How to Receive “I’m Here” Notifications in Your Virtual Waiting Room

Offices continue to make drastic changes to welcome back patients while complying with state and federal regulations. One of the most popular changes is implementing a virtual waiting room. Many offices ask their patients to wait in their car for their appointment rather than in the lobby.

Using Dentrix Ascend patient communications, you can instruct patients to text you when they arrive in the parking lot. A recent update allows you to get a notification and see the text message within Dentrix Ascend.

Customize Your Text Reminders

The text message response feature allows you to view automated text messages sent by Dentrix Ascend to a patient’s primary contact and any text response made by that contact. To create this aspect of a virtual waiting room, Dentrix Ascend is going to send your patients a text with instructions, for example, to wait in their car and text you when they arrive.

Your first task is to create the custom message.

1. Open your Patient Communications page and select the Appointment Start reminder sent one hour before the appointment time.
   
   

2. Edit the card. 
                                                       

3. Make sure Active is On.
   
   

4. Turn Exclude automated message to ON so that only the custom message is sent.
   
   

5. Set the preferred method to Text.
   
   

6. Add your patient arrival message into the Email custom message area. (Dentrix Ascend attempts to send an email when it can’t send a text, so this must be filled out too.)
   
   

7. In the text message Custom message area, add your arrival policy. It could look something like this:
   
   

Monitor Your Patient Text Responses

Dentrix Ascend notifies you of messages received by displaying a red dot next to your user name in the blue menu bar. The number in the dot represents the total number of unread messages. Click the dot to open the Inbox.

When your patient sends a text message, it appears in a bold italic text to indicate that it is unread.

Once the provider is ready to see the patient, call the patient. The mobile phone number is conveniently located under the primary contact’s name and birth date.

To keep your Inbox uncluttered, click Mark as Read, and click the hide icon.

Additional Information:

• This feature does not allow you to respond to texts in Dentrix Ascend. You will have to call the patient when it’s time for them to enter the lobby. 
• The Patient Communications module has its own navigation tour. To see how to launch the tour, click here.
• For more information on the feature for viewing text message replies, watch Viewing Text Message Responses in the Resource Center.