Are you taking new patients?
What dental practices need to publish
This is a yes/no question a caller expects to get answered in seconds — if a website can't answer it after hours, the caller assumes no and moves on.
How customers actually ask it
The same intent arrives in wording your page probably does not use. All of these mean the same thing:
- “Are you taking new patients?”
- “is your practice accepting patients”
- “can I switch dentists”
- “do you have appointment availability”
- “new patient special”
What a complete answer contains
For dental practices specifically, an answer is only complete when it covers all 4:
- 1
A direct yes or no, kept current
- 2
What a first visit includes and roughly how long it takes
- 3
Whether there's a new-patient offer or discount
- 4
The fastest way to actually book, not just 'call us'
A worked example
Illustrative — not a real business
Yes, we're accepting new patients. A first visit is a full exam, cleaning and any needed x-rays, usually about an hour, and we offer a $99 new patient special covering the exam and a basic cleaning. Book directly through the link on this page or call during office hours.
Which page should own it
New patients page
What silence costs
An after-hours 'maybe' costs a booking that a same-hour 'yes' would have captured — this question has almost no tolerance for delay.
More questions dental practices get
- Do you accept my dental insurance?
- How much does a filling or crown cost without insurance?
- I'm in severe tooth pain right now, what do I do?
- Do I actually need a root canal, or is there another option?
- How much does a crown cost without insurance covering it?
- Is professional whitening actually safe for my teeth?
Related
industry
AI customer support for dental practices
Dental enquiries stall on the same three questions almost every time: is my insurance accepted, roughly what will this cost, and are you taking new patients. All three are answerable from what a practice has already published — the front desk just doesn't get the chance to say so before the caller has already tried the next practice on the list.
term
What is AI customer service?
AI customer service means answering customer questions with a language model rather than a person. The useful implementations are grounded in a specific business's own content; the poor ones let a general model improvise, which produces confident answers that are wrong.
term
What is a knowledge base?
Traditionally a knowledge base is a help centre humans read. For AI support it is the source material a representative answers from — which means an ordinary website, well written, can serve as one without a separate help centre.
Does your site answer this already?
Point RubyRep at your website and ask it this exact question. If it cannot answer, neither can your customers.