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Treatment Plan Follow-Up

Help patients understand the next step after a treatment plan is presented.

We audit your follow-up workflow, fix the process, configure the tools, and build the automations or help hire the person you need. Then we test the setup, train your team, and hand it over.

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Situation

Is this your problem?

Sound familiar?

  • Patients say "I need to think about it" and nobody follows up.
  • The unscheduled treatment list grows and has no owner.
  • Follow-up happens when someone remembers, not on a plan.
  • Cost questions go unanswered and the plan quietly dies.
  • The schedule has holes while diagnosed treatment sits in charts.
  • You learn a plan went cold months later, from a report.
Scope

What this workstation owns.

From the presented plan to a decision, a booking, or a clear next step.

Follow-up queue
  • Maintain the unscheduled treatment list
  • Rank open plans by value and age
  • Assign each plan an owner and a next contact date
  • Keep contact preferences and consent current
  • Record every contact attempt and outcome
Outreach
  • Make approved follow-up calls, texts, and emails
  • Follow the agreed contact cadence and stop rules
  • Use approved scripts and message templates
  • Reopen stale plans within the agreed window
Estimates & financing
  • Prepare approved estimates before follow-up contact
  • Answer cost questions with approved information
  • Route financing and payment-plan questions
  • Track pre-authorization status for planned treatment
Scheduling handoff
  • Book accepted treatment within approved scheduling rules
  • Hand confirmed bookings to Scheduling & Recall
  • Route benefit questions to Insurance Verification
  • Flag benefit-expiry deadlines on open plans
Boundaries & escalation
  • Escalate clinical questions to a clinician
  • Stop outreach on patient request or opt-out
  • Record decisions and next steps in the PMS
Metrics

How do we measure success?

Five measures. Targets agreed from your practice's baseline.

Plans with a next action
Share of open treatment plans with a scheduled follow-up, a recorded decision, or a booked appointment.
Time to first follow-up
Days from plan presentation to the first completed follow-up contact.
Follow-up completion
Share of planned follow-up contacts completed within the agreed window.
Treatment booked
Presented plans that became a scheduled appointment in the period.
Stale plans
Share of open plans with no completed contact inside the agreed window.
Automation

AI agents and automations for this workstation.

A few examples. We build around your practice's needs and existing systems, not a fixed menu.

Unscheduled-list agentscan → rank → assign

Built forYour unscheduled treatment list grows untouched, nobody knows which plans to call first, or follow-up depends on memory.

$1–1.5M
Annual revenue left unscheduled
46% vs 83%
Average vs. top 10% case acceptance
10%+
Reported acceptance lift from follow-ups

Vendor benchmark: Henry Schein One 2024 Benchmark Study, based on Jarvis analytics customer data. The top 10% are their best-performing customers, not a representative sample, and the follow-up lift is their general guidance, not a measured result for this workflow. These are not our results or a forecast for your practice.

Henry Schein One unscheduled treatment benchmark ↗

The manual way

  • Export or open the unscheduled treatment list.
  • Read through every open plan by hand.
  • Pick who to call based on memory or gut feel.
  • Write names on a callback list.
  • Check later whether anyone called.

With AI agents & automation

  • The open-plan list is scanned on a set schedule.
  • Plans are ranked by value, age, and expiry dates.
  • Each plan gets an owner and a next contact date.
  • Plans without a next action surface as exceptions.

Systems needed

  • Practice management system
  • Unscheduled treatment report
  • Task queue

Human control

People decide the cadence, the ranking rules, and who gets called. The agent assigns and reminds; it never contacts the patient.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
An accepted or presented treatment plan sits with no scheduled appointment and no follow-up task. Today the list grows and nobody owns it.
What it reads
Your PMS unscheduled treatment list: procedure codes, presented and accepted dates, plan value, provider, and patient contact preferences.
What it decides
Ranking and assignment only: which plans are oldest, highest value, or nearing a benefit-expiry deadline, and who owns the next contact. Fixed rules you set.
What it does
Builds the follow-up queue, assigns each plan an owner and a next contact date, creates the task, and flags plans that pass your agreed stale window.
Human approval / takeover
People decide the cadence, the ranking rules, and who gets called. The agent assigns and reminds; it never contacts the patient.
Systems needed
Read access to your PMS treatment-plan and unscheduled-treatment reporting, plus a task list or queue. Most major dental PMS platforms expose this directly or through a scheduled report. We verify yours during the audit.
Privacy / access
Reads treatment and contact data under minimum-necessary access. No messages go out from this workflow, and access is limited to the fields the queue needs.
Logging & failure handling
Every scan, assignment, and stale-plan flag is logged. If the PMS report fails, the queue keeps its last state and the failure is flagged, never silently empty.
Success metric
Share of open plans with an owner and a next contact date, and the count of plans past the stale window.
What the practice owns at handoff
The queue configuration, ranking rules, stale-window rules, and a one-page operating guide, running in your accounts.
Good fit when
Your unscheduled treatment list grows untouched, nobody knows which plans to call first, or follow-up depends on memory.
Not a fit when
Your PMS already produces an owned, worked follow-up queue. In that case we tune what you have instead of building.
Follow-up outreach agentsend → track → remind

Built forFollow-up messages go out late or never, nobody tracks replies, or one patient gets contacted twice while another hears nothing.

