Over the last 4 or 5 years, there has been an explosion of dental office productivity tools to hit the market. Some are focused on one particular specialty, others are multi-faceted and meant to bring as many features under one subscription. To add to the complexity, almost all of these tools integrate into practice management systems, while those same practice management systems feature the same technology: albeit a bit “wonky” when it comes to execution.
A great example would be Open Dental: the open source practice management system of choice for many upstart and established offices. Open Dental’s e-services can practically do it all, but the customization and execution can be a bit cumbersome. Open Dental’s online scheduling and paperless system works well, but it is not quite as powerful as some of the others. We know about Open Dental’s in-house plan, but using something like FFS Profits or Kleer can help build in some much needed management and marketing capabilities.
What I found was that every company does one or two things exceptionally well, but can fall short with other features; so, one has to evaluate a combination of tools and make a decision on what is most important for them. As an example, one of the platforms I currently use as an add-on to Open Dental has a patient payment system, but I opted to subscribe to a different one because it had a better notification system and was much more automated. Do I want to pay two separate subscriptions? No. Do I have a choice? Also, no.
With that said, we have assembled a basic dot chart featuring the partner vendors of DSN and what they do. This will change over time, but you can at least quickly look at the features along the x-axis and visually filter down to the feature that is most important to you. Then, look at what else is offered and match it to the corresponding vendor. Everyone on this list offers a discount to DSN members, so it is a win-win regardless!
To use these vendors, sign up for DSN! I am refraining from saying what my favorites are in order for you to make an informed decision, but if you are interested in what I use in our practice, shoot me an email or message me on DSN. I suggest you demo each one, inquire about their cancellation policy, and simply experiment on what you feel works best in your practice.