Flex Learning Hub

Unscheduled Treatment Reminders

Written by Team Flex | October 30, 2024

Are you struggling to keep patients on track for their treatment needs? Do your patients need a gentle nudge or reminder to schedule important follow-up appointments? Thankfully, Flex Dental Solutions has an amazing feature to meet this need — Unscheduled Treatment Reminders. This tool helps practices stay connected with patients who need additional care so that no treatment falls through the cracks.

What Are Unscheduled Treatment Reminders?

Unscheduled Treatment Reminders are automated text messages designed to remind patients to schedule appointments for restorative care. Whether it’s a filling, crown, or another procedure, the reminders help patients stay on track with their treatment plan. These notifications can be customized based on the types of treatment, procedure codes, and timing preferences that fit your practice’s needs. 

Key Features of Unscheduled Treatment Reminders

  1. Treatment Categories: Select which categories of treatment will trigger reminders. For example, you can include fillings and crowns, reminding patients of these critical needs. 
  2. Excluding Specific Priorities: Sometimes, certain procedures may not require immediate action. If your practice uses treatment priorities like "Wait" for night guards or other elective procedures, you can exclude these from reminders. This prevents unnecessary nudges for treatments patients aren't ready to commit to.
  3. Excluding Specific Procedure Codes: Within your selected treatment categories, you may want to exclude certain procedure codes. If you don’t want to remind patients about a specific restorative code, you can exclude it from the reminders.
  4. Timing of Reminders: Timing is key to successful reminders. Flex allows you to customize when reminders are sent, how often, and how many reminders a patient receives.
  5. Message Templates: Flex makes it easy to personalize messages. Customize the text for your reminders, which can be sent in your practice's primary and alternate language (if your office is using multilingual communications in Flex). The template will autofill patient-specific details like their name, making the communication feel personalized and relevant. 

Respecting Patient Preferences

It’s important to note that Flex respects each patient’s communication preferences. If a patient has disabled text messaging in their profile, they will not receive any automated unscheduled treatment reminders, ensuring that your practice only sends reminders to those who prefer this communication method. However, the user/practice can still send manual messages unless a patient has replied 'STOP' in the past.

If you need to exclude specific patients from receiving unscheduled treatment reminders, you can easily do so in the patient’s profile settings. By default, unscheduled treatment reminders are enabled, but with a quick toggle, you can disable them for particular patients.

Final Thoughts

Unscheduled Treatment Reminders in Flex offer an effective and automated way to keep your patients on track with their dental care. With flexible settings, personalized messages, and patient-centered features, this tool will help ensure that no patient slips through the cracks when it comes to their restorative needs.

Looking to learn more about how Flex can help?