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The office gets paper from insurance companies, from specialists, from dental labs, from finance companies and from other dentists. How the heck can you have a paperless office if the world keeps sending you paper?

Here is how you do it. When some paper arrives that should be kept in the patient record such as a follow up letter from a specialist, open the letter, put it on the scanner and within seconds the letter is copied into the patient record. For Dentrix users it goes into the document center. The original paper is then shredded.  You can use this method to scan and capture x-rays and photos as well as forms and letters.

ATTENTION: Based on my experience I know right now some of the practice administrators reading this are saying to themselves, “Oh great another thing for me to do. Scan all the letters. I don’t have time for all this!” Calm down, think it through. What are you doing now with all the letters and EOBs? You open the envelope, glance through  the letter, go to the file room, find the proper chart and insert the letter. That will actually take more time than scanning into the patient record. But there is more. When the doctor needs to read the letter he or she asks for the chart and again you need to get up and search it out then take it where it is needed. The fact is using scanning the letters will not take more time it will save time, lots of time.