front desk

The Caller Who Tried Twice

"We must have been on the other line" is a guess, and patients can hear it. Once the scheduling coordinator has looked at the call log, she can say what actually happened, ask what the call was about, and find everyone else who tried twice and never made it to the counter.

October 14, 2026 · 5 min read

The Teenager Who Drove Himself

A seventeen-year-old with a license walks up to the counter by himself. May he be seen today, and who gets told what afterward? The first answer belongs to your state. The second is a federal rule most front desks guess wrong. Both belong on one page the doctor writes before he arrives.

October 12, 2026 · 7 min read

The Thing You Are Still Doing By Hand

Open the top drawer at your front desk. There is a notebook in it that was supposed to be gone when you bought the software. A by-hand process survives for one of three reasons: it is a backup, nobody was entitled to end it, or the software does not do the job. Each one calls for a different response, and none of them is throwing the notebook away.

October 9, 2026 · 6 min read

Reading Your Own Call Log

"I called earlier and nobody picked up." The front desk apologizes and guesses. The phone system knows: it wrote a row for that call the moment it came in. This post walks through a call log column by column, shows why the word "missed" means something different in each phone system, and says what a row will never tell you.

October 7, 2026 · 6 min read

The Call That Went Badly

A bad phone call is the one failure in a practice that the patient reports to somebody else's front desk. If you do hear about it, the usual fix is a conversation in the hallway, which reaches one person and nobody else. This post is about taking the call to the written page: whether the page was right, silent or wrong, and what it should say afterward.

October 5, 2026 · 7 min read

How to Tell If It Worked

Last week's post said to start AI where you can see the result, then did not say how. This is how. The ADA's list of ten commonly tracked KPIs never measures the phone, but your phone system keeps a log and your practice management system knows who ended up on the schedule. Two lists, one afternoon, and a number that describes your practice and nobody else's.

September 11, 2026 · 7 min read

What the Front Desk Is Allowed to Answer

"Am I allowed to tell him that?" Most practices answer with "use your judgment," which is not an answer. The line between what the treatment coordinator can say and what goes back to the doctor already exists, drawn by the state practice act and the ADA's own consent guidance. Here is where it sits, and how to write it down in three lists.

September 7, 2026 · 7 min read

The Handoff Nobody Documents: From the Chair to the Front Desk

Every practice runs the same twenty feet dozens of times a week. The doctor finishes, the patient walks up front, and a different person takes over the conversation. Almost nobody has written down what is supposed to cross with them. The ADA has, and the word it uses for the person at that desk is worth reading twice.

August 31, 2026 · 7 min read

Explaining a Dental Benefit Plan Without Making It Sound Like an Excuse

The front desk is being asked to translate a benefit design they did not create, to a patient who did not read the plan document, in the middle of a moment when the patient is deciding whether to accept treatment. It is one of the harder small conversations in a dental office.

August 26, 2026 · 7 min read

What Your New Front Desk Hire Cannot Even Ask About

The workarounds and exceptions and small decisions that never became procedure are the hardest part of a dental practice for a new hire to learn, because they cannot ask about what they do not know exists.

August 24, 2026 · 7 min read

Recall and Reactivation: Reaching Patients Who Have Drifted Away

Most reactivation outreach assumes the patient forgot, so it reminds them they are due. ADA Health Policy Institute data suggests forgetting is rarely the whole story, and that cost is a bigger barrier in dentistry than in any other category of care. Sorting the list into four groups and answering the real question does more than any reminder can.

August 13, 2026 · 6 min read

Writing SOPs Your Dental Team Will Actually Use

Most practices are told they need SOPs and handed a template. The template is not the problem. Your office already writes and maintains required written procedures and keeps them current, which means the capability is there. What the operational procedures are missing is an owner, a review rhythm, and a place people can reach during a busy morning.

August 3, 2026 · 6 min read