Dental office answering service built for Open Dental practices
Hygienists cannot pick up the phone with their hands in a mouth. Clinic Answering Service answers every call, books recall and emergency visits into real slots (Open Dental write-back is planned; sandbox today), checks dental benefits while the patient is talking and fills the chair when someone cancels.
Built for Open Dental, Dentrix, OpenEMR, Google Calendar practices · integration status (sandbox today, REST API live)
Sample call · sample data, not a real patient or payer response
Caller Hi, I chipped a tooth last night and it hurts when I drink cold water.
Clinic Answering Service I am sorry to hear that. Let me get you in quickly. Can I confirm your date of birth? Your Delta Dental plan shows as active with the payer, and Dr. Patel has an emergency slot today at 2:15.
Caller 2:15 works.
Clinic Answering Service You are booked at 2:15 with Dr. Patel. I have texted the address and a short pain form. If the pain gets severe before then, call back and say "urgent" to reach the on-call line.
Sample data. Eligibility and EHR steps shown run in sandbox (demo) mode today.
A third of calls go to voicemail during busy morning blocks
Front desk re-verifies benefits on the day because the booking call did not
Same-day cancellations leave hygiene chairs empty
What the dental pack does on every call
- Book, move and cancel hygiene, exam and emergency visits in real Open Dental slots
- Verify Delta Dental, Cigna, MetLife and Aetna eligibility (270/271) on the call, including preventive frequency
- Tooth pain triage words escalate to the on-call dentist with a whisper summary
- Recall campaign calls and texts for overdue hygiene patients
- Cancellation fill: call the waitlist in order, write the fill to the schedule
- New-patient intake and insurance card photo by SMS before the first visit
What is live today, and where a person stays in charge
- EHR write-back: sandbox (demo) for Open Dental, Dentrix, OpenEMR, Google Calendar. Bookings land in the built-in Clinic Answering Service schedule and reach your system by REST API or CSV export until a production adapter is released. Status per system.
- Insurance eligibility (270/271): sandbox until a clearinghouse is contracted for your account; sandbox results are test data and are labelled as such in the app. Once live, the assistant reads back only what the payer's 271 response states, says "the plan shows as active" rather than "you are covered", never quotes a price or guarantees payment, and flags errors, timeouts or inactive results to your front desk for a manual check.
- Clinical safety: the assistant books, routes and escalates. It never gives medical advice, triages symptoms or approves refills; urgent words you define go to a person on your on-call list, emergencies are told to call 911, and crisis calls go to a clinician or the 988 Lifeline. Your staff review escalations, new-patient records and flagged eligibility results.
Intake and booking examples
Each call type has its own short intake. Answers are written to the patient record, not to a message pad.
Emergency visit
Pain level, trigger (cold, biting), swelling, when it started, last visit date
Hygiene recall
Last cleaning date, insurance ID, preferred hygienist, preferred morning or afternoon
New patient
Demographics, insurance card photo by SMS, reason for visit, referral source
Systems for this specialty: Open DentalDentrixOpenEMRGoogle Calendar See how each integration works →
Read next: How to set up a dental office answering service · After-hours answering service for clinics · AI vs human medical answering services
ROI for dental offices
What do missed calls cost you?
Defaults are typical for dental offices. Change them to your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Does Clinic Answering Service book into Open Dental or just send a message?
It books into real slots, but not into Open Dental yet. Today bookings land in the built-in Clinic Answering Service schedule, which staff see live and can export or pull by API. The Open Dental adapter runs as a sandbox (demo) and production write-back with procedure-based lengths is planned.
Can it verify dental insurance during the call?
It is built to. Clinic Answering Service sends an X12 270 with service type 35 (dental) and reads back only what the 271 returns: active status and, where the payer includes it, preventive coverage. Today the eligibility connection is a sandbox: results are test data until a clearinghouse is contracted for your account, and the assistant never promises coverage beyond what the 271 response says.
What about dental emergencies after hours?
Words like "swelling", "bleeding", "knocked out" and "severe pain" trigger your emergency rule: Clinic Answering Service warm-transfers to the on-call dentist with a whisper summary, or books the first emergency slot and texts instructions if nobody picks up.
How does the hygiene waitlist fill work?
When a hygiene visit is cancelled, Clinic Answering Service calls overdue recall patients first, then the waitlist, in the order you set. The first yes is written to the schedule and the rest get a text saying the slot is taken.
Do you work with Dentrix?
Dentrix connections are scoped per practice because Dentrix versions differ. Tell us whether you run Dentrix G7 or Ascend and we confirm the write-back path before you sign.
Other specialties
Never send a patient to voicemail again.
Ask for a demo and a person replies within one US business day. BAA signed before the first patient call. No long-term contract.