Being an Office Manager in a Dental Office When you are hired as an office manager in a dental office, you will have to be prepared to wear many hats throughout your days in the office. Being aware of the responsibilities that are going to be a part of your job description is an important part of your success.
Managing a Schedule Throughout a typical day, you will find that you are in charge of booking and maintaining a schedule, handling any issues with the employees in the office and working directly with patients. This combination of interactions can be stressful and time consuming. More than likely, your key responsibility is going to be to make sure that your dentist’s schedule is productive. If you are not managing the schedule properly, your dentist will either be overbooked or under booked and both problems can have serious repercussions. The dentist will lose money if he or she does not get to see a certain amount of people throughout the day. If the dentist is consistently overbooked you may find that the dentist starts to loose clients because they are frustrated with the wait time in the office. As people cancel or re-schedule, it will be your responsibility to fill the schedule and ensure that the dentist is able to see patients throughout his or her entire work day. Many office managers have to learn that the current clients are going to be a large source of revenue for the office. When someone comes into the office to make an appointment, it may be beneficial to schedule them for their next appointment before they leave. Getting an appointment on the books is a great way to ensure that people will not forget about making their next appointment.
Online Scheduling tools In recent years, there are a lot of dental offices that have started using online scheduling rather than scheduling on paper in the office. When using online scheduling software, you may be able to make the schedule more accessible to those that are competent on the internet. Some patients may have a harder time working with online scheduling software. If you are transitioning your office to an online schedule, it is important that you are willing to work with patients that are not comfortable with this kind of tool. Confirming appointments can be time consuming and difficult if you are not prepared with the right tools. If you
are using an online scheduling program, you may be able to send out reminders via e-mail, to minimize the time that you spend confirming appointments. Some offices prefer talking with each of their patients while they are confirming appointments. Regardless of how you do it, you should make sure that you are confirming appointments and reminding your patients of the appointment that they have made. Keeping a cancellation list can be extremely beneficial when you are trying to get a certain number of people in throughout the day. Your cancellation list should be kept current, this way if someone cancels you will have patients that you can call to fill the spot.