Dentrix Daily Workflow: How a Pre-Visit Checklist Transforms Your Schedule

I’ve been recording one of our most popular Novonee courses, Best Practices: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and it reminded me how many dental teams still struggle with one core question: What should we be doing every day to be truly prepared for patients?

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Since my word of the year is clarity, I’m staying right on theme and talking about something that will absolutely improve your Dentrix workflow… The pre-visit checklist.

If your team isn’t consistently preparing before patients walk in the door, you’re living in reaction mode. That means stress, chaos, wasted time, and a half-full schedule that could be so much better.

Today I want to give you the clarity you need on daily workflow so you can approach tomorrow with confidence, not chaos.

Why Being Over-Prepared Matters

Some offices tell me, “Dayna, what if we prepare and the patient doesn’t show up?”

My response is always the same: Stop planning around worst-case scenarios.
Plan for the best-case scenario that 98–99% of patients do show up. If one or two don’t, that isn’t wasted effort; that’s preparedness that helped the majority of your schedule go smoothly.

Getting your practice ready ahead of time boosts efficiency, team confidence, and patient experience and it starts with checking the basics before the patient walks in.

1. Verify Insurance Accuracy Before Arrival

The first item on your pre-visit checklist should always be insurance verification.

Especially this time of year, benefit plans reset, employer groups switch carriers, and patients often don’t realize their coverage has changed. If a patient shows up with new insurance and your team hasn’t verified it:

• You might send claims to the wrong carrier
• You may miss eligibility issues
• You risk losing money or delaying treatment

When you confirm insurance details before they arrive, you decrease wasted chair time and increase your chances of clean claims going out the door. Your goal is 100% clean claims, and that starts with checking eligibility, benefits, maximums, and deductibles ahead of time.

Pro tip: save the eligibility PDF in your Document Center and share it with the patient when estimating this builds trust and decreases surprises later.

2. Confirm Required Forms Are Completed

Next, check that required forms have been filled out and synced into Dentrix. Automated electronic health history and new patient forms should:

✔ Be sent automatically
✔ Be completed before the visit
✔ Sync into Dentrix
✔ Drop a copy into the Document Center

This eliminates clipboards, pens, and lost paperwork. It also gives your clinical team a complete file before the patient arrives, which speeds up check-in and improves accuracy.

This practice echoes what we recommend in our article about weekly Dentrix reports and workflow best practices, checklists and structured systems help keep patient info and schedule flow aligned across admin roles.

3. Use Dentrix Tools to Confirm Everything is Ready

Dentrix includes features that help your pre-visit workflow work even harder for you.

For example, the Lab Case Manager isn’t just for crowns and retainers, many practices (especially surgical ones) use it to track implant parts, physician clearance forms, sedation docs, and more.

If something is missing and you find out after the patient walks in, it slows down the appointment and frustrates your team and your patient. A daily check keeps everything on track.

This structured preparation aligns with the broader principle I talk about in Consistency is Key with Dentrix Notes and Documentation, when teams document consistently, communication improves and errors decrease.

4. Prepare for Your Morning Huddle

Your pre-visit checklist should also feed your morning huddle planning. Before you meet:

• Are there new patients scheduled?
• Are all forms complete?
• Are lab cases ready?
• Are you on track for daily goals?

When you prepare this before the huddle, your meeting becomes effective, not reactive.

Make Your Pre-Visit Checklist an SOP

The pre-visit checklist should live as a standard operating procedure so everyone in your office knows exactly what to do daily. Call it a chart audit, pre-day ritual, or morning prep, the label doesn’t matter. What does matter is clarity and consistency.

When you build an SOP around your daily Dentrix workflow, you stop feeling overwhelmed and start operating with purpose.

Your podcasts give you quick nuggets, but the course will help you build these systems step-by-step. I hope this helps bring clarity to your dental team’s daily routine and gives you a roadmap for preparation that actually makes a difference.

I look forward to watching your journey of becoming a high-performing dental team.