Softdent Appt Reminder System

[jojob]

Does anyone use SD's appointment reminder/confirmation service?  Is your staff and patients happy with it?  I used it years ago when they first started before they could text patients.  I am thinking of returning now that they have improved.

[jaeger8]

 We are currently using Lighthouse and I would recommend it. It is capable of reading user codes and reminding people of Premed. 

We had previously used solutionreach, and although it worked for us, the features in Lighthouse are much better!

[pksaari79]

We are currently using solutionreach and we like it a lot. We do only use it for confirmations and birthday greetings, no newsletters. I was curious as to what you're paying for Lighthouse per month. And does it pick up the premedication and other user codes easily? What other differences are you pleased with in changing from solutionreach to Lighthouse?

[callton]

I don't have time to sit on hold with support so I am hoping someone will give an explanation here....eReminder settings have a check box for pre-medication reminders and we have that checked.  Our patients are not getting the pre-med part of the reminder.  This morning a patient showed me her reminder so I know she was only reminded of her appointment.  I asked her if she has ever gotten a pre-medication reminder with her appointment reminder and she has not.  Is this feature no longer working? Did it ever work?  

[celinagf]

I was considering Sofdent appointment reminder after leaving convention on friday, but after reading all these post I am sticking with Demandforce. It has everything everyone is complaining about on the other systems.  Thank you all for the information.

[pksaari79]

We use Solution Reach and do like it.....I know some's earlier response was they didn't like it.  But we find it user friendly, patients have commented positively about it, and support has been good.  We had used Televox prior and this is sooooo much easier - no set up to get it ready.  It does it for you and shows the confirmation on the schedule.  It will also let the patient know to pre-medicate if they are marked a P.  And it's great because it is 2 way texting....Televox was not.  But we use that part LOTS!!

[dental3208]

The two way texting would be a great feature for us too, but we already had an office iPhone that we would use on the weekends for emergencies and at night in case of an early morning canceled appointment. The SR support was definitely helpful when first starting, but there were too many features and it became almost too much work to keep up with what pleased each patient. Also, we do have a lot of elderly patients so they aren't big on the texting and we still end up having to confirm over the phone and to remind them to take their pre-med even with the SR automated calls too. 

[kat710]

Hi Joanne-

I just cancelled our e-reminders service.  It is lacking in every way.  We just installed the Weave system and will be going live with it in a couple weeks.  It has the ability for 2-way texting in real time. I can let you know how it is working for us once we get started.    

Leslie

[kevinlund]

Leslie,

Were you using the simple e-Services feature? I just had a conference call with a rep talking about eConnections. It seems to be e-Services, but beefed up and improved. It has a number of bells and whistles that I'm not planning on paying for, but the reminder part seems pretty good.

I'm checking out the solutions that everybody has posted in this thread to see what will fit the best for us.

Kevin

[dental3208]

Kevin,

Our experience with Solutionreach, that seems like the closest to the features of Weave, is that it is all the bells and whistles for almost $400 a month and we barely use those features. If we didn't have the office iPhone already, I could understand the two way texting feature. A lot of our patients are also older and don't use texting or emailing at all, so we are forced to use our voice call system for reminders. I, too, am also looking into the options posted since we need to find a better fit. 

[kat710]

Kevin-

We were using e-reminders.  I too didn't want to spend for anything more, so we gave it a try.  It was very limited and not real time.  We are now using Weave and there is no comparison at all!  Two way texting in real time has been fantastic.

Leslie

[mdunham]

We have used Weave for over a year and LOVE it!!!!!!!!!!  I can't imagine doing biz without it now.

[rakeshpateldds]

We are interested in the Weave system. Can you give us an idea of  the cost. 

[mdunham]

I would call/ Contact Weave as each office is unique.  I hate to not be more helpful, except to tell you that it is not very expensive at all.  Weaves abilities create so much productivity I would not consider doing daily dental biz without it.  

[dental3208]

Hi! Our office is also looking for a new confirmation/reminder system. We are currently using Solutionreach and we don't like it at all - it is very confusing and more so a burden for patients and for us in the office as well. We have looked into the Softdent e-reminders and I am in the process of Lighthouse 360. We really don't need all the bells and whistles that Solutionreach provided for us since our website provider has their own review request system that we are using instead. Since WEAVE isn't fully integrated with Softdent, we don't want to go that route and make it more confusing for us. Any input is welcome!!

Thank you!! 

[mdunham]

The only issue with weave is that it doesn't change the color of the appointment card when the patient is confirmed.    It is a nominal inconvenience compared to what freedom and productivity it allows us.    When a pt confirms via text, the weave window pops up and you simply mark the appt confirmed, the same is with email confirmations.  When a pt confirms via email, we receive a notice from outlook that pops up in a windows notification.    Everything else works within softdent, Weave provides overdue reports, lets us know of family appts, balances and such directly at their phone call.  It's great.   

[dental3208]

That doesn't sound so bad. I'll have to look into Weave again, but could you tell me a little bit more about the freedom and productivity part? With Solutionreach, there were just so many bells and whistles that we weren't using and we now only truly use it for appointment confirmations and some pts use the two way texting system. We don't use the reviews feature or really any of the reports through Solutionreach because patients did not care for the service at all. But since we have an office iPhone for the weekends/nights its just a lot going on and I want to streamline and simplify the process. 

[mdunham]

Weave has a fantastic iphone app.    Productivity--  when a pt calls or the office calls a pt, a box will pop up informing of any pt balance, or overdue hyg,  this is a fantastic tool we use often.  In addition, notifications for email and text can be set up to your office specifications. , you can text pts real time (VERY NICE)  our pts and staff have become quite spoiled with it.    There is a report in box that can pull all of your pt overdue recalls,  You can ask pt's for reviews, read reviews and respond from weave pop up window.    You can equally check voicemail straight from weave popup on screen, you can view how many calls you received today, how many were unanswered, answered and placed. (great tool to satisfy the doc.)    You can email directly from Weave window.  I can't imagine my biz without it now.  I will never not have it or something very similar  

[callton]

Is Weave an add on to your current telephone service?  Currently we have Century Link for our telephone and internet service.  Curious about whether Weave provides the telephone service.

Thanks!

[mdunham]

I do not believe so, Just the phones.  We have Cox HS internet and phone. 

[doctom4300]

We use LightHouse for reminders, both text and email. It only accepts a pre-set text reply from patients, but if they respond with anything other than the pre-set, we get an email telling us what they said. We can do two-way texting with LightHouse. The instructions are clear on how to confirm - respond with C to confirm. We do have a couple patients that have their signature set for texting. In those cases, we get an email telling us that the patient responded with something other than C, and then I just mark them confirmed.

LightHouse does not update real-time, but it does update once an hour. I wouldn't really want it to update real-time, although a shorter interval would be ok.

I don't know if LightHouse has the capability of sending pre-med reminders. We can change the message that is sent to everyone, but I don't think we can specify that only certain patients get the pre-med reminder.

When we make reminder calls, we call anyone that hasn't confirmed their appointment. I don't worry whether or not they received their electronic reminder (text or email). If they got it and didn't confirm, they get a call. If they didn't get it, they get a call.

Carrie, thank you for that information. I've been debating looking into the SoftDent reminder system. For now, we will stick with LightHouse.