatment.
Did you know?
According to one study, verifying and updating insurance for one patient takes over 12 minutes. If you verify and update insurance for 20 patients per day, that’s four hours of cumulative time spent sitting on the phone. This single task could potentially lead to labor overages.
Solution:
Digital patient check-in solutions eliminate the need for manual data entry by directly integrating patient information into your dental practice management system. With EHR integration and seamless syncing, staff no longer need to spend hours on repetitive tasks like updating insurance details.
While streamlining data updates can improve workflows, another pressing concern is Limited Sharing of Information. Let’s explore how it impacts practices.
5. Limited Sharing of Information
Problem:
Once you store relevant forms in the file cabinets, they will have limited accessibility to other staff members in the same practice. Sometimes, forms buried in an unorganized way create confusion to extract the needed patient information, leading to missed documentation. This lack of accessibility and organization can disrupt workflows, delay care, and result in critical information being overlooked.
Did you know?
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates a global shortage of 10 million healthcare workers by 2030. In the US, nearly half of the physicians have experienced burnout in the past two years. Additionally, providers generate 137 terabytes of data every day, of which 80% are unstructured.
For most healthcare providers, patient records are scattered across physical and digital formats, making it difficult to get a comprehensive view of a patient’s medical history. These fragmented systems can lead to potential discrepancies between records, causing delays in diagnosis and treatment.
Solution:
Digitizing patient records with a platform like CERTIFY Health ensures secure, centralized access for all staff, eliminating the hassle of physical forms. Real-time updates and automation reduce errors, streamline workflows, and improve patient care. A unified system provides a comprehensive view of patient history, minimizing delays in diagnosis and treatment.
As we’ve seen how information accessibility can hinder efficiency, let’s shift our focus to the next challenge: No Customization in patient intake forms.
6. No Customization
Problem: Static paper forms allow fewer adjustments or customization to add some necessary fields relevant to patient care. This lack of personalization often results in incomplete or irrelevant information being collected from patients, leading to inefficiencies. Dental practices may struggle to create these forms to accommodate diverse patient treatment needs, further complicating workflowsDid you know?
According to a study by Accenture, 89% of patients expect healthcare providers to provide digital forms that are customizable enough to their needs. Additionally, practices using manual workflows spend an average of 40% more time collecting and validating patient information compared to those using customizable digital systems.
Solution:
Digital intake forms help dental practices to easily customize fields to capture all relevant patient information accurately. These forms can be customized to address specific treatment needs, ensuring that no crucial data is missed. By replacing static paper forms with dynamic, digital alternatives, practices can reduce inefficiencies, enhance data accuracy, and provide a patient-centric experience.
With the challenges of static forms addressed, let’s tackle one more issue facing dental practices: Added Hard Costs tied to traditional check-ins.
7. Added Hard Costs
Problem:
Dental practices following traditional check-ins need buying pre-printed forms, clipboards, pens, file folders, scanners, and additional storage space. These recurring expenses quickly add up, increasing operational costs and resource dependency.
Did you know?
Manual, paper-based processes across the healthcare industry contribute to an estimate of $18 billion to $22 billion in unnecessary annual expenses. Despite this, many health systems and providers groups continue to depend on these outdated methods.
Solution:
When your dental practice switches to a digital check-in system you can eliminate the need for costly pre-printed forms, clipboards, and storage space. With customizable digital forms, patient data is securely captured and stored electronically, reducing operational expenses. So, dental practices can easily minimize errors, improve efficiency, and reallocate funds to enhance patient care.
These are the challenges dental practices encounter with manual check-ins. Let’s explore the next section to see how transitioning to digital check-ins can offer significant advantages to your practices.
The Shift Towards Digital Patient Check-In
With hassles in manual patient check-in system, most dental practices are switching to digital check-in. This process not only eases the patient care journey but also facilitates patient-provider communication. With digital check-in, practices can utilize the features including:
- Appointment Reminders: Send patients reminders via text or email, reducing no-shows and ensuring timely appointments.
- Online Intake Forms: Enable patients to complete pre-registration forms before their visit, reducing wait times and improving accuracy.
- Mobile Check-in: Patients can complete check-in remotely via their mobile devices, providing convenience and reducing in-office wait times.
- Self-service Kiosks: Improve your patient self-check-in process with kiosk software, enabling patients to complete their check-in without the need for staff intervention.
- Real-time Updates: Provide patients with instant notifications about their appointment status and queue position, improving communication.
- Digital Consents: Enable patients to sign consent forms electronically, eliminating paperwork and speeding up the check-in process.
The shift to digital check-in brings significant benefits to dental practices, improving both operational efficiency and patient satisfaction.
Enhance Your Patient Check-In Experience with CERTIFY Health
CERTIFY Health is your patient intake platform that streamlines your dental practice operations through digital check-in. With various features such as digital forms, automated reminders, kiosk/tablet check-in, queue notifications, and real-time updates, your practices can improve patient experience and operational efficiency.
Dental practices using CERTIFY Health report remarkable results: a 30% reduction in wait times and a 40% improvement in data accuracy. These improvements not only streamline workflows but also lead to significantly higher patient satisfaction scores—ensuring happier patients and more efficient operations.
Are you ready to simplify your patient check-in process? Let’s connect to discuss how CERTIFY Health, a patient check-in software can transform your practice.
