Dental appointment software is sold on feature lists, and a small practice is better served judging it on three records instead: the recall list, which patients are due and unbooked; the reminder schedule, which messages go out and when; and the confirmation log, who answered and who sat out the chair. Those three are the front desk's whole working day, and a product that keeps them well is worth more than one with online booking, two-way texting and a patient portal it does not keep. Kheirkhah et al. 2016 put the mean no-show rate at 18.8% and the cost at $196 a no-show; the records are how a practice moves its own rate.
The recall list: who is due and has no booking
Dental revenue is return visits, so the most valuable screen in the software is the list of patients whose hygiene interval has passed with nothing booked, sorted by how overdue they are and showing the last contact. A recall list that has to be run as a report from the chart software each morning is one that gets run on Mondays and forgotten by Wednesday. The software should open on it.
The reminder schedule: touches and lead time, set once
A practice decides how many reminders go out per appointment and how far ahead the first one goes, and the software runs that schedule every day without anyone remembering. The free reminder template on this site prints the messages a week that schedule produces and the hours it would take by hand, so the practice sees the load before it buys. Two touches, days ahead and the day before, is the shape the Cochrane 2013 review's attendance figures support.
The confirmation log: the record that makes the next reminder smarter
Every reminder that goes out should come back as a confirmation, a cancellation or silence, recorded against the appointment. Dantas et al. 2018 found prior no-show history is a main determinant of the next no-show, so a patient who sat out a chair once needs an earlier reminder and a phone call next time. Software that sends reminders but does not record the answer cannot do that, however good the sending is.
Questions people ask about dental appointment software
Is dental appointment software the same as practice management software?
No. Practice management software holds the chart, the claims, the imaging and the treatment plan. Appointment software holds the diary, the recall list, the reminders and the confirmations. Some suites do both; a small practice should check the second half is actually worked, not just present.
How much does a no-show cost a dental practice?
Your own average visit value, times the no-shows a week at your rate. Kheirkhah et al. 2016 measured $196 per no-show in the clinics they studied; the free template on this site takes your own visit value and prints the weekly revenue at risk.
What should dental appointment software show when it opens?
The recall list: every patient due for hygiene with no booking, sorted by how overdue they are. If the demo opens on the calendar, ask to see the list before anything else.
Sources
- Kheirkhah et al., Prevalence, predictors and economic consequences of no-shows, BMC Health Services Research 2016
- Gurol-Urganci et al., Mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, Cochrane 2013
- Dantas et al., No-shows in appointment scheduling, a systematic literature review, Health Policy 2018