Orthotown October 2024 - 42

Dental Patient
Trosien Orthodontics Halloween Party
of things. Patients love this level of
routine contact and communication.
Even adult patients love getting
these recaps of what happened at
the appointment; they can refer back
later if they can't remember what the
next steps are, whether they were to
continue wearing elastics, etc.
Virtual appointments have also
taken off since the pandemic. We don't
use them nearly as much as we did
a few years ago, but they still have
a place in our daily routine. I used
Smile Snap and Ortho Screening Kit
over the last few years, and had great
success with them for retainer checks,
instructions to patients and aligner
fit problems. I've since winnowed my
communication programs down to
just Edge and Cloudberry. Edge has
InVisit for virtual visits, which is fully
integrated with the rest of Edge in that
it saves the comments automatically
into the patient's chart and allows for
one-button saving of the submitted
photos. Cloudberry can do the virtual
visits as well, and doesn't require a
patient to create a separate account to
what they already have.
Segment your email messages
From a marketing perspective, email
announcements about new technology
in the office, promotions, milestones
and the like can be an easy, virtually
free way of staying in the minds of
patients and potential patients.
I used to use Mailchimp when I
wanted to send a notification to all
of our patients; these days, I use Edge
Broadcast to send messages to patient
groups. We design an email using
Canva or Microsoft Word, then configure
it in Edge Broadcast and select
which subgroups of patients we want
to send it to. We've done things like
announce an upcoming patient event,
reminding people to use their HSA
dollars before the end of the year, and
telling patients about retainer insurance.
Because Broadcast is a part of
Edge, it's easy to select which groups
of patients you want the message to
go to-say, Phase I only, parents only,
retention only, all active patients, etc.
Track your team's efforts
Outgoing messaging and communication
is far easier to manage than
incoming. When patients contact us
with a question or problem, or need
to be contacted to change something,
the communication needs to be
assigned and tracked so it doesn't fall
through the cracks. I've used multiple
systems and software to manage
these tasks and assignments, but
OCTOBER 2024 | 42 | ORTHOTOWN.COM
always found that they were adding
to the ever-growing list of things I
need to manage. I've used Asana,
Click Up, Google Sheets, written
to-do lists and more.
In an effort to have everything in
one place and be HIPAA-compliant,
we now use Cloudberry for tasks. I can
track the whole team from the top
down and follow along with the communication
tied to the tasks. For quick
communication within the office, we
use Edge's Instant Messenger. That
pops up immediately on a teammate's
computer, much in the way a text
message would on a phone.
Collaborating with dentists and
specialists has historically been
difficult to do electronically. I get
the same emails as everyone else,
describing some dentist who received
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Orthotown October 2024

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