$600K+
Scheduled treatment attributed
19
Locations in the deployment
7.4M
Messages sent in one year

Vendor-reported customer story: Solutionreach describes a 19-location dental group that consolidated patient communication onto its platform. The $600K is treatment attributed to text and online booking across a broad combined deployment (reminders, recall, newsletters, group messaging), not a treatment follow-up workflow alone. These are not our results or a forecast for your practice.

Solutionreach Dental Associates case study ↗

The manual way

  • Pull the day's follow-up list.
  • Call or text each patient by hand.
  • Note replies in the chart or a spreadsheet.
  • Set your own reminder for the next attempt.
  • Hope nobody gets contacted twice.

With AI agents & automation

  • Follow-up messages go out on your cadence.
  • Replies are recorded against the plan.
  • Anything beyond a simple reply goes to a person.
  • Failed sends and non-responders surface as exceptions.

Systems needed

  • Practice management system
  • Text or email
  • Exception queue

Human control

A person handles every real conversation: questions, objections, anything with feeling in it. Replies go to a person, not back to the automation. With the optional AI assist, the system drafts a suggested response for a person to approve, but nothing sends itself.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
A follow-up contact comes due for an open plan. Today it depends on someone finding time to call.
What it reads
The follow-up queue: patient name, preferred channel, contact consent, the plan summary approved for messaging, and contact history.
What it decides
Which approved template applies (first follow-up, reminder, final attempt) and which channel the patient prefers. Fixed rules, no judgment calls.
What it does
Sends the approved follow-up message, records delivery and replies against the plan, creates a task when the patient replies, and schedules the next step in the cadence or stops per your rules.
Human approval / takeover
A person handles every real conversation: questions, objections, anything with feeling in it. Replies go to a person, not back to the automation. With the optional AI assist, the system drafts a suggested response for a person to approve, but nothing sends itself.
Systems needed
Read access to your PMS follow-up queue and a consent-aware texting or email channel. We check what you already own first.
Privacy / access
Messages contain no clinical detail beyond an approved plan reference, follow the patient's recorded consent, and honor opt-outs immediately. Access is limited to the fields outreach needs.
Logging & failure handling
Every send, reply, and stop is logged against the plan. Failed sends create an exception task instead of dropping the patient.
Success metric
Follow-up completion within the agreed window, reply rate, and plans that reach a decision or a booking.
What the practice owns at handoff
The cadence, templates, consent rules, and exception workflow, running in your accounts, documented.
Good fit when
Follow-up messages go out late or never, nobody tracks replies, or one patient gets contacted twice while another hears nothing.
Not a fit when
Your team already runs a tracked cadence inside tools you trust. Then we connect and document what exists instead of replacing it.
Estimate & financing agentassemble → draft → route

Built forCost questions stall follow-up, staff rebuild estimates from scratch for every call, or financing options come up only when the patient asks.

~60%
Patients who delay due to cost
20 → 5 min
Manual prep vs. draft review
5 hrs / mo
Illustrative time saved

Industry figure: the American Dental Association reports that nearly 60% of patients delay or avoid treatment due to cost, as cited in Henry Schein One's benchmark commentary. The time figures are an illustrative calculation, not measured results: 20 follow-up contacts/month × (20 minutes assembling the estimate and options − 5 minutes reviewing a draft) / 60 = 5 hours/month. Review time includes approval. The audit must validate volume, prep time, and correction effort.

Henry Schein One unscheduled treatment benchmark ↗

The manual way

  • Open the plan and the fee schedule.
  • Rebuild the patient portion estimate by hand.
  • Look up which financing options apply.
  • Write a cost summary before the call.
  • Answer financing questions from memory.

With AI agents & automation

  • The estimate and approved options attach to the follow-up task.
  • AI drafts a plain-language cost summary.
  • The coordinator reviews and corrects before any contact.
  • Financing questions route to the approved answers.

