Month 1 - Configuring the appointment book

The change over from our previous provider to SOE was not a walk in the park but we were told that it would be a steep learning curve. There have been no issues with the transfer of DATA from one system to another, but everything obviously works different. SOE can be very much individualised and it took us a while to figure out exactly what we wanted and how we wanted to do things to set it up appropriately. The clinical staff all took to it swimmingly, but the reception staff are struggling more.

As the manager, I am finding that I need to do a lot of initial ‘hand holding’ and taking a lot of time to ‘tidy up’ the system from the changeover. The DATA we held were incorrect in some formats and most patients did not have a correct recall or dentist allocation…. Thus, it has become a bit of a ‘spring clean’ which took longer than I anticipated.

The system is very much windows based and therefore quite intuitive to use. The online help is brilliant and my monthly phone calls from my appointed ‘saviour-and-know-it-all’ is without a doubt, the essence of what kept me going. Staff ask me how to do something and if I do not know how, I make a list and get Andrew to look at it. He really is very good at what he does!