Out-of-hours dental calls: cover options for practices

Mostly bookings and pain. Patients ring once their own working day is over, so evenings bring new-patient enquiries, rebookings and the people whose toothache has got worse since lunch.

• New patients asking whether you're taking NHS or private patients, and how soon they can be seen.
• Existing patients cancelling or moving tomorrow's check-up or hygiene appointment.
• Patients in pain, or with a broken tooth, lost filling or loose crown, who want to know what to do.
• Private treatment enquiries, such as implants, clear aligners or whitening, from people comparing practices once the children are in bed.
• Occasionally, someone with heavy bleeding, a facial injury or swelling that's affecting their breathing, who needs emergency help rather than a dental appointment.

When practices first check their call logs, the number of new-patient calls going unanswered after hours can be embarrassing. Those are the calls with a direct cost, because a new patient has nothing tying them to you yet. Our guide to what missed calls cost a dental practice shows how to put a figure on them.

Your clinical team decides that, in writing, before anyone answers a call. Whoever picks up after hours should sort calls by the rules you give them and route them, not judge how serious a symptom is.

The NHS says people who need emergency or urgent dental care can get advice from NHS 111 or contact a dentist and ask for an appointment. It says urgent treatment should be offered within 24 hours or 7 days depending on symptoms, that a knocked-out adult tooth should be seen within 1 hour or as soon as possible, and it lists the problems in the first row of the table as reasons to go to A&E or call 999.

That guidance is for England. Practices in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should use the arrangements their health board or trust gives them, and practices elsewhere should use the urgent care routes that apply to their patients.

That they've reached your practice, when you're open again, what to do if it's urgent and what happens to their call. A patient who knows they'll hear back at 8.30am is usually happy to wait.

1. 1A greeting in your practice's name, and a clear statement if the call is answered by an automated receptionist.
2. 2Whether they're a new or existing patient, and whether they're looking for NHS or private care.
3. 3What they're calling about, in their own words.
4. 4For pain or damage, your out-of-hours instruction given exactly as written, such as your own emergency number or NHS 111.
5. 5For anything that sounds like an emergency, A&E or 999.
6. 6For everything else, a booking into an agreed slot or a call-back time your team will keep.

Keep routine calls short. Someone ringing at 8pm to move a hygiene visit wants it sorted in a minute, not a long conversation.

Four, and most practices combine two: a route for urgent calls, and something that answers everything else.

An on-call rota still makes sense if you offer your own emergency appointments, because only a clinician can decide who gets them. The other options are about making sure routine callers don't hit voicemail and give up. Our dental answering service guide compares the four in more depth, including a sourced reception cost, and our general guide to out-of-hours call answering covers the same choice for any business.

No. Your front desk is the engine of the practice, and a receptionist patients know by name is worth keeping as the first voice they hear during the day. After-hours cover is for the calls nobody is there to take.

That's the honest case for an AI receptionist in a dental practice: overflow when the desk is busy, and evenings and weekends when it's closed. At 8pm the choice isn't between a person and software. It's between an answer and a phone that rings out. Our guide to handling new-patient enquiries covers the daytime side, and our guide on whether callers hang up on an AI receptionist looks at how people react.

Book routine appointments into set slots, and leave anything clinical for your team. A patient who books a hygiene visit at 9pm isn't still ringing round at 9.05pm.

Only automate bookings once your appointment types are clean. If your diary has five names for a check-up and lengths that vary by dentist, a person can cope but a booking system can't, and a patient booked into the wrong slot frustrates everyone. Agree which types can be booked, how long each takes and which clinicians see new patients, then open only those slots.

Patients in pain are different. Even if you hold emergency slots, someone at the practice usually needs to decide who gets them, so take the details, give your instruction and call back first thing.

Everything your team needs to call back without asking the basics again, sorted with urgent calls first.

• Name, number and whether they're a new or existing patient.
• NHS or private, and for new patients how they heard about you.
• What they called about, in their own words, and when it started if they mentioned pain.
• What they were told, so nobody contradicts your out-of-hours instruction.
• When they're free, and whether they'd take a short-notice cancellation.
• Any booking made, with the slot.

Then give one person the job of working through the list as soon as you open. A call back at 8.15am feels like good service; one at 3pm feels like you forgot.

With call forwarding. You keep your practice number and divert calls after closing time, or whenever nobody answers, to whatever covers them.

• Most business phone systems can divert on a schedule, such as 6pm to 8am and all weekend.
• A no-answer divert sends calls on after a few rings, which also covers the busy first hour and lunch.
• If you run more than one site, set each practice number up separately so patients hear the right name.

Our guide to forwarding business calls walks through the settings. Then test it: ring your own number one evening as a new patient, a patient with toothache, someone cancelling and someone whose face is swollen, and listen to each call.