Getting You Patients Excited About VPWebAccess

So you're excited: You can clearly see the benefits of VPWebAccess for your practice, such as easy access to account information for patients and staff and decreased phone traffic as patients check information on-line. You've invested in VPWebAccess, followed the easy instructions from Ortho II, and have set up VPWebAccess for your office. Now--as often happens with great new ideas--the question becomes, How do we get people to actually use this great technology?

There are several easy steps you can take to ensure that more and more patients and parents will understand and use VPWebAccess.

First, it's important that everyone on your staff understands the benefits of VPWebAccess for your patients and your practice. After all, they can't whole heartedly promote something if they don't understand it!! If you have one staff member who has helped set up VPWebAccess, ask them to present a short overview to the rest of the staff and demonstrate how to log on. This way your staff can be talking to patients and parents about how easy it is to use!

Second, post signs announcing the service. Ask the entire staff to develop a list of reasons why VPWebAccess is a great tool for your patients and parents. Then post the list in several prominent spots around your office to serve as a reminder to talk about VPWebAccess with every patient.

Also, Ortho II provides some wonderful sample letters you can use to announce the new service and inform patients and parents of their VPWebAccess account numbers. By using a sub-group to run the letter, your office can target active patients and narrow down the number of letters being sent. You may want to exclude pre-treatment recalls from the list and introduce those patients to VPWebAccess at their next appointment. If you have a Treatment Coordinator, you can decide if introducing VPWebAccess fits in best at the Initial Evaluation or when treatment is started. If I am working with someone who seems at all hesitant (and time permits), I'll even log them onto their new account to show them what VPWebAccess has to offer.

Finally, if you haven't yet gathered e-mail addresses for patients, now is a great time. Create a sign-in screen or memo in On-Deck that asks patients to register their e-mail addresses as they sign in. You may even want to make it part of a contest: those who register can be entered to win a gift certificate to a local computer store, for example. By gathering this information, your practice will be in a great position to use the e-mail messaging system that is a part of VPWebAccess. Before you know it, you can be sending birthday cards, appointment reminders, and other messages with your VPWebAccess service!

It's often difficult for doctors and staff to find time in a busy schedule to get these new ideas started, but when everyone realizes the huge potential of time saved as patients use VPWebAccess to check appointment times, account balances and more, the investment of a little time now will reward your practice in the future over and over again. So get your patients using VPWebAccess and I think you will agree that this may be the most exciting service to come along in orthodontics since colored ligatures!