Why Oral Surgeons & Endodontists Still Use Referral Pads

As we’ve been building Sindi over the past year, one question kept coming up: "Why are specialists still using referral pads?" With one of our co-founders being a 33-year-old oral surgeon and many of his dental school classmates now owning their own practices, we expected clear answers. But we were surprised by what we heard.

The most common response? "Because this is how everyone does it."

While that answer works on the surface, we knew we needed to dig deeper.

Why does “everyone” send referrals this way?

• "It’s quick for the hygienist."
• "All the information they need is there."
• "The doctor prefers the referral pad."
• "I don’t know. This is what we’ve always done."

At first glance, these are valid reasons. But when we step back and ask, could it be better?, the conversation shifts. What if there was a way to make referrals easier for everyone involved—not just for the hygienist or the referring doctor, but also for the office manager, specialist, and patient? What if there was a way that worked just as easily as a referral pad but offered modern efficiency?

That’s exactly what we’re building with Sindi. Our goal is to make sending and receiving dental referrals as simple as filling out a referral pad, but with all the added advantages of a digital platform. Real-time updates, patient notifications, seamless office-to-office communication, integrated scheduling, file sharing, post-op notes, and much more.

Referral pads solve the first step—creating the referral—but they don’t address the dozen or more steps that come afterward: scanning, saving, downloading, emailing, calling, calling again, scheduling, following up—you get the idea. It's easy to say "referral pads work fine" until you break down the referral journey from start to finish and see all the manual tasks that add friction to the process.

With Sindi, everything—referrals, communication, and file transfers—happens in one place. We’re creating the best referral management software for dental practices, and we’d love for you to join us.

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