Dental Intake Glossary
These are the terms that come up when a practice tries to fix its intake process, defined the way they are actually used in a dental front office rather than the way a vendor brochure uses them. Each entry covers the beginner explanation, the technical detail that matters operationally, and the failure modes worth knowing about.
Practice Management System (PMS)
What a dental practice management system is, the modules that matter for new-patient intake, cloud vs server tradeoffs, and how data actually gets in.
ReadNew Patient Intake
New patient intake defined: the fields a dental practice must collect before a first visit, who collects them, when it breaks, and what a complete record looks like.
ReadInsurance Verification
What dental insurance verification means, the difference between eligibility and benefits, what practices check before a first visit, and where the process breaks.
ReadHealth History Form
What a dental health history form collects, which answers change clinical decisions, how often it must be updated, and why free-text answers cause problems.
ReadNo-Show Rate
How dental practices calculate no-show rate, why new patients no-show more than recall patients, and which interventions actually move the number.
ReadPatient Recall
What patient recall means in a dental practice, how recall intervals are set, why recall lists decay, and how intake data quality determines recall performance.
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