The 9:40 short notice cancellation
A patient calls at 8:15 with a sick kid. By the time your coordinator finishes the morning check ins, that hour is gone and nobody has worked a list to replace it.
$198 average production lost per open hygiene hour
Hygiene recall for private practices
Every gap in tomorrow's hygiene column has a patient who is already months past due
ChairGap reads your schedule overnight, finds the openings, and lines them up against the continuing care patients whose recall date came and went. Your coordinator taps once, the text goes out, and the chair is booked before the first prophy of the day.
- Running in 386 US practices
- HIPAA aligned hosting, BAA signed on request
- Connected to your schedule in one afternoon
What the schedule costs you
An open hygiene chair does not feel like an emergency until you add up the month
Nobody at the front desk is sitting still. The recall list just loses every argument against the phone ringing, the insurance portal timing out, and the patient standing at the window with a copay question.
A recall list nobody has time to work
Most two chair practices are carrying between 900 and 1,600 patients whose continuing care date has passed. Working it by phone takes hours that the front desk simply does not have.
1,240 median past due patients per practice at signup
Voicemails that never get returned
Your team leaves three messages, hears nothing, and marks the chart as attempted. The patient was not avoiding you. They were at work and they do not answer unknown numbers.
7 in 10 recall calls end in voicemail, not a booking
Benefits that expire on December 31
Patients with two cleanings left and an unmet deductible walk into January with nothing used. That is treatment you already diagnosed, paid for by an insurance year that just closed.
$1,300 typical unused annual maximum per lapsed patient
From open slot to booked chair
Four steps, and only one of them belongs to your team
ChairGap sits beside your practice management software instead of replacing it. Nothing about the way your hygienists work needs to change.
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Connect your practice management software
We read from Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Curve Dental and Denticon through a read only bridge that syncs every night at 11 p.m. local time. Appointments, recall intervals, last visit dates and mobile numbers come across. Nothing is written back without your say so.
Setup call runs about 40 minutes -
Get the gap list at 7:10 every morning
Before the huddle, ChairGap posts tomorrow's and the day after tomorrow's open hygiene time, chair by chair, next to a ranked list of past due patients who live close enough to come in on short notice. Ranking weighs how overdue they are, whether they have remaining benefits, and how they have responded to texts before.
Reviewed in under 3 minutes -
Send the text with one tap
Your coordinator picks a slot, reviews the message, and sends it to the shortlist. Each text is written in your practice voice and carries the real date, the real time and the hygienist's first name. Reply handling, opt outs and quiet hours are managed for you.
Average of 9 seconds per gap -
Book the reply and close the loop
Answers land in one shared inbox with the chart context beside them. Confirm the patient, and ChairGap drafts the appointment note, marks the recall as scheduled, and stops texting anyone else about that slot. The report at the end of the month shows exactly which production came back.
Written back to your system in one click
Built for the hygiene department
Everything here exists because a practice asked for it
No modules you will never open. Six things, each one aimed at the same number: hours in the hygiene column that go unproduced.
Live gap radar
ChairGap compares tomorrow's booked hygiene time against the hours your chairs are actually open and flags every hole, including the 20 minute stubs left after a short appointment. You see the gap the moment the cancellation posts, not at the end of the day.
The past due ledger
Every continuing care patient is scored by how far past their recall interval they have drifted, in bands of six, twelve and eighteen months. Filter by last hygienist, perio maintenance versus adult prophy, remaining benefits or distance from the office.
One tap reactivation texts
Pick a slot, pick a shortlist, send. Each message merges the patient's first name, their hygienist, the exact date and time, and a one word reply option, and it never mentions a diagnosis or a procedure code.
Shared reply inbox
Answers arrive in one thread per patient with their last visit, their recall status and their balance on the same screen. Two people can work it at once without stepping on each other, and every message stays on the chart.
Consent, quiet hours and opt outs
Texts are held between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the patient's own time zone, STOP replies are honored instantly and permanently, and written consent status is stored per patient with a timestamp. Your BAA covers the whole message trail.
Recovered production report
At the close of every month you get one page: hours that opened, hours refilled, appointments kept, and the production those visits carried at your own fee schedule. It is the number you take to the practice meeting.
What changes in the first quarter
Four numbers your hygiene coordinator will notice by week three
Figures below are the median across 386 subscribing practices over the twelve months ending January 31, 2026, measured against each practice's own first 30 days on the platform.
11.4
Chairs refilled per month
The median practice turns 11.4 open hygiene hours into kept appointments every month. Most of them come from patients between eight and twenty months past due, which is the band that responds best to a dated, specific offer.
$2,257
Production recovered monthly
Those refilled hours are valued at each practice's own posted fees for an adult prophy, a periodic exam and bitewings. It excludes any treatment diagnosed during the visit, so the real figure is usually higher.
19 min
Median time to first reply
Patients answer a text the way they answer a friend. Nineteen minutes is the midpoint between the send and the first response, which is why a slot found at 7:10 a.m. is usually spoken for before lunch.
34%
Of the past due list reactivated
Across a first ninety days, roughly a third of the dormant continuing care list comes back on the books. The rest stay in the ledger and get worked again at the interval you set, without anyone re-typing a call list.
From the front desk
Three practices, three schedules that stopped leaking
We asked the people who actually press the button what changed. These are their words, lightly trimmed for length.
I used to keep a legal pad ASAP list that was three weeks out of date. Now the gap list is on my screen at 7:10 and I have the 10:40 spoken for before Dr. Whitcomb finishes his coffee. Last month we refilled fourteen hygiene hours and I did not pick up the phone once.
My hygiene department was running about 82 percent of available hours and I had been told that was normal for two chairs. We are at 94 percent now. The part I did not expect is how many of those reactivated patients came back with real treatment sitting on the chart from 2023.
