Filling The Schedule

Maintaining a full schedule is essential to maximizing production, minimizing downtime, and ensuring continuity of patient care. Openings caused by cancellations or no-shows present an opportunity to proactively engage patients and optimize your schedule.

This guide outlines the best practices and tools within CareStack to efficiently fill open appointment slots.

Summary

When schedule gaps occur, CareStack provides multiple tools to quickly identify and rebook patients, including:

• Maximize daily production
• Reduce revenue loss from cancellations and no-shows
• Improve patient retention and engagement
• Increase case acceptance
• Maintain provider efficiency

Using a structured approach ensures your team can quickly identify the right patients and convert open time into productive appointments.

Why Proactively Filling Open Slots Matters

A consistent strategy for managing open time helps your practice:

• Maximize daily production
• Reduce revenue loss from cancellations and no-shows
• Improve patient retention and engagement
• Increase case acceptance
• Maintain provider efficiency

Best Practice:
Treat every open slot as an opportunity to deliver care and generate production.

Identify the Type of Opening

Before filling a gap, determine:

• Length of the opening (e.g., 30 minutes vs. 2 hours)
• Type of treatment that fits the slot
• Provider and operatory availability

This ensures you target the right patients for the right time.

Treatment Plan Board

The Treatment Plan Board is a powerful tool for identifying and scheduling treatment opportunities based on both production value and clinical need. It provides a centralized view of patient treatment plans, allowing your team to efficiently locate and schedule procedures that align with available time in the provider’s schedule.

This feature is particularly effective for identifying high-production procedures (e.g., crowns and implants) as well as short appointments (e.g., fillings) to fill gaps in the schedule. Whether you are looking to maximize larger openings or quickly backfill cancellations, the Treatment Plan Board allows you to search by code-specific treatment or evaluate comprehensive plans based on total dollar value.

A key advantage of this feature is the ability to schedule directly from the board, seamlessly launching into the scheduler with all relevant treatment details automatically populated into the appointment modal. This reduces manual entry, improves accuracy, and streamlines workflow efficiency.

How to Use

• Identify patients with planned or unscheduled treatment to proactively fill openings 

• Filter by Accepted but not Scheduled statuses, then Plans in Proposed State. Sort for plans created within a specific timeframe (e.g., last month) as well. 

• Customize your search using filters such as procedure code, provider, location, and created date

• Use the code filter to quickly find equivalent procedures when replacing last-minute cancellations or adjusting the schedule

• Review treatment plans, accept treatment, and perform patient outreach directly from the board

• Utilize the note feature to document communication and track follow-up activity for improved team coordination

Treatment Plan Board Filters – How & When to Use Them

All Plans

• How to Use: Review all treatment plans regardless of status to identify unscheduled or aging treatment opportunities.

• When to Use: During daily reviews, production meetings, or overall treatment audits.

• Goal: Gain full visibility into pending treatment and production opportunities.

Plans in Proposed State

• How to Use: Review treatment that has been proposed but not yet accepted and follow up with patients regarding scheduling or financial questions.

• When to Use: During treatment follow-up and case acceptance outreach.

• Goal: Increase case acceptance and recover unscheduled treatment.

Accepted but not Scheduled

• How to Use: Identify patients who already accepted treatment but do not have appointments scheduled. Prioritize these patients for outreach.

• When to Use: Daily, especially when filling cancellations or open chair time.

• Goal: Convert accepted treatment into scheduled production and fill the schedule quickly

Plans created this month

• How to Use: Review newly created treatment plans to ensure timely follow-up and scheduling attempts are completed.

• When to Use: Weekly or during monthly production reviews.

• Goal: Prevent new treatment opportunities from aging or being missed.

Plans assigned to me

• How to Use: Review treatment plans assigned to you for follow-up, scheduling, or patient communication tasks.

• When to Use: During daily treatment reviews.

• Goal: Maintain accountability and ensure consistent patient follow-up.

Benefits

• Improves schedule efficiency by quickly identifying the right treatment to fill
  open time slots

• Supports production goals by prioritizing high-value procedures

• Reduces time spent searching across multiple areas of the system

• Enhances team collaboration with built-in communication tracking

Best Practice:
Use Opportunity Miner strategically to fill high-value openings by prioritizing patients with outstanding treatment needs and favorable financial positioning.

To explore the Treatment Plan Board workflow, click here.  

Utilize the Reschedule Queue

The Reschedule Queue contains patients who:

• Had appointments canceled or marked as no-show

• Were not rescheduled at the time of cancellation

How to Use

• Filter patients by availability or flexibility

• Reach out to rebook their missed appointments

Best Practice:
Maintain an updated Reschedule Queue list to quickly fill last-minute openings.

To explore the Reschedule Queue workflow, click here. 

Work from Recall Lists

The Recall System helps identify patients due for hygiene or periodic care.

• Unscheduled

• Overdue

• Broken (missed prior recall appointment)

How to Use

• Filter by recall type and status

• Filter by Provider

• Match patients to appropriate Recall type, Provider and time slots

Best Practice:
Use recall patients to fill preventive care gaps and maintain patient retention.

To explore the Recall List workflow, click here. 

Opportunity Miner for Targeted Scheduling

The Opportunity Miner enables your team to build highly customized patient lists using specific clinical, financial, and scheduling criteria. This allows you to proactively identify patients who are most likely to accept treatment and fill open time slots efficiently

Example Filters

• Identify patients with remaining insurance benefits or account credits, helping reduce out-of-pocket expenses and improve case acceptance rates

• Target patients with proposed, accepted, or recommended treatment, while including additional filter criteria 

• Manage and filter patients with unscheduled treatment plans based on treatment status, insurance coverage, and plan estimates

• Refine results further using filters such as provider, location, treatment plan status, and last visit date to align with operational needs

These filtering capabilities allow your team to quickly identify high-priority patients, streamline outreach efforts, and gain insight into potential production opportunities—ultimately saving time and improving schedule utilization.

Best Practice: Use Opportunity Miner strategically to fill larger or high-value openings by prioritizing patients with outstanding treatment needs and favorable financial positioning.

Please note: Combining filters will further refine your patient list to target specific patients for your scheduling goals. Combined filters have “and” logic.

To explore further into The CareStack Way - Opportunity Miner

To learn more about how to schedule: Final: Scheduling an appointment

Address Unscheduled Treatment

Patients with unscheduled treatment represent untapped production.

Considerations

• Review treatment plans directly

• Identify patients ready for scheduling

• Combine with other tools (e.g., Opportunity Miner and Treatment Tracker Operational Report for ungrouped treatment)

Best Practice: Use a structured approach rather than relying solely on one tool to manage unscheduled treatment effectively.

To explore the Treatment Tracker Operational Report, click here. 

The Ideal Open Slot Management Workflow

When your team follows a standardized approach to filling schedule gaps, your practice benefits from:

• Increased production and revenue

• Reduced downtime

• Improved patient engagement

• Higher case acceptance rates

• Better utilization of scheduling tools

An optimized scheduling strategy ensures that every open slot becomes an opportunity — helping your practice stay productive, efficient, and patient-focused.