Scheduling Opportunities: the four call lists

Built to fill your schedule as soon as possible. The pages are in order for a reason: the order IS the priority order. People already walking in first, then people who asked to come sooner, then people who already said yes once, then reactivation calls. Your front desk owns this dashboard.

Every worklist on this dashboard is driven by the same three controls. Learn them once:

1. The green pills on the table = which list you're looking at

They're a single choice: pick one and the table re-scopes instantly. When a pill has sub-choices, picking it reveals them right next to it. Click the active pill again to clear it, or hit Reset to go back to the default view.

2. The Filters button = who's included

Top left of the page, with the plain-English sentence next to it telling you exactly what's applied right now (this page starts at "patient status Patient", meaning active patients only). Open it to narrow to one provider, one hygienist, a specialty, a procedure category, or a specific code:

Patients already coming in who could take a second appointment. The pill on the table flips between the two cuts:

Treatment Opps

Everybody coming in on the hygiene side who has outstanding treatment and no doctor visit booked. They've already taken time off; they're already in your building. The list shows each patient's appointment time, so you match them to your open doctor slots: the 8 o'clock hygiene patient is your best candidate for the 8 o'clock doctor hole.

Flip the pill to Hygiene Opps and the same list turns inside out: patients coming in on the doctor side who need a cleaning booked. Two refine chips appear next to the pill:

• Never Seen: they have never had a cleaning at your practice.
• Overdue: they've had cleanings before and they're past due.

Work this before they arrive: they're walking in anyway, so hygiene gets added to their visit or booked at the desk on their way out. Way easier than finding them by phone later.

Patients with a booked appointment who told you they'd come sooner if something opened up. The workflow to install at the desk: any time someone says "sooner if you can," double-click the appointment in Open Dental, click ASAP, and write why in the note. Those notes show up right here.

When you get a cancellation, filter this list by procedure category to match the open chair: a filling hole gets filled from the filling list. This is your cancellation backfill before anyone touches a phone book.

Broken appointments that went to Open Dental's unscheduled list. These people said yes to you at some point and fell off the schedule, which is exactly why they outrank cold recall calls. The Last appointment date filter at the top narrows the list to a window, like people last seen in the past six months.

One discipline: when you reschedule them, use the old appointment, don't create a new one.

Your recare call list; use this one instead of the old report. The pills at the top of the table are how you slice it, and here is the whole vocabulary in one picture, top to bottom:

• Idle: two choices, Never seen in hygiene and Reactivation. Nothing picked = the whole list.
• Pick Reactivation (patients who HAVE had a cleaning here before but have nothing scheduled): two sub-chips appear, Overdue and Not Overdue.
• Pick Overdue: the pill collapses to the breadcrumb "Reactivation, then Overdue" and the table now shows only patients past their hygiene due date with nothing booked. Click the breadcrumb to switch sub-choices, or Reset to clear.
• Pick Never seen in hygiene (patients who have NEVER had a cleaning at your practice): its own sub-chips are No future Appt and Has a future Appt.

Now the order Ash gives every front desk, using those exact pills:

• 1. Reactivation, then Overdue, first. They know your hygiene program and they're late. Warmest calls, highest hit rate.
• 2. Reactivation, then Not Overdue, next. Not late yet, but not booked. Get them going before they become overdue.
• 3. Never seen in hygiene, last. They've never had a cleaning with you. Coldest calls on the list. Inside it, start with "No future Appt" (nothing on the books at all); "Has a future Appt" patients are already coming in, so they can be handled at the desk instead of by phone.

Sort by Due Date, most recently due first: the person who went overdue last week picks up; the one from 2023 usually doesn't. The list carries the Insurance Carrier column so the caller can answer "does my plan cover it" on the spot.

Working it as a team

Use the download button (next to the pills) to export the list, add a who-called column, and publish it to your team monthly. And keep expectations honest: you will never call your way through three thousand patients. The real goal is upstream: stop people from ever entering this list by scheduling everyone before they leave.