Can you believe it’s already April? Time can fly when you’re working hard and busy, but it’s important to keep up with necessary tasks, especially as a small business owner. At your dental practice, you need to make room in the schedule for chart auditing, but how often does it need to be done? Why is it important? Keep reading to learn the answers.
How Often Should Chart Audits Be Performed?
Unlike your taxes, which you work on just once a year, chart audits need to be done on a more frequent basis. In fact, some experts recommend performing chart audits four times per year! At minimum, this task should be completed twice a year to stay on top of inactive patients and make sure incomplete treatment plans get done.
Why Do Dental Chart Audits Matter?
Chart audits not only enable you to conduct quality assurance on your patient information, but it also critically allows you to get a clearer idea of how your practice is doing. Knowing how many active patients you have as well as who specifically still needs to come in gives you valuable insight.
Making Better Business Choices
Based on the number of active patients, you can then make smarter business decisions for your practice. You can determine whether you should bring in an associate dentist, more hygienists, or new technology without creating a financially stressful situation.
When you are aware of who has become inactive and who has incomplete treatment plans, you can focus your outreach efforts on these patients, potentially using your time and energy more efficiently.
Quality Assurance
Everyone makes innocent mistakes now and then, but when it comes to your patients’ files, mistakes can have serious consequences with dental insurance and or even the law. Checking your patients’ charts regularly ensures that quality is kept at a high level and will pass with flying colors.
What’s the Best Way to Perform Chart Audits?
Many dental practices are already busy and near feeling overwhelmed with their workload. If the thought of adding regular chart audits to your front desk staff’s plate will negatively impact your office culture, consider outsourcing this task. An impartial party can assess the quality of your records and give you an unbiased view of your patient base.
Chart audits don’t have to disrupt your practice’s normal workload. When you work with a services company, you can keep going at full speed and have necessary chart audits performed so that you know how well your practice is doing and where you can improve.
About Dental Support Specialties
Dental Support Specialties is an administrative services company that has been in business for more than 15 years. In addition to dental answering services, we also can provide scheduling assistance and chart auditing, among other services, for dental practices throughout the country. We are HIPAA compliant and committed to helping your practice thrive. To schedule a consultation, contact our team.