I was against texting patients. I thought it would read as pushy and I did not want to be the office that spams people. Two things changed my mind: the message goes out with a real time on it, and STOP actually works. In fourteen months we have had four opt outs and one complaint.
24,610
hygiene appointments refilled since March 2024
62%
of reactivation texts answered within one hour
4.9 / 5
average rating across 3 verified practice reviews
Plans by chair count
Priced against one refilled hour, not against your headcount
Every plan carries the nightly sync, the morning gap list, one tap texting and the shared reply inbox. The difference is how many chairs and patients you are covering.
Solo Chair
One hygiene chair, one location, usually a single doctor practice.
$39per month, USD
- 1 hygiene chair monitored
- Up to 900 active continuing care patients
- 400 reactivation texts each month
- Nightly sync with your practice management software
- Morning gap list at 7:10 local time
- Shared reply inbox, 2 user seats
- Email support, answered same business day
Practice
Two or three chairs with a coordinator running recall properly.
$79per month, USD
- Up to 3 hygiene chairs monitored
- Up to 3,500 active continuing care patients
- 1,500 reactivation texts each month
- Past due ledger with benefit and distance filters
- Recovered production report every month
- Shared reply inbox, 6 user seats
- Signed BAA and consent audit trail
- Phone and email support, one hour response
Multi Site
Two to six locations under one owner or one office manager.
$149per month, USD
- Up to 6 locations and 12 hygiene chairs
- Up to 12,000 active continuing care patients
- 5,000 reactivation texts each month
- Roll up reporting across every location
- Per location message templates and quiet hours
- Unlimited user seats with role permissions
- Named onboarding lead and a quarterly review call
- Priority support with a 30 minute response target
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be canceled at any time from inside the account, effective at the end of the current billing month. No setup fee, no annual contract, no per message surcharge inside your included volume.
Straight answers
The six questions every practice asks on the first call
Three plans, billed monthly in US dollars: Solo Chair at $39, Practice at $79 and Multi Site at $149. The price covers the nightly sync, the morning gap list, the reactivation texts included in your plan, the shared inbox and support. There is no setup fee and no charge for extra chart lookups. If you go past your included message volume in a busy month we tell you before the next send rather than adding a surprise line to the invoice.
Most practices are live the same afternoon they start. The setup call runs about 40 minutes: we connect the read only bridge to your practice management software, confirm your recall intervals and operatory hours, and write your two message templates in your own voice. The first overnight sync then pulls your continuing care history, and your gap list is waiting at 7:10 the next morning. Practices with more than one location usually take two days because each office needs its own hours and quiet hour rules.
We sign a business associate agreement with every practice before the first sync runs. Patient records are encrypted at rest and in transit, hosted in United States data centers, and access is limited to the named seats on your account plus the two support engineers who are trained on your file. Outbound texts never contain a diagnosis, a procedure code or a balance, because a phone screen is not a private place. You can export or delete your practice data at any time and we purge it within 30 days of cancellation.
Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Curve Dental and Denticon are supported today, on premise or cloud hosted. The bridge reads appointments, recall intervals, last visit dates, insurance renewal months and mobile numbers, and it writes back only the appointment note and the recall status once you confirm a booking. If you run something else, send us the name on the demo request and we will tell you honestly whether we can read it or not. We have never asked a practice to change systems to use ChairGap.
You cancel from the account settings page in two clicks and the plan ends when the current billing month closes. There is no notice period, no cancellation fee and nothing to mail in. Before you go, export the past due ledger and the message history as a spreadsheet so your team keeps the work. Practices that pause over a slow summer and come back in the fall keep their templates and their consent records intact.
This is the objection we hear most, and it is a fair one. The difference between a nuisance and a favor is specificity: a message offering a real 10:40 opening tomorrow with a named hygienist reads as an invitation, while a message asking someone to call the office reads as homework. ChairGap caps how often any single patient can be contacted, holds messages outside 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. in their time zone, and honors a STOP reply permanently and across every location. Across our subscribing practices the opt out rate sits at 1.2 percent of contacted patients.
The Open Chair
What we learn from the practices whose hygiene column stays full
The Open Chair is the ChairGap magazine. It covers hygiene recall, scheduling, dental benefits and the working economics of a one to three chair practice, written for the person who has to answer for tomorrow's open hours.
practical guide
How to Run a Same Week Hygiene Gap Fill in a Small Practice
A step by step routine for turning tomorrow's two open hygiene slots into seated patients, from pulling the overdue list before the first appointment to confirming the last seat by mid afternoon.
comparison
D1110, D4346, and D4910: Which Hygiene Code Fits Which Patient
Three hygiene codes, three different patients. Here is what each one requires in the chart, how plans treat frequency, and how the code you choose sets the recall interval you will schedule.
mistakes to avoid
Seven Recall Mistakes That Keep Overdue Patients Off the Books
Most hygiene recall systems fail in the same seven places: the list, the reset rules, the ask, the channel, the wording, the cleanup, and the person who owns it after five o'clock.
Talk to us
Send us your quietest day and we will show you who is on it
Tell us which weekday your hygiene column runs light. On a 20 minute screen share we will pull an anonymized sample of your own past due patients, rank them the way ChairGap ranks them, and show you the text that would go out tomorrow morning.
- A real practice manager runs the call, not a sales development rep working from a script.
- We reply to every request within one business day, usually the same morning.
- Bring your practice management software name and we will confirm the bridge on the call.
- Nothing is installed on your server until you have signed the business associate agreement.
Every request reaches a person, not a queue. If a form is not your thing, write straight to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com and mention your practice management software in the subject line.