Unscheduled treatment follow-up: weekly call list plus a generic booking nudge (Open Dental)

The problem

Treatment that is diagnosed and presented but never booked is care the patient doesn't get and production the practice never sees. The benchmark below comes from a practice-software vendor.

• Henry Schein One's benchmark: average providers had a case acceptance rate of 46%, against 83% for the top performers. Source: Henry Schein One: average providers are losing hundreds of thousands in unscheduled treatment (Practice-software vendor benchmark)
• Open Dental already has a Treatment Finder report and an Unscheduled list; this recipe turns them into a weekly, de-duplicated call list with a capped text. If your team works the report every week, you may not need it. Source: Open Dental manual: Treatment Finder report (Vendor manual)

Who it's for

US dental offices on Open Dental with a treatment coordinator or office manager who calls patients about unscheduled treatment.

Tools and monthly cost

Example month: Illustrative arithmetic. Assume 60 unscheduled plans, 40 with text consent, and a first text to each in month one: 40 one-segment texts = $0.33 plus carrier fees of $0.14-$0.20. Open Dental API $15 per location (Comm permission for commlogs). Uses the Twilio number from the missed-call recipe. About $16 a month plus your n8n server.

Setup

1. Read the 'HIPAA, TCPA and BAAs' section on the dental hub first.
2. Use the Twilio number and A2P campaign from the missed-call recipe, and its SMS webhook, so STOP replies reach Open Dental.
3. Give the workflow an Open Dental API key with the $15 tier (it reads procedures, appointments and patients, and writes a commlog for each text). Set OD_AUTH and OD_REQUEST_INTERVAL_MS.
4. Create the call-list Sheet in BAA-covered Google Workspace, share it only with the treatment coordinator, and swap the mock sheet URL for n8n's Google Sheets node.
5. Set PRACTICE_SHORT, PRACTICE_PHONE, WEB_SCHED_URL, PRACTICE_TZ and TP_MIN_AGE_DAYS (default 14: give a patient two weeks after the plan is presented before anyone nudges them).
6. Run it once with the Twilio node disabled and review the call list before letting it text anyone. The workflow also has a manual 'run now' webhook used by our tests. Delete it, or put it behind n8n's header authentication, before you go live.

Download

Download dental-unscheduled-treatment-follow-up.zip

Contains the n8n workflow, the mock data, the test runner with its last results, and the mock server we tested against. All keys in .env.example are fake.

Test result

Every workflow was imported into n8n 2.45.4 and run end to end on our test machine. Open Dental's API, Twilio, Stedi, Google Sheets and the email sender (Resend) were replaced by a local mock server built from their official API docs: it checks the same request shapes and required fields, enforces Open Dental's request throttle (HTTP 429) and records every call. We also compared the mock's field names with Open Dental's public test database (read-only GET requests with the test key Open Dental publishes, no writes). These recipes use no AI model; every decision is a written rule. Patients, plans and phone numbers are invented. Verified with mocks; no real patient data used, and nothing was sent to a real phone, patient, payer or account.

Actual output from the test run

Scenario U1: the generic text, and the first rows of the staff call list (invented patients; this list stays in the practice's Sheet). Names and numbers are invented.

U1: Maple Grove Dental: you have a follow-up visit to schedule with us. Book: https://example.com/maple-grove/book or call +15555550100. Reply STOP to opt out.

Call list:
[
 {
  "week_of": "2026-11-02",
  "patient": "Frank Odum",
  "PatNum": 106,
  "phone": "+15555550206",
  "planned": "D4341",
  "planned_fee": "295.00",
  "presented": "2026-08-20",
  "action": "Call (opted out of texts)"
 },
 {
  "week_of": "2026-11-02",
  "patient": "Hank Moss",
  "PatNum": 108,
  "phone": "+15555550208",
  "planned": "D4341, D4341",
  "planned_fee": "590.00",
  "presented": "2026-10-01",
  "action": "Texted (1 of 2)"
 },
 {
  "week_of": "2026-11-02",
  "patient": "Kara Diaz",
  "PatNum": 111,
  "phone": "+15555550211",
  "planned": "D2740 #18",
  "planned_fee": "1250.00",
  "presented": "2026-08-01",
  "action": "Texted (1 of 2)"
 }
]