In this article, you'll read about
- Krekeler & colleagues before digitization
- Nelly as an expert in practice digitization
- Challenges of analog document management
- Positive feedback from older patients
- Data protection as with banks
- Future-proof everyday practice thanks to digitization
- Efficient digital with Nelly
With its treatment methods, the Berlin dental practice is Krekeler & colleagues technologically ahead of many competitors. State-of-the-art dental procedures such as digital impressions and tooth restorations with 3D recording (and thus treatment without taking an impression) are used there.
While complicated dental processes have been digital for a long time, simple organizational processes such as patient admission and billing were still carried out in paper form. But that has now changed practice. We show how Krekeler & Kollegen have consistently pursued the digitization of their dental practice with Nelly and how they are benefiting from it today.
Shortage of time and mountains of paper — Krekeler & Kollegen before digitizing their dental practice
The dental health of the entire family is at the heart of the Krekeler & Kollegen dental practice. The focus is on tooth-friendly and tooth-preserving procedures. This means that the practice uses prophylaxis, preventive examinations and conservative dental treatments to ensure that patients do not experience any symptoms in the first place.
While practice takes a proactive approach to patients' health, organizational processes relied on familiar analog processes until recently. This is how she completed anamnesis, clarification forms, data protection and invoices in paper form. However, this repeatedly presented practical challenges.
Paper form makes processes slower and more expensive
Spend doctors and medical professionals a third of their working time with analogous administrative tasks — such as taking anamnesis and issuing invoices. That also gave dentist and practice owner Melanie Krekeler something to think about. She therefore began researching how she could optimize organizational processes by digitizing her dental practice. It quickly became apparent that with digital solutions, the practice would eliminate mountains of paper, save costs, relieve specialists in their day-to-day work and make it easier for patients to visit the practice.
Nelly as an expert in digitizing medical practices
While looking for a provider for digitization, Krekeler & Kollegen came across Nelly. The practice quickly won over Nelly's holistic approach. In this way, the provider digitizes a variety of bureaucratic processes in medical practices — from anamnesis to documents such as cost estimates and billing.
What also convinced Berlin health practice: Nelly is an established expert on the topic of digitization in dental practices. The platform has already been used by over 450 medical practices. More than 350,000 patients have benefited from this to date. In this context, Nelly has already digitized over 3 million documents.
Digitalize dental practice — Nelly solves these challenges
For Krekeler & Kollegen, the focus was primarily on digitizing documents. In this way, the dental practice wanted to simplify the entire working day — for employees and patients. In return, she was able to overcome these challenges:
Complex patient admission
Since the digitization of dental practice, anamnesis is significantly less complex and cumbersome. For example, employees must fill out the completed by patients medical history sheet No longer manually transfer the sheet to your own system and then bring the sheet from reception to the treatment room.
The practice's dental administrative assistant (ZMV), Jasmin Link, also stated this: “The medical history sheet is right in the doctor's room without us having to bring it there. It makes everyday life easier for all of us here. ”
In practice, patient admission now works like this: Patients scan a QR code directly at the reception and fill out the medical history sheet on their smartphone in the waiting room. From there, the data is automatically and directly transferred to the practice system — and can therefore also be viewed by the dentist in the treatment room.
Inefficient document handling
Before digitization, all documents — both before and after treatments — had to be printed out first and then completed and signed back to the practice by the patient. This often required the postal service as well. This not only cost money, but also a lot of time. Melanie Krekeler's team can now complete this process for many documents with just a few clicks — just like the patients. Documents such as cost estimates and clarification forms are delivered digitally - Only certain documents still need to be in writing. Nelly stores the digitally signed documents in the patient portal. The data is then transferred to PVS via an interface.
Complicated invoices
With Nelly, the Berlin dental practice was also able to simplify billing. Patients now save their preferred payment method and Nelly issues invoices via email or text message. For practices, this means faster liquidity, less paper consumption and more time savings.
Digitalization of dental practice: positive feedback from older patients
Patients do not need an app so that they can fill out the registration form with Krekeler & Kollegen quickly and easily; they can simply store their data in the browser on their own mobile phone. In this way, the process of data entry is familiar. This is particularly helpful for older people. You don't suddenly have to operate another device or operating system.
The digitization of dental practice is therefore also popular with older patients, as ZMV Jasmin Link explains:
“Older patients have received this primarily positively. If they have a cell phone, they love the ease of data entry. ”
Despite the holistic digitization of dental practices, Krekeler & Kollegen remain flexible. Should patients not have a smartphone (with them), they can still fill out the intake or treatment form with paper.
Data protection — as secure as with banks
Sensitive data, such as patient information, requires the highest possible level of data protection. To ensure that the data is just as secure as on paper (or even more secure), Nelly's highest data protection standards for practice digitization were a decisive factor for Krekeler & colleagues. At Nelly, the team found data protection similar to that of banks: All data is encrypted and stored on German servers in compliance with GDPR. In addition, Nelly has a TÜV certification for certified data protection run through.
The digital dental practice is therefore not only well received by patients, but also by the team. This is how ZMV let Jasmin Link know:
“The change here in our team was consistently positive. Since we already work very digitally in everyday dentistry, switching to digital documents was just the next logical step. ”
Future-proof everyday practice thanks to digitization
Just as the team led by dentist Melanie Krekeler treats patients with foresight, the practice is also looking ahead to the (digital) dental future. The fact that this is online is shown not only by the recently introduced e-prescription, but also by the soon mandatory electronic treatment and cost plan (eHKP). Practices that are reluctant to digitize today are therefore quickly losing touch — with the requirements of the industry and with patients' expectations.
Efficient digital with Nelly
Nelly is the first company in Europe to holistically digitalize dental practices. Practices can easily integrate the software into their existing practice management program. The result: you save
- 90 minutes a day
- 80 percent of paper and printing costs, and
- 30 percent billing costs.
Now you too can create a digital workflow in your practice. We advise you non-binding and free to your individual case!
The personal names used in this article always refer equally to all persons. Dual naming and alternate names are omitted in order to improve readability.
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