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Wired for Success by Alan A. Curtis, DDS, MS, Editorial Director, Orthotown Magazine

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Googlize Your Business
All Things Google for Your Orthodontic Practice

by Alan A. Curtis, DDS, MS, Editorial Director, Orthotown Magazine

Google is more than a search engine. Google wants to be your go-to source for everything. No, really. It wants to be your source for all information in the world. Its mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

To that end, Google has created amazing tools to help its users organize the most useful information and make it accessible. Think about the information you create and distribute. Chances are, Google has come up with a very user-friendly solution for your systems.

E-mail

Does every member of your orthodontic team have his or her own branded e-mail? By using Google apps, your business can have a branded e-mail address for every member of your orthodontic team. Replace johnsonorthodonticsfrontoffice@gmail.com with info@johnsonortho.com.

Until recently, this branded Gmail service was free; now it's $50 per employee per year. Our office welcomes new employees to the office with their own business cards with name@CurtisOrthoAZ.com on their cards. If the new employee gets fired or quits, simply log on and delete the e-mail account or forward it on to the person's replacement.

Calendar

Sally, a new employee, is invited to bring her smartphone or tablet to the office where the office manager gives her access and sets up the master practice Google Calendar. This calendar uses Google to track everything from when employees are on vacation, and when office meetings and continuing education meetings are planned. Each employee's work schedule is real-time as planned by the office manager. Who is the closer? Who is the opener? Who is in charge of changing the ultrasonic solution? All these are appointed to the Google Calendar. Staff need to have general access to the practices' holidays, doctor vacation, patient days and administrative days. Google Calendar, managed through Google apps, makes this useful and accessible information.

Google Drive

Google Drive is Google's digital filing cabinet. All information is stored in the cloud. Documents, spreadsheets and presentations can be traditionally created using Microsoft Office and then uploaded to Google Drive for storage and access.

Sally, our new employee, is given a link to the office employee policy manual and the new employee training checklist, all on the private and secure app. Treatment coordinators track and communicate their calls and follow-ups in a spreadsheet. The office marketing coordinator communicates, organizes and records her marketing efforts on a spreadsheet and the back office staff maintain supply inventory using a spreadsheet. Time-off requests and periodic employee performance review documents are stored here as well. None of this data needs to be backed up because the folks at Google have that covered. Doctors can log in at any time from their smartphones, tablets or PCs to review and monitor efforts by their teams.

Google Voice

Have you ever wanted to reach a mother who needs to pay her bill? Or had a grandmother bring a child to his RPE delivery appointment but need the instructions on how to activate the appliance to go to dad?

Do you want to give patients your cell phone number but want to be able to change it when crazy patients take advantage of your kindness? Do you want to text driving directions to the patient who is running five minutes late for his exam? If someone needed to get ahold of you quickly, they would likely text you rather than use e-mail or voicemail. Because of this, Google Voice is your answer.

Google voice allows you to set up secondary phone numbers for voicemail and texting from phones, tablets and PCs. Text a payment reminder to the family that owes you money. Text a second divorced parent a YouTube video titled, "How to activate a rapid palatial expander." Text a link to your office on Google Maps. Who knows, it might also remind a patient again about the consultation appointment he or she made yesterday. Google Voice can be used to screen prospective applicants to job openings you have at your office. I have emergencies routed to my Google number where my voicemail is transcribed into text messages.

Google Analytics

Ever wonder how many hits your website gets in a day? Or how people find your website? How long do they spend on each page of your site? Google Analytics knows this information. Have your web company place an HTML code behind your site to track this information.

The world of Google will make the systems in your office run at the speed of business all with the scalability, accessibility and precision you need to make the most of your business. How are you using Google technologies in your practice? Go online and share at Orthotown.com

Orthotown Magazine
September 2025
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