Dental Receptionist Checklist

For many (as patients), visiting a dentist can be a nightmare. As a patient, you have no option as you are in pain but you also know that things are not any better at the dental practice. Therefore, it is very important to have a great dental office manager for your dental practice, who can not only ease out the patient but also reduce their worries by giving them a great experience. How? By simply making sure they follow the
dental receptionist checklist” or “dental office manager duties”.

A dental receptionist checklist or simply put a dental office manager’s duties include a long list of tasks. They involve helping patients who have just reached the dental practice or patients who are about to leave. The dental office manager’s duties also include but not limited to booking appointments, sending reminders, managing insurance queries, verifying insurance, attending patient calls, updating the practice management software, and a lot more. It is important to note that someone with great people skills would make great dental receptionist.  There is no specific degree required for being a receptionist at a dental practice. 

However, there are few online courses that train you for the job or you could always learn on the job. Below is the framework you can use to define your dental office manager duties or your dental receptionist checklist.

Why do you need a front office checklist for your dental practice?

The dental office manager is the first person that comes in contact with the patient and it is very important that they are organized. In short, your dental practice profitability depends a lot on your receptionist/office manager. But apart from just patient interaction, there are other reasons why a it is important to define dental office manager duties:

• They can become your guide for onboarding new dental receptionist/office managers
• Can be extremely helpful if other team members are filling in
• It can be used to benchmark the performance of your dental office manager
• It will free up time to make sure your front desk is not missing calls.

How to go about building a dental receptionist checklist?

The key to your dental practice success is having the highest possible level of organization for the office manager. One way to think about the checklist is to think of tasks that every receptionist performs and that are repetitive in nature. It is also important to think of the frequency of occurrence and then to break up office manager duties into the following categories:

– Daily activities
– Weekly activities
– Monthly activities
– Annual activities

Why do you need to break down the checklist by timelines? Because there are certain activities that happen just once a month or once a year but some activities occur everyday as you see patients.

Pro tip: Review daily activity checklist every month and keep adding items to it till you fill you’ve made the best possible checklist.

Remember, it is almost impossible to create a checklist that fits every dental office. Everyone has different needs, patients and ways of working but we’ve tried to put together a checklist that can be a good starting point. For this example, we’ll be creating a daily activity dental receptionist checklist or simply put: dental office manager duties.

DENTAL RECEPTIONIST CHECKLIST/DENTAL OFFICE MANAGER DUTIES:

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