Patient Communication

Bring Patients Back with the Reactivation List

Reactivation List

Ever wonder what happened to that favorite patient of yours? Want to reach out to patients who haven’t been in the office for a while? Look no further, the Reactivation List is here to help. The Reactivation List is used to track and manage contact attempts for patients who haven’t been in the office for an extended period of time (you can determine what this period is). If you can’t reach patients or find that they don’t plan to return to your practice, you can mark them as inactive or archived.

Click the thumbnail to see an infographic on using the Reactivation List and read below for more.

Initial Setup

Before you can start using the Reactivation List, there is a bit of setup. First, you will need to enable the feature. To do so, go to Setup, Advanced, Show Features, and enable Reactivation List (this is in the General section).

Once that is enabled, you’ll want to set your default settings for the Reactivation List. This will determine which patients actually show up on the list. Go to Setup, Appointments, Reactivation to set Reactivation List defaults.

From here, you can set default messages, statuses, contact intervals, etc., but most importantly you will set the default Days Past (this will be the default minimum number used to calculate the To date in the Reactivation List). So, if you normally want to reach out to patients you haven’t seen in at least 3 years, you would set this to 1095.

Once you’ve got your defaults set, you’re ready to start using the Reactivation List!

Using the Reactivation List

To get to the Reactivation List, go to the Appointment Module, Lists, Recall, and click the Reactivations tab

Filtering the List

The default To date is based on the Days Past that is set in Setup Reactivation and the default From date is three years prior to that date. Both of these dates can be changed once you’re in the Reactivation List. This date range filters based on the last time the patient had a completed procedure (i.e., the patient must have last been seen in the set date range).

If the patient was last seen in the set date range, but they’ve already got an upcoming appointment scheduled, they’ll be excluded from the list. There’s no reason to reach out; they’re already coming back into the office.

Set filters in the View section to further filter which patients are included in the Reactivation List

  • Show Reactivate: Choose the number of contact attempts to include in the list. This is helpful if, for example, you only want to reach out to patients you have yet to reach out to. Set this to 0 to only see patients who have not been contacted.
  • Billing Type: Helpful to filter by a specific billing type and exclude out others (e.g., Collections, Pre-collections).
  • Exclude Inactive: This is unchecked by default, so patients whose status has been changed to Inactive will be excluded from the list. If you’d like to include those patients, maybe some were marked Inactive prematurely or you want to give patients you’d previously marked as Inactive another shot, check this box to include them.
  • Click Refresh after setting filters to update the results in the grid. See our Manual for information on other filters.

Contacting Patients

Once you’ve set your filters and clicked Refresh, the grid in the middle of the window will update. From here you will see patient information, including Primary Provider and Contact information. Contact information is pulled from the patient’s Prefer Recall Method (if any), which is why it’s always helpful to ask patients their preferred method of contact and set that in Edit Patient Information. If no Prefer Recall Method is set, a Home Phone or Email will display.

You can easily select a patient and right-click to go to their Family Module or Account (or use the buttons at the bottom) to get more information about the patient.

You can mail patients directly from the Reactivation List, just like the Recall List, by creating postcards or mailing labels.

  1. Select the patients you would like to mail. Click and drag or Ctrl + click to choose multiple.
  2. Click one of the following buttons:
    • Postcard Preview: Click to print postcards with preset text. See Reactivation Setup to customize.
    • Single Labels: Click to print address labels on a dedicated label printer (e.g., thermal printer).
    • Label Preview: Click to print address labels on standard printer using label sheets.
  3. From the preview window, click Print.
    • If printing Single Labels, there will be no preview. Labels will be printed immediately. Depending on your printer settings, you may receive a printer prompt before printing begins.
  4. If all Postcards or Labels printed successfully, click Yes on the prompt to mark the patients as reminded.

If you don’t want to mail a patient, you can also easily create email from the Reactivation List by selecting patients and clicking Email. You can customize the email message sent in Reactivation Setup.

For patients that you may want to call, or otherwise manually contact, you can also create Commlogs from the Reactivation List by clicking the Comm button. You can even select multiple patients at once if you want to leave the same Commlog (e.g., if you called five people in a row and none answered).

You can also set a specific status when creating your manual Commlog.

  1. Select patients. Click and drag or Ctrl + click to choose multiple.
  2. Choose a status from the Set Status dropdown.
  3. Click Set.
  4. Enter your Commlog. Some automated text will already be entered, but you can add or edit as needed. (Remember: this Commlog is be added to all of the patients you selected)
  5. Click OK to save the Commlog and update the Reactivation status of all selected patients.

Scheduling Patients

If you’ve reached out to a patient and gotten a hold of them and they would like to schedule an appointment (yay!), it’s easy to do. Simply click Sched Patient (or Sched Family if the patient wants to schedule for multiple family members).

The Appointment Edit window will be launched for the patient, so you can set up an appointment for the patient. If they have any procedures still in their treatment plan, these will be listed, otherwise, use Appointment Procedure Quick Adds (Single-click items) to quickly treatment plan and attach procedures to the appointment.

If you did select Sched Family, once you click OK, a window will appear for the next family member and repeat for each family member until done. For any family member you do not want to schedule, click Cancel on the Edit Appointment window.

All appointments will be sent to the Pinboard. Once you’ve discussed availability and openings with your patient and know when they want to schedule, click and drag the appointment into an operatory opening to finish scheduling.

Deactivating Patients

If a patient is unreachable or you do reach them and they don’t plan to come back to the office, maybe they’ve moved out of the area, you probably don’t want to spend future time and energy marketing or reaching out to that patient, so changing their status is suggested. If they are marked as Inactive, you can still bring them up on the Reactivation List later on, but they won’t show up by default and if you really don’t want the patient to show up on the list, you can mark them as Archived.

Individual patient statuses can be changed in Edit Patient Information. This can be accessed from the Family Module by double-clicking the Patient Information area.

Alternatively, if your practice wants to clean up multiple patients at a time, you can use the Patient Status Setter to update the status of patients who have not had an appointment or completed procedure since a certain date.

Go to Tools, Misc Tools, Patient Status Setter:

  1. To find patients with an “active” status, choose Patient from the Patients with Status.
  2. Set remaining criteria.
    • Set the date (and what it applies to) and filter by clinic.
  3. Click Create List.
  4. Select patients whose status you would like to change. Click and drag or Ctrl + click to choose multiple.
  5. Choose the Change Patient Status To from the dropdown.
  6. Click Run.
  7. Click Yes on the prompt.

Now you’re ready to start using the Reactivation List! But of course, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to Contact Us for support.

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