Dental recall and reminder planner: next examination and hygiene dates from the clinician's interval, with the reminder dates that cut failed appointments

Dentally's own support pages list the recall questions practice owners ask most: why has a patient not received a recall, how do I know the automated recalls are working. The questions are about trust in a process nobody can see. This planner makes the process visible for one patient: the dates, in order, from the interval the clinician set.

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Recall and reminder planner: the next examination and hygiene dates from the interval, and the reminder dates that cut failed appointments

Last examination PatientAdultUnder 18 Recall interval set by the clinician (months)369121824NICE CG19: 3 to 12 months under 18, 3 to 24 months for adults, set on the patient's risk Hygiene interval (months, 0 for none) Last hygiene visit TodayLeave blank for today

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The interval is clinical; the dates are arithmetic

NICE's guideline on dental recall sets a range, not a number: between three and twelve months for patients under 18, and between three and twenty-four months for adults, with the interval chosen on the individual's risk of oral disease and reviewed at each visit. The clinician sets it. The planner takes the months and adds them to the last examination, capping an under-18's interval at twelve months because the guideline does, and prints the due date. It never proposes an interval.

Hygiene has its own interval and its own last visit. The planner shows the hygiene due date beside the examination and says whether the two fall within a month of each other, which is when they should be booked together.

The reminder dates

Working back from the due date: the recall invitation one month before, then the three-step sequence that one vendor measured as taking its average FTA rate from 4.3% to 2.5%: an email at 20 days, an email at 7 days and a text at 2 days. A reply-to-confirm on the text took the rate to 1.2%. The planner prints the dates and marks the ones that have already passed, so a patient who is three weeks from due shows only the steps still available.

Overdue

A patient past the due date without an appointment is overdue, and the planner says by how many days. The practice's own policy then applies: contact again at one month and three months, record each contact, and let the clinician decide whether to write a final letter. The record of contacts is what matters if the patient later says they were never recalled; the CQC guide covers the evidence the front desk is asked for.

Checking the system against the planner

The owner's question, "why has Mrs X not received a recall", has three usual answers, and the planner finds which one applies. The interval in the record is wrong or missing, so the system never generated a due date: compare the record's interval with the clinician's notes. The due date was generated but the contact details are out of date, so the invitation went to an old address or a dead number: the planner's dates will all show as passed and the contact log will show sends with no reply. Or the sequence ran and the patient did not respond, which is the overdue list's job, not the recall system's. Running five random patients through the planner once a month, and comparing with what the system did, is a ten-minute audit that catches the first two before an inspector or a complaint does.

What the planner does not do

It does not read your practice management system, so it is a check, not a replacement: run a patient through it when you doubt the system's recall and compare the dates. It does not send anything. And it does not know the patient; the clinician's interval and the hygiene interval are typed in from the record.

In the practice

An AI Recall Coordinator set up by Overlyft runs this for every patient in the practice management system each week: it lists who is due in the next month, drafts the invitations and schedules the reminder sequence, keeps the overdue list with the contact history, and reports the recall rate and the FTA rate monthly. It changes no interval and writes nothing clinical; the practice manager reviews the invitation wording once and the clinicians own the intervals. Patient data stays in the practice's own systems and account, under the data protection rules for health data. Not clinical advice.