Website for a private dental practice with booking and reminders
The practice runs on a diary that is full weeks ahead, a fee list people compare before they ring anybody, and a reception answering the telephone while three patients stand at the desk. An hour that empties at short notice is the most expensive hour in the building.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
Where the week leaks
None of this is clinical. It is diary administration, and it is the part of a practice that costs the most when it goes wrong.
The chair that stands empty at ten
The ten o'clock does not arrive. Nobody rang, the surgery is set up, the nurse is stood there, and the hour cannot be sold to anybody else at that notice. It happens most weeks in a diary that was booked solid, and it never appears anywhere as a loss. It just looks like a quiet morning.
Holding room for the ones who cannot wait
Some of the day has to stay free for patients who need to be seen quickly. Held too tightly, those hours stand empty; opened up, they are filled a fortnight in advance by routine work and there is nothing left when the call actually comes. Reception is making that judgement by hand, several times a day.
The fee list gets compared before anybody rings
People look at what a private practice charges before they get in touch, and they compare one list against another and against whatever else they can find. If your fees are not somewhere readable, the comparison still happens, using whatever they turn up instead, and the telephone call never arrives at your desk.
Four things a practice diary needs
Everything else is included too. These four are the ones reception will notice by the end of the first week.
Appointments booked against the real diary
A patient chooses the appointment type first and the time second, and is only shown times the practice can genuinely take. An examination and a longer appointment do not occupy the same amount of the day, and the diary works to that rather than putting every hour up as if it were open.
Confirmation on booking, reminder before the day
The confirmation goes out immediately, carrying the date, the time and the clinician, and the reminder arrives while there is still room to rearrange rather than simply not attend. E-mail sending is in every plan; SMS, which is where most patients actually read anything, is a prepaid add-on.
Surgeries and clinicians as resources
Two surgeries and three clinicians is a real ceiling on how much can run at once. Put the rooms and the people in as resources and tie each appointment type to what it needs, so nothing can be booked into a surgery that is already in use or with somebody who is not in that day.
A fee list a patient can actually read
Every line takes the pricing type that suits it: a set fee where the fee is set, a from-price where it depends, a quote where it has to be quoted and approved on its own page. Written out on the page, it answers the question people are asking before they decide whether to ring.
How the fee list can be laid out
Your own names and your own fees. The structure is what matters here: a pricing type on each line and a length behind it, so that the list and the diary agree.
The list can be split into categories, for example examinations, hygienist appointments and quoted work, each with fees of its own.
What practice managers ask first
Yes. Slots can be reserved for one appointment type or closed to online booking altogether, so the hours you hold back stay held back until reception decides to fill them.
It does. Rooms and staff go in as resources and every appointment type is tied to what it requires, so nothing is bookable when the surgery or the clinician is already committed elsewhere.
It sends a confirmation at the point of booking and a reminder before the day, and it gives the patient a link for rearranging without ringing. A slot released the evening before is back in the diary that evening.
No, but the list is the first thing people go looking for. Lines that genuinely vary can be shown as a from-price or as quoted work, so nothing on the page commits you to a fee you cannot hold.
It can be imported instead, so the pages and the fee list carry across. The builder then adds whatever is missing, and anything on the finished page is edited by clicking the pencil next to it.
They run from €49 to €199 a month excluding VAT. The site on your own domain, SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support are part of every plan, and SMS sending is bought as prepaid credit.
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Get the practice diary and the fee list online
Set out how the practice is organised, which appointment types you run and how long each one takes, and a first version comes back with the diary, the resources and the fee list in place. Reception can adjust any of it on the page itself.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.