Dentally Portal

Hey!Is there anyway to turn off the DOB and First initial of surname to log onto Dentally Portal?It is very time consuming especially when reception is busy.  Patients shouldn’t have to log back in to sign part 2 of their NHS form / estimates etc.I understand having to initially do it on arrival but it is excessive and time consuming having to log them in again just for a quick signature.

We have a problem with online abooking where patients are booking a 15 minute examination in the middle of an hour long space. We dont want to use zones as this is too much work to implement and wouldnt, as far as I can see, solve the problem. It would be much better if patients were limited to booking at the start or end of a space. Even better if patients were first offered spaces that fit exactly the appointment time, before later being offered other appointments. with a larger space. 

Could I suggest doubling the size of the signature box on dentally portal for tablets. Many patients have difficulty signing within the box, or don’t even notice it so the medical history times out

Has there been any known issues with the patient portal this week?  We have had several patients who have been able to access the portal but when clicking on medical history/FP17 forms they will not open.  Our Dental Nurse manager tried from a couple of the patient phones too and she could not open the forms.

Hello,It would be useful if the date bar at the top of the diary would have an option to move forward by not just a week, 3 months and 6 months, but also just by a month (as per attached screenshot)Thank you!

Hey everyone! 👋 We're currently looking at ways to improve how online booking and appointment reasons are configured, aiming for an easier workflow with more control over your appointment settings.I’m looking to recruit practice managers to help test this new workflow, so you can feed back on our designs and share your insight to help us shape the experience before launch.If you’d be happy to spend around an hour of your time exploring this new workflow and sharing your feedback, please leave a comment below and I’ll follow up with a meeting invite.Thanks in advance!

Hey - I think it should be an option to always send medical history forms to in house Ipads, as not all patients have smart phones/may need help to update theirs. Some patients need to update them more frequently too. 

It would be useful if NHS appointments (in the portal) could have a private price set on top of NHS banding - so we can offer hygiene along with an NHS checkup in the same appointment.This would give use better control of appointment times and pricing.For NHS practices with a UDA treadmill, time efficiency is essential.Currently patients can “book together” - but if an NHS checkup is 15 minutes we don’t need a full 20 minute hygiene slot ...maybe just an additional 5-10 minutes. We could also charge a reduced price for hygiene booked with a checkup.Current workaround would be to make a sperate “Hygiene booked with checkup” hygiene appointment and rely on patients to make the right selection and not book it as a standalone appointment - which they inevitably will.  

when managing multiple dentists it would be really handy to lock appointments to the specific dentist that requested it - when dragging and dropping appointments from the clipboard to minimise booking mistakes made rather than having to hide other dentistsor is there a better way to do this that i am yet to discover? 

It would be good if we could use newlines, as well as bold, italic, underline - ideally just hmtl/css including hyperlinks - in portal appointment descriptions.Currently we are using brackets to section/demarcate second and third paragraphs but this is a pretty bad user experience, and not great for effective communication.Example“Description of appointment type. (Cancellation policy) Information about discounts and offers.“

Currently the portal says: “Balance due after appointment” but some practices take payment on the way into the appointment - it would be better to say “Balance due at appointment” ...or give the option to choose the preposition in the portal settings

Please consider a ‘drag and drop’ layout for online booking. I would like to re-arrange the way it appears in line with our paid advertisement strategy and ease of finding most valued appointment bookings. Right now it isn’t supporting each practice’s growth specifically and generalised for all. 

It would be good if there was a straight forward way to charge for premium appointment times via the portal.The only way I can think of doing that at the moment would be to duplicate all appointment types in the portal settings but change the appointment charge to the premium charge - but this would cause a cluttered and unfriendly UI.A better way would be to manage premium appointment charges via zones in the diary combined with a percentage markup or set fee. Potentially the fee could be set/applied to a zone type in the portal settings. Prices would be displayed as “from £[default_price]” and then updated on selecting appointment times in a set diary zone, with the difference being displayed alongside the available times in the diary.

Hello allIs it possible to link directly to a specific appointment type in the online booking.For example, let’s say I have setup a New Patient Exam. Is it possible to have an online booking link that only enables that appointment specifically.The use case would be:To include the New Patient Exam link in marketing correspondence (rather than a generic online booking link which requires choices by the patient).   To create numerous New Patient Exams for specific practitioners and zones. We can then do the logic check ourselves (e.g. is the patient a young patient, old patient, interested in implants etc) and direct them to the correct booking link.It is important the link would be isolated - its only possible to book the specified appointment type with that link, the patient cannot override the flow.Thoughts?

