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You have a full day scheduled and as soon as the phones are off of forward, the emergency calls start; a patient with a severe tooth ache who waited a week to see if it would “go away”, another whose crown has broken loose, and a pediatric patient who knocked out a baby tooth when he fell rushing into kindergarten. Your team is doing their best to juggle the calls, calm and comfort your patients, and glean the right information in order to fit them all into a heavily booked day. However, between a hysterical mother, a busy executive inconvenienced by another office visit, a difficult patient in terrible pain, and the front offices’ lack of clinical experience, the important facts needed to schedule and treat your emergency patients fall short. Each of these urgent appointments winds up incorrectly prioritized and placed into inappropriate time slots, which sets back the entire day frustrating you, your team, and your other patients.

Does this scenario sound like something that’s happened at your practice? You’re probably nodding your head, “Yes”. Anyone who has handled a dental emergency call knows that patients are not consistent in describing their symptoms, their pain, and can often be uncooperative wondering why they are being peppered with questions when they are in such acute discomfort. Dentists listening to an emergency patient’s symptoms chairside have the benefit of diagnostic tools, as well as years of clinical experience and education, to help determine the condition that’s causing the problem. However, your front office team, who has limited, or no clinical training, relies on asking the emergency call a set of pre-selected questions to determine when they should be scheduled into the day. No matter how well you have trained your team, it’s just not an accurate system.

Now there is a better way to repair the disconnect that so often arises between patient, team, dentist, and schedule during dental emergencies: a new dental software program called Crumb’s Cranium. Developed by New York Dentist, Dr. Donald Crumb, Crumb’s Cranium is a simple scheduling tool that “thinks” like a dentist. Easily downloaded and installed on any PC in less than 30 minutes, Crumb’s Cranium works alongside your existing dental software and helps your front office team by:

• Recognizing the most common reasons for dental patients to call your office with an emergency
• Providing simplified, logical sequencing of diagnostic information questions for effective triage and prioritizing of emergencies
• Providing scheduling recommendations, clinical impressions, and a printout system to prepare the dentist and clinical team for the emergency appointment

Crumb’s Cranium streamlines your dental emergency management, smoothes over the scheduling conflicts dental emergencies tend to create, reduces stress, and allows you to spend the time with your patients that they need and deserve. Best of all, it requires virtually no dental knowledge, minimal computer skills, and becomes a great training tool for the team members who handle dental emergency calls. To learn more about Crumb’s Cranium, how it can improve the day-to-day operations of your practice, and receive a free, 30-day trial, visit www.crumbscranium.com .

About Dr. Crumb: Since 1976, Dr. Crumb has practiced quality dentistry for patients in and around Syracuse, New York. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1971, achieved his DDS at New York University College of Dentistry in 1975, and completed a post-doctoral residency at Northwestern University in 1976. He believes strongly in giving back to his community for all that it has given him and has been an attending dentist on the clinical staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center since 1977.