Answer: “In a down economy, competition is at its highest peak. Investing all your efforts into practice marketing is where you need to spend your resources.”

Expenses and Fees — The Obvious:

1. The average cost of a Periodontist is $1000 per hour, give or take
2. The average cost of a transcriptionist is $300 to $600 a month depending on how much dictation there is
3. The average cost of practice management software per year is $1500 to $2500

Expenses and Fees — The Hidden:

1. The average cost of a Periodontist is $1000 per hour, give or take

• This fee doesn’t include how much time needed to proofread the letters at an average rate of $1000 per hour
• When you don’t get the letter back to the referring doctor in time, this can have a negative impact on your business and practice-to-practice relationships

2. The average cost of a transcriptionist is $300 to $800 a month depending on how much dictation there is to send

• This fee doesn’t include how much time you have spent proofing the letters at an average rate of $1000 per hour
• When you don’t get the letter back to the referring doctor in time, this can have a negative impact on your business and practice-to-practice relationships
• Transcriptionists type wordy paragraphs and it’s been proven that referring dentists don’t read long letters. However, they still need these fully detailed letters delivered on time. It’s expensive to upset dentists and loose referrals

3. The average cost of practice management software per year is $1500 to $2500

• This doesn’t include the amount of time it takes you to transcribe your clinical notes into new progress notes then convert or dictate them into letter format. This means that you the doctor have to be the key player in the creation of these materials at an average rate of $1000 per hour
• If the staff use standardized tick sheets to create letters, they can result in incomplete, boring, ‘form letters’, often with mistakes too
• Someone at your practice has to create these notes and letters. If you have a key player doing this, what happens if this person is gone for some reason? It’s expensive, time-consuming, and stressful finding new employees that are competent
• Practice management software was designed for billing and scheduling, often requiring you to add on modules in order to create clinical notes and reports. These are just glorified word processors that actually create more work since templates still have to be filled out manually then transcribed into reports
• Practice management software clinical charting was designed for dentists and leaves little to be desired for Periodontists. It is risky medically and legally to chart only a portion of what is needed, which can also be time-consuming and expensive

There are many other issues that come up regarding inefficiency and resources poorly spent, but PANDA addresses all of them so you can focus on saving your practice time and money in this down economy. For less than $290 a month!
That’s less than the price of a transcriptionist or even a part time employee.

It’s expensive to outfit an entire practice with a computer everywhere you look. The idea of furnishing the entire practice with new hardware is not only unrealistic for most practices financially, but it isn’t even a requirement if you want your practice to go digital. What would you want to achieve by turning “high-tech” anyway? Is it so you can go paperless as soon as the hardware arrives? If that’s your plan, it’s a glamorous fantasy! You simply don’t need to spend money setting up hardware that isn’t going to be used to its fullest potential.

Computer hardware and gadgetry is only as good as the task that it is used for. If you don’t have a logical and efficient process in place to begin with, you will still need to face the inevitable in the end: implementation. Many people think implementation means putting computers all over the office, and PANDA is here to tell you that this is not true. A slow and gradual implementation process with baby steps is not only more realistic, but it is an obtainable goal that meets your need to improve efficiency quickly, especially in the areas that really need it. For example, your office in particular may need a better workflow process in place for the way you record Progress Notes. Or perhaps the way you create letters and general correspondence is not structured enough to be considered an automatic, hassle-free process. Each office is different.

This approach – gradually tackling each area that needs improvement – is the real way to think about implementation. And it is what will truly save you time and money down the road, not to mention increase production. PANDA customers are astounded at how much smoother their office workflow has become even just weeks after they’ve implemented PANDA.

So save your money on getting those fancy computers, ditch the illusion that going high-tech will magically fix everything, and hop onboard now.

These concerns are valid, of course, but this is not the way to approach the whole thing. To prepare yourself, or at least to try and shift your way of thinking about all of it, you need to consider the things that are the most inefficient about your system as the top priority. Don’t even think about going paperless as if it’s this huge mountain of extra things to do under a strict timeline. For example, a common key factor of inefficiency in practices that are not paperless yet is the time wasted hunting for the paper chart or clinical note histories. By the time your staff is able to locate the missing documents to make new entries, the patient is long gone and the doctor is on to the next patient. When this key issue is addressed, it turns out to be the number one biggest time saver, making the entire system run so much smoother. So just start here! Please realize that you don’t need to scan and archive everything in your office in order to cut back on wasting time hunting for charts and records. As time goes on, the next thing to address, for example, might be digital progress notes. PANDA excels at this. Once you get into a routine of converting to paperless one priority at a time, the rest will come naturally. You’ll soon find that your team becomes more relaxed when they don’t have to scramble to find charts and records. Within weeks you will see a huge difference. When you go one step at a time, suddenly you’ll be at the top before you know it.

Imagine if you could fill in a structured yet flexible form or tick sheet while being detailed and efficient and never have to stop at the end of the appointment to duplicate your efforts. Now that’s effective productivity! There is no other system available today that will write your progress notes for you like PANDA Perio. It is extremely accurate yet so simple to use that everyone in the practice will be producing thorough and accurate progress notes because of PANDA’a unique convergence system.

Learn more by watching our walkthrough video or by emailing us for more info. Better yet, just call PANDA at 1-800-517-7716 and prepare to be amazed!