Introduction to Smart Fill
Is your practice experiencing a high volume of broken appointments? Frustrated by having to manually search through patients to find replacements for open slots? Smart Fill provides an automated, seamless solution that helps you find and contact the best patients quickly, while also catering to their specific scheduling preferences. Use the following article to become familiar with Smart Fill's benefits, the different lists used to find patients for open slots, and the screen used to manage it.
Table of Contents
Why use Smart Fill?
Smart Fill helps you find patients to fill empty slots in your schedule and contact them, without having to manually filter through records in your Practice Management System. By accessing the ASAP and Recall Past Due lists within the Practice Online Portal, Smart Fill narrows down the right patients for open time slots. In addition, Smart Fill identifies the unique scheduling preferences of individual patients on file to find the perfect match for your empty appointment slot. Patient results can also be refined by a robust set of filtering options provided to you.
ASAP List vs. Recall Past Due
Smart Fill finds potential patient records to fill your open schedule from two distinct places: the ASAP List and Recall Past Due appointments. These lists are separated into two different tabs on the main Smart Fill screen, and automatically populates with appointments from your schedule.
- The ASAP List displays records noted as "ASAP" within your Practice Management system. These records show patients that have already scheduled, but want an earlier appointment when available. These are a reliable way to fill your open slots as the patient has already expressed interest in coming to your practice, as well as providing excellent service for patients in need of quick service.
- Recall Past Due shows records of patients that are coming due or are overdue for a recall appointment according to the recall settings in your practice management software. Coupled with Recall Reminders, reaching out to these records helps retain existing patients while filling your open slots with more reliable customers.
The Smart Fill screen displays patient records in separate tabs for both of these lists, while also providing multiple ways to narrow down patient results to find the best matches for open slots.
Smart Fill Screen
The Smart Fill screen provides a single, easy-to-use space to manage all of your Smart Fill needs. From here you can find potential patients to fill empty appointments, alternate between the ASAP List & Recall Past Due appointments, filter patient results, and contact patients directly via text to schedule appointments. We've designed this screen to be a simple user experience, with minimal need to navigate to other pages or features.
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ASAP List |  |
Recall Past Due |  |
Filter |
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Patient Records |  |
Patient Scheduling Preferences |  |
Send Preview Button |
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Send Text Button |
ASAP List
When selected, the ASAP List button displays existing patient appointments marked as ASAP within your Practice Management System. The Smart Fill screen displays the ASAP List as its default view. To learn how to mark patient appointments as ASAP within your practice management system, visit our ASAP List article.
Recall Past Due
The Recall Past Due list transitions the active patient list to appointments for patients that are either upcoming or past due. You can adjust the date range of recall appointments, as well as other important fields, within the Filter menu. For a more in-depth look into how records for Recall Past Due appointments are generated, visit Introduction to Recall Due & Recall Past Due Reports
Filter
The Filter field drops down a set of filter options that allows you to narrow down potential patients to fill empty slots on your schedule. You can filter based upon any of the filter headings available on the Smart Fill Screen. Filtering the list also limits who receives any mass text messages that are sent. These results update in real time so you don't have to refresh the page after changing filters. Note that filter fields change when alternating between the ASAP List and Recall Past Due appointments (see below).
Patient Records
Patient records are sorted by appointment date and time by default, or by custom Filters established by the user. Clicking on a patient records opens an overview of the specific patient, showing their name, age, contact information, recall type, recall due date, time past due, their last reminded date, insurance, and scheduling preferences if they have been added by the office staff or the patient.
Patient Scheduling Preferences
The 
icon on the Scheduling Preference column shows additional preferences set by the patient. This includes which days the patient can come in, their preferred date range, and preferred providers. This icon only appears if a user or the patient has set their appointment preferences through Smart Scheduling. To learn how to set Patient Scheduling Preferences, visit Setting Patient Scheduling Preferences in the Practice Online Portal (POP).
Send Preview Button
The Send Preview button allows you to see a preview of the message, and lets you double check that the message looks good and that you haven't missed any typos or grammar issues. The preview requests a mobile number to view the message through the phone before sending (featured in image below).
Text Message Body
The text message body is where you draft text messages to be sent to the patients listed above on the Smart Fill screen. Here you can edit messages using standard alphanumeric characters, then test and send them using the Send Preview and Send Text buttons. We recommend keeping texts under 160 characters to avoid the message being split into multiple texts by the phone carrier.
Note: Please note that this should be used only for contacting patients regarding their appointment. Any marketing related messages may violate FCC rules and can be subject to fines and civil penalties.
Send Text Button
The Send Text button sends the message you wrote in the Text Message Body to all patients that were included in the filter options selected. A pop-up appears confirming that the message was sent successfully, along with the number of records that were contacted. Sent texts also appear on the Text Messages screen found on the left navigation menu.