Comparison
Filling the chair is the easy half. The record is the other half.
Online booking tools are good at what they do, and a clinic that only needs appointments should probably use one. The trouble starts when the booking tool becomes the de facto patient record because it is the only system anyone logs into.
| a booking-only tool | Dently | |
|---|---|---|
| Online booking | Good. Booking is the whole product. | Excellent, and already included. |
| Clinical notes | A free-text field, if any. | Full charting, per surface and per stage. |
| Treatment plans | Not modelled. | Staged, costed, and tracked to completion. |
| Billing | Takes a deposit, not a course of treatment. | Invoices built from what was charted. |
| Reporting | Bookings and no-shows. | Production, acceptance, recall and revenue by treatment. |
Use both, or use one that does both. What does not work is treating a calendar as a clinical record.
Start with one clinic
See what your next month of treatment is really worth.
Bring one location onto Dently, import the patient list, and start finding which chairs, doctors and treatments move the practice forward.