Do you have patients that are chronically late to their appointments no matter how many appointment reminders you send? Have no fear, Engagement is here!
Engagement has established a process to help. If you have a patient that is scheduled but is consistently late to their appointments, you can create a specific appointment buffer with a code, attach the code to their appointment, and when we send out your automated appointment communication, we will inform the patient that their appointment is a number minutes earlier than it actually appears in your schedule. This way you can still maintain a full schedule without having to block off more time for the patient and they will hopefully get to the office earlier than usual or even on time!
Creating Appointment Buffers in Open Dental
Step by Step Instructions:
From the main menu of Open Dental, click Lists and Procedure Codes to pull up the full list of procedure codes for your practice
Click New to begin creating your custom Engagement procedure codes
Be sure to create MOD10 (10 minutes), MOD15 (15 minutes), MOD30 (30 minutes), MOD45 (45 minutes) and MODNO (no automated appointment reminders) as Procedure Codes with corresponding descriptions and copying the entire MOD (NO, 10, 15, 30...) code as the abbreviation. Click Do Not Usually Bill to Insurance to ensure this Is an admin code rather than a billable service
From your schedule, double click into the patient's appointment. Click Add to
select your custom MOD (NO, 10, 15, 30...) code to trigger your patient to arrive early or to be ignored from automated communication
Once you've added your MOD (NO, 10, 15, 30...) service code, be sure to save your appointment
Here Is how your appointment will look on the schedule:
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