I just want a practice management software program that helps me do my job efficiently.
Shaking my head at the multitude of PMS’ing PMS I’ve used. Some throw hissy fits if my hygienist is in the chart. Some don’t play well with other softwares and share info. And others hide a patient’s name behind 50 clicks that you’d think you just hacked the security system for Fort Knox.
Thank god newer software allows more than one user to enter a chart. Legacy PMS would treat a digital chart as if it were a physical chart. Defeating the whole freakin advantage the digital age gives us. Multiple parties can work on the same chart at the same time and access the information at any given moment. The internet age has made information readily available. If your legacy PMS hampers any of your staff’s ability to enter a chart throughout the day, consider looking elsewhere.
You are not Apple. Yet these PMS think they live in a vacuum. They purposely make it difficult to work with third party softwares. Because money is no object for dental offices, upcharging you extra for their ready made ‘solutions’ like mobile and web communications, claims processing and payments processing is an easy decision to part ways with your hygiene exam revenue each month. Apple charges you a premium to use their dongles. PMS charges you a premium just because you use their elitist piece of crap software.
Have you ever trained a new front desk member? Better yet, do you know your own PMS front to back? I’m a dentist, I just want to do dentist things. I need to know enough to drill into a tooth, not a phD in software engineering to understand what’s happening in my PMS. Yet I remember needing two full business days and some extra practice when one of my practices made the switch to a new PMS. WTF, TWO days, if you can’t explain to me how to pull up a chart, put in a treatment plan and charge them out within 15 minutes, I’m out. This goes hand in hand with training staff. A simple to understand PMS for your job is easier to help onboard new staff, create consistent charting, and lessen errors for data input.
This is a sample from my own PMS toolbar. There is no other view layout. All we get are these dumb icon’s. WTF do these icons even mean!?!?! Oversimplification to icon/images hinder and don’t help in this example. If I were training someone new looking at this software it’s not intuitive. I’d have no idea which of these icon’s were for mass patient emails, patient claims or to send a message to my assistant.
This all goes to my first principles question at the beginning of this episode. The PMS is not to make me PMS. It needs to help me do my job efficiently. Anything that hinders me otherwise, is waste. Ask a few of these questions before you add, switch or subtract a software system from your practice:
- Does the PMS leverage digital advantages, making checkin, checkout, charting, notes, xrays, and payments easier for patients and staff?
- Does the PMS play well with other softwares? Open source is usually a signal that it will.
- Is the PMS intuitive enough that someone brand new clicking through it would understand where to find major information? Names, Accounts, Charts and Claims.
No more PMS, I’m going to continue to search for a better PMS, hoping there is one out there that strives for helping us clinicians become more efficient.
Lam