enamelrod wrote:to dr tech and bcomp what are you using now to confirm appointments? Im all about cutting cost.
and bcomp break even? that's exactly what the statement means you need to do x to pay for itself? not sure what you are saying. We all want it for free but seriously 250 per month amounts to $2.60 per hour on a 12 day work week at 8 hrs per day. How long does it take your staff to do confirmation calls about an hour? almost a 1/3 of minimum wage?
I think you meant 12 day month not week.
I have a problem breaking things down to hourly or daily costs. Sure it sounds like very little, but all the little costs add up.
I tend to look at the long term picture. $250/month amounts to $30,000 over the next ten years. That's a hell of a lot of chump change and I can think of a lot of things to do with it, starting with a couple of nice vacations.
Calculating a break even point is very nebulous. I remember when I purchased Dexis, they tried to make a selling point of how much money you will save in chemicals & film and assistant time developing x-rays, and time waiting for film to be processed. It's absurd, because all those savings are eaten up by the cost of the hardware and the annual maintenance. You don't convert from film to digital to save money. You do it because of the convenience it offers and because it's better for your patients with less radiation exposure and better diagnostic capabilities.
Same thing here. Unless you measure every single metric in your practice, you can't possibly know exactly how many more patients showed up than would have if you didn't use it. And calculating the staff cost savings is meaningless unless you are able to eliminate a staff position because of it, or your staff is so busy that they end up neglecting to confirm in the first place. The reason to get a program such as TRS is the convenience it offers in being able to reach the vast majority of your patients without much effort, at times that are convenient to them, and in ways that increase the effectiveness of your efforts, and because of the neat way it organizes your communications with your patients, such as with
true two-way texting.
How many times has your staff called a patient on their cell phone and confirmed an appt only to have them still not show up? Do you know where the patient is or what they are doing when you call them? Are they in their car, out shopping, at another appt? Do you think they stop everything to write themselves a reminder that they have an appt next Tuesday with the dentist? By the time they get home they have forgotten all about it. When you call them on Tuesday to ask where are you, you get an "oh, yeah, I forgot all about it, sorry."
When they get an email or a text msg it is in writing. It stays there and when they are sitting at their desk and see it in black & white they can put it in their calendar. When they get a confirmation request the week before they are more likely to let you know if they can't keep it, giving you time to schedule another patient. If they don't reply they will get another request 2 or 3 days later, and then a text reminder the day of the appt. You would have to be brain dead to forget your appt. And if someone were not sure of the day or time of their appt they can always look in their Inbox to check it.
There is no doubt that there is a convenience and advantage to this software. Unless and until Jordan builds something as comprehensive directly into OpenDental there is a great benefit to be had with TRS.
My impression is that OD users are generally more discriminating and more cautious about overspending, so, I'll ask again. At what price would you not hesitate and say "For that price, I can't pass up the convenience."
drtech already chimed in at $50-100/month.
I would think that $100/month (on par with OD itself) would be a no-brainer that no one should be able to pass up.
Anyone else? What would you be willing to pay?