By business type
An assistant for a dental clinic, and where it has to stop
Most of what arrives at a dental reception is administrative: prices, appointment times, whether you take a plan, what to do about a lost filling at nine on a Friday night. An assistant handles the first three well. The fourth is triage, and triage is the thing it must never attempt.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- how much is a check up
- do you take nhs patients
- how much for a crown
- i chipped a tooth what do i do
- do you do payment plans
- can i bring my daughter with me
- how long does a filling take
- do you offer sedation
- what happens if i miss my appointment
- are you taking new patients
- do you do teeth whitening
- is the practice accessible for a wheelchair
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Your full price list | The single highest value document. Price is the most asked and least published thing in dentistry, and an assistant that can quote a band or a range from your own list removes the most common phone call you get. |
|---|---|
| New patient information | What to bring, how long the first appointment runs, what the examination covers, and whether an x-ray is usually taken. This answers the anxiety underneath the question rather than the question itself. |
| Your cancellation and missed appointment policy | The exact notice period and the exact charge. Vague wording here produces a complaint later, so index the policy you would actually enforce. |
| Treatment explainers you already publish | Pages on implants, aligners, root canal treatment and whitening. These carry the vocabulary patients search with, so they are what makes the assistant answer in their words rather than yours. |
| Payment plans and finance terms | Which plan you offer, what it covers, and what a patient has to do to apply. Finance is a decision point, and an unanswered finance question is a lost booking. |
| Practice logistics | Opening hours including the ones that vary, parking, the nearest accessible entrance, and how to reach the out of hours service. |
What has to reach a person
Any symptom, from a twinge to a swelling
Pain, swelling, bleeding, a knocked out tooth, a reaction after treatment. These are clinical judgements, and the difference between an inconvenience and an emergency is a question only a clinician can ask.
The correct behaviour is to stop answering, give the practice number and the out of hours route, and take the patient's details if they want a call back. Not to suggest a painkiller, not to estimate how urgent it is.
Anything about a specific patient's own treatment
Whether their crown is ready, what the dentist wrote in their notes, why they were referred. The assistant has no access to a patient record and should never appear to, because a confident wrong answer here is worse than no answer.
A quoted price for work that has not been examined
A price list gives bands and starting points. A patient asking what their treatment will cost is asking a question that depends on an examination, and turning a range into a number they will hold you to is a complaint waiting to happen.
The assistant should quote the published range, say clearly that the final figure follows an examination, and offer to book one.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot help with symptoms or anything about your own treatment. Please call the practice on the number above, and use the out of hours service if it is urgent. If you would like the team to call you back, leave your name and number and I will pass it on.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Appointment and treatment information is health data
The fact that somebody has an appointment at a dental practice is itself health information in most data protection regimes, and in the United States it falls under the health privacy rules. That shapes what the assistant may confirm to whoever happens to be typing.
In practice: never confirm that a named person is a patient, has an appointment, or had a procedure. The assistant answers about the practice, not about people.
Advertising rules apply to what it says about treatment
Dental advertising is regulated in most countries, and the restrictions on claims about outcomes apply to anything published in the practice's name. An assistant answering in your name is publishing in your name.
Keep the indexed material to what you would be comfortable printing in a leaflet, and it inherits that discipline automatically.
Who is registered to say what
Reception staff are not registered to give clinical advice, which is why a well run practice already has a script for handling symptom calls. The assistant should use the same script, because the constraint on it is the same constraint.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether a symptom is urgent, or how long it can safely wait.
- Which painkiller to take, or how much of it.
- Whether a particular treatment is right for a patient's mouth.
- Anything about a named individual's records, appointments or history.
- A firm price for treatment that has not been examined.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a dental clinic rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- A dental visitor wants an appointment. What should happen?What to say when a dental visitor asks for an appointment, given the assistant cannot see the diary or hold a slot.
- Explaining a dental deposit or a charge for a missed appointmentWhat the assistant should say about dental deposits, short notice cancellations, and a charge that has already landed.
- What the assistant can say when somebody asks what a crown costsDental prices come in bands and the final figure follows an examination. Quoting one without committing the practice.
- Answering what actually happens at a first dental appointmentFirst appointment questions at a dental practice are usually anxiety in disguise. What to answer, and how to word it.
- Passing a dental visitor to a person the moment a symptom appearsA described toothache is not a support question. Spotting it mid sentence and getting the patient onto the phone.
- A patient wants to move their appointment. Which one is it?Which dental appointments can be moved, why a crown fit is harder to shift than a check up, and what may be said about notice.
- Three dental waiting lists, and what can be said about eachThe funded list, the short notice cancellation list and the orthodontic wait are three different queues, and only one is good news.
- Why a dental practice cannot just publish nine to fiveA practice runs sessions, not office hours. What to publish about the lunchtime gap, hygienist days and the Saturday list.
- Nine on a Friday, and somebody types that a filling has come outA Friday night message about a broken tooth is not asking when you open. What the assistant has to surface before anything else.
- Getting a patient from the bus stop to the chairThe step at the front, the surgeries upstairs and where to leave the car. Arrival detail a practice has usually never written down.
- Routing a dental complaint without touching the clinical partPractice complaints procedures are written and staged. What may be acknowledged, and why the treatment itself must never be discussed.
- Plan, insurance or paying at the desk: three different answersA capitation plan is not insurance, and neither decides what a claim pays. What to publish about plans, claim forms and authorisation.
- Somebody wants a price in writing before they have been seenA dental estimate is a document issued after an examination, not a figure from a chat window. How to explain the way one is produced.
- Three access requests a dental practice gets, none of them an FAQA wheelchair user, a deaf patient needing an interpreter and a patient asking about sedation are three different requests.
- Why a dental record cannot simply be deleted on requestDental records carry a statutory retention period. What the assistant may explain, and why the request still has to reach a person.
- A patient wants to stop paying the monthly planEnding a dental plan means a notice period, a direct debit and sometimes a plan provider. What can be explained and what cannot be ended.
- A patient wants their money back on a fillingA crown that failed is a clinical dispute, not a returns question. Why it has to be routed and the treatment never discussed.
- Can you see all four of us at the same time?Four people, one dentist and one chair. What can be explained about consecutive slots and the school holiday rush.
Questions
- Will it try to diagnose if a patient describes pain?
- It answers only from the material you give it, and a price list contains no diagnosis to give. The refusal wording is yours to write, so you set exactly what it says when somebody describes a symptom. You can also make it more cautious, so it refuses on a weaker match rather than reaching for the nearest page.
- Can it book the appointment as well as answer about it?
- It does not write into a diary. What it does is answer the questions that stop somebody booking, then take a name, an email and a message when they ask for a person, which arrives with you as an enquiry.
- What should we index first if we only have an hour?
- The price list, the new patient information, and the missed appointment policy. Those three cover the majority of what a dental reception is asked, and all three are already written down somewhere.
- Does it need patient records to be useful?
- No, and it should not have them. Everything above is answered from published practice information. Nothing in the useful set requires knowing who is asking.
Keep reading
- For a medical practiceAdministrative questions a practice can safely automate, the symptom questions it must never touch, and how to word the refusal.
- For a veterinary clinicOwners ask about price, hours and emergencies at once. Here is what a vet practice can automate and where it must hand over fast.
- For a physiotherapy clinicSession prices, referral rules and what to wear are safe to automate. Exercise advice and injury assessment are not.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.