Systems needed

  • Practice management system
  • Fee and estimate data
  • Review queue

Human control

A person reviews every estimate and cost summary before use. Benefit verification questions go to Insurance Verification; clinical questions go to a clinician.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
A follow-up task involves a plan with cost questions or no current estimate on file. Today the coordinator rebuilds it before every call.
What it reads
The treatment plan, your fee schedule, your approved estimate rules, and your list of approved payment and financing options.
What it decides
Nothing financial. It assembles the estimate draft using your rules and selects which approved financing options apply to the plan size. The AI drafts; it does not decide.
What it does
Prepares the estimate draft and a plain-language cost summary attached to the follow-up task, flagged for coordinator review.
Human approval / takeover
A person reviews every estimate and cost summary before use. Benefit verification questions go to Insurance Verification; clinical questions go to a clinician.
Systems needed
Read access to plans and fee data in your PMS, plus your documented financing options. If estimate rules are not documented, writing them is part of the audit.
Privacy / access
Financial and treatment data stays in your accounts under minimum-necessary access and a Business Associate Agreement where required. The agent sends nothing to the patient.
Logging & failure handling
Every draft, review, and edit is logged. Missing fee data stops the draft and flags a person instead of guessing a number.
Success metric
Share of follow-up tasks with a current estimate attached, and coordinator time spent per contact.
What the practice owns at handoff
The estimate assembly workflow, the cost-summary template, the approved financing language, and the review process, in your accounts.
Good fit when
Cost questions stall follow-up, staff rebuild estimates from scratch for every call, or financing options come up only when the patient asks.
Not a fit when
Your PMS already generates patient-portion estimates your team trusts and uses on every call.
Stale-plan reactivation agentidentify → contact → queue replies

Built forPlans older than 90 days sit untouched, you reactivate only when the schedule looks empty, or patients hear from you once and never again.

30 plans
Assumed monthly stale list
12 → 4 min
Manual work-up vs. queue review
4 hrs / mo
Illustrative time saved

Illustrative calculation, not measured results: 30 stale plans/month × (12 minutes reviewing and logging each by hand − 4 minutes reviewing the queued draft) / 60 = 4 hours/month. Patient conversations, clinical decisions, and final close-out calls remain with your team and are excluded. The audit must validate list size and handling time.

The manual way

  • Run an aging report when someone remembers.
  • Read through months of cold plans.
  • Pick a few names and call between other work.
  • Stop when the schedule fills up again.

With AI agents & automation

  • Plans past your stale window are found automatically.
  • An approved re-engagement message goes out.
  • Replies route to a person with the plan context.
  • Non-responders close out per your stop rules.

Systems needed

  • Practice management system
  • Text or email
  • Aging rules

Human control

People set the stale window, the stop rules, and the message. Every reply goes to a person; a patient who declines is marked and never contacted again by this workflow.

Full build specification
Trigger / problem
An open plan passes your agreed stale window with no completed contact. Today these plans sit until someone runs a report.
What it reads
The aged open-plan list: last contact date, plan age and value, contact history, consent status, and any recorded opt-out.
What it decides
Eligibility only: which stale plans qualify for one more approved contact under your rules. Fixed rules.
What it does
Sends one approved re-engagement message, logs the attempt, routes any reply to a person with the plan context, and closes out non-responders per your stop rules.
Human approval / takeover
People set the stale window, the stop rules, and the message. Every reply goes to a person; a patient who declines is marked and never contacted again by this workflow.
Systems needed
Read access to PMS plan and contact history, plus a consent-aware messaging channel. We verify what your PMS can report before scoping the build.
Privacy / access
Same rules as the outreach agent: minimal message content, recorded consent, immediate opt-out, data in your accounts.
Logging & failure handling
Every attempt, reply, and close-out is logged against the plan. Anything the system cannot classify becomes a task for a person, never a dropped patient.
Success metric
Share of stale plans with a logged final outcome (booked, declined, or closed), and reactivated bookings per period.
What the practice owns at handoff
The stale-window rules, the re-engagement template, the stop rules, and the close-out workflow, documented in your accounts.
Good fit when
Plans older than 90 days sit untouched, you reactivate only when the schedule looks empty, or patients hear from you once and never again.
Not a fit when
Your open-plan list is small enough that a person works every plan every month. In that case a simple aging report and a task list may be enough, and we will say so.
Hiring

We help you hire for this workstation.

One role. Two hiring routes.

Role for this workstation

Treatment Plan Follow-Up coordinator

Own the unscheduled treatment list, run the follow-up cadence, answer approved cost questions, and hand booked treatment to scheduling.

Reports to your office manager. Clinical decisions stay with clinicians, and final estimates stay with your approved process.

EmployeeBest when the role also owns the physical front desk or in-person treatment conversations.
Remote human virtual assistantBest when the work can run securely through your phone and practice systems.

How we help

  • Define the role, hours, boundaries, and access
  • Choose employee, direct hire, or agency
  • Source and screen qualified candidates
  • Interview every candidate with one scorecard
  • Set up access, training, SOPs, and onboarding

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Resources

Resources.

Relevant articles for improving this workstation.

Treatment They Never Came Back ForWhat Happens After a Patient Says, 'I Need to Think About It'?The Unscheduled Treatment Recovery SystemWorkflow: Unscheduled Treatment RecoveryUnscheduled Treatment Recall Script GeneratorTreatment Plan Coordinator VAThe Crown That Wasn't ThereWhen Every System Texts the Same Patient
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FAQ

Common questions.

Bring us the part that isn't working.

We build it, train your team, and hand it over. Your team owns and operates it.

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