As a dental practice, you want to ensure that your patients are attending their scheduled appointments. Appointment confirmation requests in Engagement can help streamline this process by automating the appointment confirmation process. Here's how confirmations in Engagement work with a dental practice's practice management software.
In this article, we'll go over:
Review and Edit Confirmation Message Verbiage
When the patient receives a confirmation request, Engagement recognizes only the following confirmation-based responses:
C
Confirm
Yes
Okay
Ok
Si
Confirmed
I’ll be there
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Patients can respond and confirm their appointment using any of the recognized confirmation-based responses but they cannot respond to cancel their appointment. Engagement does not recognize cancellation-based responses from patients. We recommend including instructions in your verbiage which instructs patients to call your practice should they need to reschedule their appointment.
To ensure that your patients clearly understand the required response needed in order to confirm their appointment, it's important to ensure that your message verbiage clearly states the action item and instructs patients to respond with any of the accepted responses listed above.
To learn how to edit confirmation message verbiage, click here.
If the patient confirms using one of the recognized key words, the software updates the appointment status to "confirmed" in the practice management software. If the patient does not respond to the confirmation request, nothing happens in the practice management software.
Dentrix and Open Dental Users: If your practice uses a customized confirmation status and wants to change the appointment status to something other than confirmed or cancelled, please reach out to Dental Intelligence support.
Note for Eaglesoft Users: Eaglesoft does not allow for customized appointment statuses so confirmation statuses cannot be customized in Engagement.
Once an appointment is confirmed, the patient will not receive any additional confirmation request messages for that appointment. If the patient has not confirmed prior to the final appointment reminder, they will be asked to confirm again in the next appointment reminder notification.
Unrecognized Responses That Require Extra Verbiage
If a patient responds with a message that contains unrecognized phrasing that Engagement cannot verify as a confirmation response, Engagement will not be able to automatically update the appointment status.
In this instance, Engagement will reply to a patient with a triggered message when it is suspected that the patient wanted to confirm, but we are not 100% sure.
In the Verbiage settings, be sure to check the Confirmation requests - extra verbiage messaging to set up your practices's extra verbiage message and capture those patients who may respond with a response that can't be recognized by Engagement.
Unconfirmed responses will need to be manually recorded in your practice management software. If not, the patient will receive an additional confirmation request. Cancellations will also need to be manually recorded in your practice management software.
Customize and Activate Automated Appointment Confirmations
By default, Dental Intelligence has set up automated appointment confirmation messages with the following automation settings:
1st confirmation request
Sent 7 days before the appointment time
Preferred delivery channel: text
2nd confirmation request
Sent 4 days before the appointment time
Preferred delivery channel: text
3rd confirmation request
The 3rd confirmation request is meant to be more aggressive and should be enabled only if the 1st and 2nd confirmation requests are enabled. If the 2nd confirmation request is not sent due to the appointment added last minute, Engagement will use the verbiage from the 2nd confirmation request instead to not upset patients with aggressive verbiage.
Sent 3 days before the appointment time
Preferred delivery channel: text
Appointment confirmations are added to your TouchPoints dashboard by default when your Engagement account is set up, but they are inactive and will not be sent to patients until you activate it by clicking on the toggle to turn it green.
You can edit these automation settings and activate them for your practice in just a few clicks in your TouchPoints dashboard.
In the left side menu of Engagement, click on Follow Ups. Then click on TouchPoints
Click on the Appointments tile, then click on the 3-dot menu next to the appointment confirmation request TouchPoint that you would like to edit (1st, 2nd, or 3rd). Click Edit to begin
If you would like to make changes to the default automation settings, update the following TouchPoint fields:
Timing: Enter the number of days before the appointment that the confirmation should be sent and select to send it at the appointment time or a fixed time
Preferred delivery channel: Text or email (Tip: We recommend sending automated appointment confirmations via text message as they are more timely and patients are more likely to respond)
When finished, click Save
Upon clicking save, you'll notice that the appointment confirmation TouchPoint toggle will turn green and the status will show as Active. These reminders will now be sent to your patients
Disable or Delete Automated Appointment Confirmations
To disable automated appointment confirmations, click on the green toggle to turn it off. The status will show as inactive and the toggle will be greyed out. Once deactivated, automated hygiene recall reminders will no longer be sent to patients.
To completely delete your appointment confirmation automation, click on the 3-dot menu next to the confirmation TouchPoint you'd like to delete and choose Delete.
Please note: Once your automation has been deleted, you will need to re-add the TouchPoint and all of your preferences if you would like to begin sending automated messages to patients once again.
Appointment Confirmations in Patient Chat
Patient confirmation responses to automated appointment reminders will not show up as new unread messages at the top of of the messaging window in Patient Chat. This functionality reduces clogging up your message feed and helps ensure that your practice stays on top of the active messages from patients that needs responses.
Show all communications in patient message thread
If you would like to have confirmation responses to automated appointment reminders show up in each individual thread so that you can see it in the chat history, make sure you click to select the checkbox to show all communications. Selecting this checkbox will include automated responses in the patient chat history.
Click on Patient Chat in the left side menu of Engagement
Use the search bar to locate the patient by name
Click on the patient message thread to open it
Click on the three-dot menu in the up right corner and select Show all communications
Add an Automated Appointment Confirmation TouchPoint
If you've deleted your appointment confirmation automation--no worries! You can get it enabled in just a few clicks. To turn on appointment confirmations and start sending them to patients:
In the left side menu of Engagement, click on Follow Ups. Then click on TouchPoints
Click on the Appointments tile, then click the blue Add TouchPoint button. Choose to add the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd confirmation request
Next, set your automation preferences:
Timing: Enter the number of days before the appointment that the confirmation should be sent and select to send it at the appointment time or a fixed time
Preferred delivery channel: Text or email (Tip: We recommend sending automated appointment confirmations via text message as they are more timely and patients are more likely to respond)
When finished, click Add
Once added, the appointment confirmation TouchPoint will show as active. Confirmation messages will begin being sent to impacted patients within 10 minutes of activation
