How Eaglesoft has helped one practice keep its focus where it should be: On patients

Running an efficient dental practice is a complex job. Staying on top of nine dental practices, though extremely rewarding, can sometimes seem like an overwhelming feat. Using dental practice management software that does not streamline the various daily aspects of your practices only adds further to that challenge.

Monjit Guram, DDS, of Hometown Dental in Fort Worth, Texas, discovered just that. 

Practice needs

“We were working with software that wasn’t doing everything we needed,” Dr. Guram says. “We work with a wide variety of patients – we do a lot of work with Medicaid patients, for instance – and the system didn’t support the information needed to file those claims.”

Determined to simplify the numerous tasks that went into maintaining his offices, he began his search for a new practice management solution that would help him run his practices more efficiently and he discovered Eaglesoft. 

“Our Patterson sales representative knew that we were looking for new software, and we looked at a lot of options,” Dr. Guram says. “He told us one of Eaglesoft’s strengths is that it’s completely integrated. This creates a one-stop shop for all the information and provides great communication flow between the doctors, hygienists and the front desk. Even our recall system has been totally integrated in addition to going paperless.”

Related reading: How Eaglesoft eClaims make claims simple

Data conversion 

Dr. Guram began seamlessly converting his practices to the new paperless, advanced practice management software, and found Patterson’s support to be an invaluable asset during the process.

“Patterson was great about helping to convert the data from the old system to Eaglesoft,” Dr. Guram says. “The entire database has been migrated, so we can always trace several years back on a patient and look at their history.”

Business management

Hometown Dental’s office manager, Margaret Mata, said the transfer to Eaglesoft resulted in a vast variety of improvements.

“Eaglesoft has definitely helped us tremendously time-wise,” says Mata. “It helps with timecards, monthly reports, reconciliation reporting, collections summary reporting and other reports as well. From a patient perspective, it’s been very valuable too. We can immediately see no-show patients, total patients and service history reports, all within Eaglesoft.”

More from Patterson Dental: 5 things to explore before opening your doors

Ease of billing 

Billing can be a complicated process for dental practices, and Eaglesoft helps to easily organize it. 

“It’s a consistent, solid platform,” says Sarah Duran, billing manager for Hometown Dental. “Eaglesoft is much better at managing all aspects of our practice, and has been able to simplify technology for us. We noticed a big impact in our treatment planning process. Treatment plans can be done in the operatory by the doctor, and information on appointments to be scheduled is seamlessly passed to the front office all through the software. There’s no handwriting to decipher and less that we can miss or misunderstand. It’s saved us a lot of mistakes and a lot of time, and we’re still finding new features that we can use in Eaglesoft.”

Accuracy and increased productivity

Dr. Guram says that eliminating mistakes can also eliminate tensions in the practice. Most importantly, practices can avoid billing mistakes, which can result in unpaid claims being sent back to them.

Eaglesoft also helps the offices to maintain the most up-to-date and thorough patient records. Dr. Guram uses Eaglesoft’s IntelliCare feature to ensure medical history, referrals and other patient information is complete and filed into the system, which helps the very busy front desk team immensely.

“It’s definitely more efficient because there’s no finger-pointing going on,” Dr. Guram said. “It gives doctors more of a say-so in the collections, because they are able to put the information right in and pass notes directly onto the claim to the insurance companies.”

Ultimately, Eaglesoft has helped Hometown Dental keep its focus where it should be: on patients.