Playbook, dental clinic
Three dental waiting lists, and what can be said about each
A practice usually runs more than one queue and calls them all the waiting list. The funded list, the short notice cancellation list and the wait for an orthodontic assessment behave nothing like each other, and answering with the wrong one leaves somebody waiting for a call that was never going to come.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for waiting lists holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A practice can be closed to new adults on a funded scheme and open to children and to private patients on the same day, so establishing which list is meant comes before quoting any wait.
- The short notice cancellation list is the one queue that can produce an appointment today, and it is almost never published, which means the most useful answer in this pair is usually missing from the material entirely.
- An orthodontic wait is a wait for an assessment with a different clinician, sometimes at a different site, so a practice quoting its own examination wait has answered a question nobody asked.
- Where funded activity is capped for the year, a list moves quickly in one quarter and not at all in another, and describing that pattern is more honest than reducing it to a number of weeks.
How it arrives
- how long is the wait for an nhs place
- can you put me on the cancellation list
- are you taking children on the nhs
- how long to see an orthodontist
- do you ring people when someone drops out
- will i lose my place if i miss your call
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which lists exist and who each one is for | Adults on a funded scheme, children, private examinations, plan patients, orthodontic assessment. Name them the way reception names them, or a visitor asking about the waiting list will be told about whichever queue your material happens to describe best. |
|---|---|
| The short notice cancellation arrangement | Whether you keep one, how somebody joins, how much warning a call gives, and whether turning down two slots takes them off it. Good news that costs a paragraph to publish. |
| How you make contact and how long somebody has to reply | Which number you ring from, whether you leave a message, how many attempts. People fall off dental lists mostly by ignoring an unknown number, and knowing to expect it fixes that. |
| The orthodontic route | Whether an assessment needs a referral from a dentist first, who carries it out, and where. This is the wait people mean when they say waiting list, and your own diary has nothing to do with it. |
The reply
We keep separate lists and the position is not the same for each: our page says whether we are open for adults and for children on the funded scheme, and private examinations are booked directly [1]. We also keep a short notice list for people who can come in at an hour's notice, and reception can add you to it [2]. I cannot see any list from here or add anybody to one, so leave me your name and an email and I will pass it to the team.
It names the lists separately instead of averaging them, because somebody turned away from one may be eligible for another. The short notice list is offered to a person who did not know to ask for it. And it is explicit that nothing here adds anybody to anything, which is the belief that leaves people waiting.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks where they are on a list, how much longer they have to wait, or asks to be added to one.
I cannot see the list or add you to it. Give me your name, an email and which list you mean, and reception will confirm whether it is open and what happens next.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say somebody has been added to a list, because nothing here writes to one and they will stop chasing.
- Never quote a wait in weeks unless your own material publishes a figure with a review date against it.
- Never say a wait will be short because a cancellation may come up, since the cancellation list is a separate arrangement with its own rules.
- Never suggest going private will be faster unless your material says so, because that reads as a sales pitch bolted onto a funded enquiry.
Questions
- We are closed to new funded patients. Is it worth answering at all?
- It is the answer that saves the most reception time you have. A plain closed at the moment, with the position for children stated separately, ends the call in one line and does not depend on seeing a diary.
- Can it say how far up the list somebody is?
- No. It has no access to a list and cannot look anybody up. It can explain how the list is ordered if you write that down, which satisfies most of what people are actually anxious about.
- Should we publish the orthodontic wait?
- Publish the route rather than the wait, unless the wait is genuinely yours. A practice quoting somebody else's assessment time ends up defending a number it does not control.
Keep reading
- Everything for a dental clinicThe questions a dental practice actually gets, the ones that must reach a clinician, and the documents worth indexing first.
- Handling waiting lists in generalExpectation setting is the whole job: how the list is ordered, how contact is made, and whether a short notice cancellation can reach them.
- 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.
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.