Curve Dental Review
Updated: May 19
Considering Curve Dental as your practice management software? We've been using it exclusively for 4 years now and this is our curve dental review.
Table of Contents:
Overall Assessment
We would like to start with saying that we are very happy with Curve Dental and we couldn't imagine switching to any other practice management software. We're specifically using Curve Hero and it has been just about three years since we've started.
Cloud based software
We love the fact that it is cloud based because we don't need servers in the office. Our IT closet only has our Verizon router and the Ethernet hub. Since we have extra space, we just use the IT closet to store our cleaning supplies.
This may be a glossed over point but because you don't need servers, you do save on electricity bills.
What we love the most is that it is in the cloud so you can access the schedule at home and write notes if you leave the office early. You can also put in appointments while at home and that is absolutely critical in his era of online booking.
Scheduling
The scheduling is easy and the interface is intuitive. All new staff members barely need any training to understand how it works. Just show them about ten minutes and they'll pick it up themselves.
Almost everything on the screen is clickable so that helps. The search bar is amazing as well because you can use it to search for everything. Its not just patient names that you can search for but also birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, and you name it. It is literally like a google search bar.
Charting
The charting is pretty good and it looks really good as well. It is definitely one of the most aesthetic charting that we've seen out of any practice management software.
It is easy in that you can create separate treatment plans as shown above. Our own issue with it is charting existing. You have to click on the procedures and then the materials to change what you want to chart. Wish there was a quicker or more efficient way to do it.
That is one area that needs a little work I suppose.
One cool feature is that you can draw on the odontogram like free hand draw on it.
Billing
The way curve dental bills is that each visit date is a separate invoice. We do like this because it lets you know where the balances come from. Some PMS have a unified ledger where everything is just on one page. Sometimes that gets hard to figure out where the patient owes money. Was it from their second visit or from their third visit?
Having the invoices based on treatment date simplifies that. At the very bottom they do have an account summary so it lets you know overall if they have a balance or not so this still serves the same person as one unified ledger as well.
Curve Hero does come with integrated billing as well through either Bluefin or Globalpayments. This lets you swipe the credit card and apply it directly to the invoice. The credit card processing is integrated with curve. For some systems, the payment processing is separate so you charge the patient and then you have to go back into the PMS to POST the payment. With curve you don't need to post the payment because the swipe posts it for you.
Having it integrated minimizes errors because you don't have to retype in the payment amounts.
Claims
Sending out claims is a breeze because everything is done electronically. We very rarely have to mail out paper claims, maybe less than 1% of the time. To send out a claim all you have to do is check out the visit and then click send to batch. That's it.
Predeterminations are also done the same way, except you just right click, send to batch with an attachment. You can add attachments to the claims via a third party service that syncs with curve called NEA fast attach. When you send it to batch with an attachment, it'll automatically show up on the NEA website. From there you basically just take screenshots of corresponding xrays or perio charting and then it will send out.
No need to print and mail anything!
Health forms and checking patients in
The way curve dental does new patient check ins is all paperless. You actually use a tablet or a laptop if you prefer to check in patients. You basically send a kiosk code to the tablet and then the patient can just fill out their health forms on the tablet. You can customize the forms as well to include financial policies and office policies as well. Everything is signed and recorded digitally.
ONLINE SCHEDULING
Curve dental recently released online booking for patients. Here the patients can self schedule their appointments and it will book right into the schedule. That's right it books in REAL time.
There are some third party softwares that will bridge to curve for online booking but typically there is about a 10-15 minute delay in the scheduling updating. With curve's own system, there is no delay and it is instantaneous.
For the self scheduling, you get to choose the parameters for appointments. For example you can have NP visits, recares, operative, and whatever you want. You get to set the appointment time left and operatories that you wish to let them book in.
CurveGro
The online scheduling is actually part of this but there are additional features in CurveGro. It allows two way texting and you know patients LOVE texting. You can also set up algorithms where you can send patient appointment reminders automatically.
Our office has set up a 1 week reminder, 2 day prior to confirm the appointment and a 3 hour prior appointment reminder. Our no show rate is pretty low with this tactic in place.
Aside from appointment reminders, you can also set up other campaigns such as recare due reminders. We have one set up where:
Send an email and text at the 6 month due mark
Send an email at the 9 month due
Send another email and text at 12 months due
Send email at 18 months due
That is just to give you an idea but all of the variables are customizable. You can even harass the patients if you want by sending a reminder every single day if you wanted to!
Conclusion
Overall, we're very happy with CURVE and don't plan to switch anytime soon. Cloud is the future so you might as well join it! Our long island city dentist, highly recommends switching to this.
We've used opendental, ezdental, dentrix, and even tried dentrix ascend. Curve beats all of them by a wide margin.