We ran into an issue today that highlighted what feels like a massive gap in the workflow, so I wanted to share it here as both a question and a feature suggestion.A patient was completing their NHS PR on the tablet, but unfortunately the tablet crashed mid-process. As a result, the signature didn’t save and the PR form no longer appeared as an option on the tablet for the patient to complete.Support advised two possible workarounds:1️⃣ Ask the patient to complete a paper PR and upload it (!!! -  I was quite taken aback when a paper form was suggested. We invest in software precisely to avoid reverting to manual, paper-based processes. )2️⃣ Create a brand new treatment plan (with no completed items) plus a “temporary” appointment, link them together, and generate a new PR form that wayApparently the invalidate option removes the form but doesn’t prompt a new one.While I appreciate the suggested workarounds, neither feels ideal: Going back to paper isn’t something we want to do - it’s b

At the moment if an NHS patient books a Private appointment via the portal e.g for Private Emergency then the portal forces the patient to fill in an NHS PR form even though the appointment is a private appointment. NHS PR forms are ONLY for an NHS Course of Treatment. This is wrong functinality.

Another feature that would be incredibly helpful is the ability to send an online booking link directly from a patient’s treatment plan.For example, a dentist may create a treatment plan with three appointments, where the first appointment is 1 hour 45 minutes and costs £314, but the patient leaves without booking at reception. It would be really useful to be able to send the patient a bespoke booking link for that specific appointment as part of the follow-up process, rather than relying on back-and-forth messages or asking reception to manually recreate it. Ideally, the patient would also be required to make an advance payment of £314 at the point of booking.This functionality existed in EXACT (albeit without the payment element), and it worked well. Having something similar in Dentally would make treatment plan follow-ups much smoother, reduce admin time, and improve conversion from planned to booked treatment.

We have just bought a Samsung Tablet for the practice, but it only appears as if it can be run as a concierge and not for signing estimates. Can this be done with an Android tablet? We are not fans of apple products. 

Hello,I have to agree with the comments of Kate T and RegentStreet85 about whether Dentally Portal is fit for purpose in servicing the needs of Plan Practices. Kate T wrote the following to the Community.“Hi Simon, the problem is with booking dental checks from our point of view.  It would be ideal if a private patient only had the option to book a private dental check, a Denplan Care patient only had the option to book a Denplan Care dental check etc.  Many thanksKate”From RegentStreet85“Hi,Yes i agree with this request. It would be a lot easier, we have 8000 pts to deal with and can be a pain when needing to book relevant appts to a plan.Unfortunately the portal doesnt seem very Denplan friendly.” It would appear that Dentally has designed a patient portal without finding out what Plan Practices need from online booking. Frustratingly the portal does not seem to be very Plan friendly.Regards,Tim 

Putting 'pt satis' in clinical note templates will automatically change to 'enough for you' when you press save

Dear Dentally Team, I would like to suggest the creation of a new report (or an adjustment to the existing one) that separates service credits from sundries.Currently, both are coming together in the same category, which makes it difficult to obtain an accurate monthly report for sundries.Having these two items reported separately would make the monthly reports much clearer and improve the accuracy of our financial tracking.Please let me know if this is something that could be implemented, or if there’s already a way to generate such a report that I might have missed.Thank you very much for your attention and support.

 Dear Dentally Team,I wanted to suggest a small improvement that would make a big difference to how we work at reception. At the moment, when a dentist calls a patient into the surgery, the only indication we receive is a small status change to the letter “S”. This is very easy to miss, especially during busy times, and it means we have to constantly monitor the screen to avoid missing it. It would be extremely helpful to have a clearer notification for reception—such as a pop-up window when a dentist calls a patient. This would make the communication between reception and the clinical team much smoother and ensure patients are called promptly and efficiently. We believe this small addition could really improve the workflow for practices using Dentally.Thank you. Best regards, Kamila

Portal currently has a standard text under the ‘what do you need?’ header:Dental checkup → A checkup to screen for common problemsHygienist → Classic clean or advanced stain removalEmergency → For deliberating pain or accidentsI would like to be able to change these descriptions, for example hygienist implies you can only book a ‘classic clean’ OR stain removal, whereas I would prefer to say ‘professional cleaning and oral health advice’. An emergency could be a lost filling or crown, not necessarily deliberating pain or due to an accident. It would be good to either customise these descriptions, or have the ‘No → I’m a new patient’ link directly through to the treatments page where the text is customisable.

We’ve noticed that the tablets( Apple , Android) need to be re linked repeatedly, which disrupts our workflow. Each time we contact support, the standard advice is to remove the device, clear the cache, and re link essentially repeating the same temporary fix. It would be greatly appreciated if Dentally could address the issue and provide a more stable and reliable version of the product or may be a new product. A long term solution would significantly improve the user experience and reduce the need for repeated troubleshooting. 

Is there any update/plan regarding the online booking restrictions to prevent NHS patients from booking private exam appointment.