As patients start to return to the office for appointments, they may be apprehensive and not know what to expect when they arrive. You can send a message to all of your patients to describe how appointments will work during this time of social distancing and heightened caution, but patients will want specific instructions to follow for their appointments.

Dentrix Patient Engage allows you to customize the appointment reminder messages that are emailed to your patients ahead of their appointment. This is a great place to provide these messages and instructions!

From the Dentrix Hub dashboard, select Appointments (1), Reminder Settings (2), and Edit (3). Then, click Edit on the default plan.

In the default plan, click Save the Date (4), expand the email settings for messages “Sent one day after the appointment is scheduled” (5) and click Edit Template (6).

In the editor, click the + symbols to add another block of text, and enter a message telling the patient about social distancing measures your office is taking or other policies you have implemented to help ensure a safe operation. When you are finished writing the message, you might want to select and copy the text so that you can use it again in other email messages. Save the message block, and then click Save and Go Back to exit the editor.

Scroll through other email messages and edit them in a similar manner. For example, you might choose to add the text to the emails sent “3 business days before the appointment” and “1 business days before the appointment.”

Now that this messaging is part of your appointment reminders, your patients will arrive better informed and having less anxiety wondering what to expect.

When your practice has resumed normal activity, you can remove or modify these messages by editing the emails once again. Hover your mouse over the block of text and click the pen icon to edit the message, or click the trash can icon to remove the entire block of text.

Adapting your appointment reminder text to let patients know about your policy changes is part of the virtual waiting room you can set up with Dentrix and other integrated tools like Patient Engage and QuickBill eStatements. Visit https://magazine.dentrix.com/setting-up-a-virtual-waiting-room-with-patient-engage/ to read the article and get other ideas.