Patient Experience

We’re using an I-pad and a touchscreen Chrome book for Concierge in our practice. We have used a Chromebook as a tablet as it is compatible. Unfortunately, when filling out the date of birth, they have to  use the full keyboard to input the ‘/’ in-between the numbers for the date, which the I-pad does automatically. I understand this is not a setting Dentally can change, but was wondering if there is an easier way to find the patients to sign them in. A way that doesn’t involve typing in their date of birth. This is easier for our elderly patients who find touchscreen keyboards tricky, and can just maybe select buttons instead (which happens after).  

Has anyone else experienced taking a payment, and then it loads and processes it to the users account but rather than getting rid of the payment box it keeps it on the screen, occasionally causing confusion as we think we just haven’t clicked record payment yet but we have and it successfully went onto the patient profile, so sometimes we end up putting a payment through twice as a result.We have very good internet, but this happens occasionally and has done for a few weeks now, is anyone else aware of this happening when taking payments, has this happened to anyone else before?

is there a way to set up automatic emails to patients (both private and NHS) a day or so before their appointment to update their medical history without having to send them all separately or have them fill in the form when they arrive on the tablet which takes at least a good few minutes 

is there a toggle/ message/ pre made message we could send automatically for patients to leave us a review after their appointment? 

Can dentally be linked and integrate with VOIP phones? This would hopefully allow caller ID to be displayed, ie when Mr Daniel Smith calls the practice, with his patient file already in Dentally, his name would pop up on the display to give a personal touch.VOIP also can allow a phone transcript to be created and so when Daniel Smith calls, a text file would get saved under the correspondence tab in dentally when the call took place and the details.Is this possible, easily done?  

If we had a data tag that pulls from the patients Dentist Recall, we could tailor automated texts to include the data tag which would read something like “Dear Patient, This is a reminder you are due a dental examination on or around *[patient_next_dentist_recall]…… etc etc.It could be pulled from two locations in dentally, via either Patient Details-->Next Dentist Recall where it shows the date chosen but this is a dropdown that can be changed, OR from Patient Recalls→Due where it shows the date chosen under where it says DueLittle additions like this would be fantastic for customisation for automation. EDIT: Referencing a specific date in a text like this works better because a patient can know exactly when they are/were due depending on when they read this communication from us (as long as the dentists set up recalls correctly!)

Hi, For the instances where patients have two appointments on one day (i.e. Exam and Hygiene), would it be possible for there to be one SMS sent, and if they reply ‘Yes’ for confirming, that it applies to both appointments?Patients are commenting often that they receive too many reminders, and most of the time this stems from when they have two appointments on the same day. They also will not reply ‘Yes’ to both messages so our receptionist are having to see that they’ve confirmed one and manually changing the other. Many thanks in advance for your consideration. Fran

Is there any submission/progress for existing patients to use the online booking portal for booking outstanding treatment? 

Good afternoon everyone.Could I make a request that the automated correspondence that uses the first name field for patients be changed so that it uses the preferred name instead?We have several patients (as I’m sure most practices do!) who either use their middle name routinely and some who use a completely different name, although they may not have officially changed it. Some of these patients then get offended when they suddenly receive a text in their “dead name”, especially as I’ve edited all our templates to uses the preferred name option.Thank you

Could we have the option to use the full name for the days of the week and month?At the moment its, Mon 2 Jan at 10:00AM - doesn’t look professional. Could someone look into this and change it or have the option to use the full names likes, Monday 2nd January at 10:00am. Thank you! :)

Any pointers on creating visually appealing html email templates in Dentally? I’ve tried pasting in some basic html email templates but the styling gets thrown out when I toggle between code view and the visual editor. 

We are finding that sometimes whilst patients are actively using the concierge app to complete forms, a message comes up asking if they are still there, even though they are actively typing? Can the timing of the message be extended to only come up if the form is left idol for a long period?

Is there a feature were appointment confirmation can be automatically  sent once booked in diary

Instead of the small symbols by the patients name, would it be possible to have the appt change colour in accordance to their status. to better manage and see when people are late or havent been checked in.Some recent technical issues have caused appts to be missed and patients having to reschedule. 

Are there plans to add a patient field for pronunciation? We would like to improve customer service by using their name correctly, and we could put this in the regular name fields in brackets but we do not want this to pop up in any letters or emails accidentally.  

Hi everyone,Does anyone know of a way of adding the pts dental chart with treatment plan to the top of the estimate as part of the template?  This has always been a great visual aid for patients and its a shame I cant seem to get it on the estimates since joining Dentally. Many thanksSimon

Hi does anyone have experience of Tabeo finance? or use anything they would recommend for patients to be able to spread the costs of treatment? thanks  

FAO Multi Site PracticesSo I currently have a ticket open with the support team (who are really great and are looking into it) When our patients receive their recalls sms or email and they click the link to the portal but if they see a dentist/hygienist that crosses sites it doesnt allow them to see avaiability of appointments for both sites.  For instance we have a few patients that see a hygienist who works on one site and a dentist who works across both. If the patient is registered to one site, they cannot book their recall at the other.  As I said above development are looking into but I was keen to see if any other sites have had a problem with it

Is there a way to be able to view all created consent forms for a family from a single log in of the dentally app. when we’ve got large families in and 3-4 kids in for short appointments entering each child’s DoB to retrieve the relevant forms they need to sign is slowing us down as a practice. Given that the adult accompanying them will need to sign all the forms anyway it would speed us up so much if they could see all the forms they need to sign for their family together rather than one at a time. 

We have noticed if a patient has more than 5 appointments, they don’t all print out. Is there a way to get it print all appointments when there are more than 5? I dealt with a patient who had to book 9 appointments and i was unable to print them all out.Many thanks.

We were hoping to be able to automate aftercare instructions, eventually for all treatment items, but initially to start with extractions. So when a patient has an extraction done, they would immediately have after care instructions emailed to them. We trialled this, however, it was only possible to send the automated email, to be initiated by the appointment reason. This caused several issues, such as patient booked in for urgent, who had an extraction, wouldnt get the aftercare instructions. Or, patient booked for extraction, but then changed their mind on the day, would then get aftercare instructions even though the treatment hasn’t gone ahead. I have been told that it is not possible to have automations run of the actual treatment item. Has anyone managed to automate aftercare instructions / information successfully? Or, has anyone used something like Zapier to automate emails from their own practice emails rather than relying on dentallys email system?

Hi Community! We are always looking for ways to improve Dentally based on your feedback, so we’d like to know your thoughts. We understand that the NHS does not specifically recommend hygiene appointments for children – only regular dental exams. To help us understand more about this and whether you would value the option to automatically exclude children from hygiene recalls, take a quick look at our poll below! 👀  Let us know if you have any more comments around child hygiene recalls below! 👇 

We’re experiencing a couple of issues with the Concierge app that are causing confusion for our patients and staff:Task Incompletion:Patients using the concierge app sometimes see a message stating they still have one pending task, even after completing all required forms. (Please see the attached image for reference.)HC3 Exemption Amount Entry:We’re unable to enter HC3 exemption amounts in decimal values (e.g., £44.50). Only whole numbers seem to be accepted.Any quick solution to these will be helpful. Thanks 

I’m curious to learn about how other practices are structuring their appointments. Are you still operating separate hygiene and examination appointments, or have you moved towards therapist-led exams? 😉

Enhancing patient experience can be quite a challenge!What are the key barriers you encounter in your practice that prevent you from taking your patient care to the next level and how do you think Dentally can help you overcome these obstacles?Share your experiences and ideas! 💡