Every patient due for a cleaning hears from you the day they're due, and again until they book. Elva reads your schedule every night, reaches patients by text, email and phone, answers their replies and puts the visit on your hygiene schedule, synced with your practice management system.
Every night Elva reads your schedule and recall dates and works out who is due or overdue, who already has an appointment, and who can't be contacted.
The default sequence is a text, then an email on day 5, an AI call on day 12 and a call from your team on day 21. Each step goes only to patients who haven't booked.
Patients reply in their own words and their own language. Elva answers, offers times with the right provider and puts the visit on your schedule, with no link required.
Patients still unbooked reach your Calls page with who to call, why, and what they were already sent. One tap records the outcome, and Elva carries on from there.
Hygiene recall is built before you log in. You review the wording and press Start, and nothing is sent until you do.
Due dates — recall dates read from your schedule every night, so patients are found the day they're due, not when someone runs a report
Recall type — six-month cleanings, gum-care maintenance, yearly exams and children's fluoride, each with its own timing
Gum-care patients — a three-month cycle gets its own recall, and when a patient runs two months late Elva moves faster: a text, a phone call three days later, then your team
Existing appointments — patients who already have a visit booked are left out, and anyone who books stops receiving messages, however they book
Contact details — patients with no mobile number or email are left out and counted, so you can see who the recall can't reach
Opt-outs — patients who opted out are never contacted, and replying STOP ends texts at once
Patient language — you write in English, and each patient reads and hears their own language
Contact limit — a cap on how often any patient hears from the practice, shared across everything Elva sends
Quiet hours — texts and calls go out only inside the hours you set
Combined messages — a patient due for a cleaning and an exam can get one message that covers both, not two
Chart facts — every name, date and number in a message is checked against the patient's chart before it sends
Replies — "Do you have anything after 5?" gets real times with the right provider, at any hour, and the visit is booked in the conversation
Results — sent, reached, booked and attended, plus who the recall isn't reaching and why
That list is the monthly overdue report most front desks work through by hand, between patients. Elva runs it every night across the whole schedule.
In a 20-minute demo we walk through the hygiene recall that is ready on day one, build a new one from a sentence, and show the messages your patients would get.
A dental hygiene recall system tracks when each patient is due for a cleaning or exam, contacts the ones who haven't booked, and gets them onto the schedule. Hygiene recall software runs that process automatically against your practice management system, every day.
Practices also call it recare, and it is not the same thing as an appointment reminder. A reminder goes to a patient who is already booked. Recall goes to the patient who has no appointment, which is the harder job, because no one is waiting on the other end.
The ADA recommends pre-appointing hygiene patients before they leave, and it is the best habit a front desk can build. It still leaves gaps: patients who decline, patients who cancel and never rebook, and patients whose visit comes due months after the last one. Those patients are who a recall system exists for.
Elva runs hygiene recall for every patient who is due or overdue, up to the point where they have been gone 18 months or more. Gum-care maintenance, yearly exams and children's fluoride each have their own recall and their own timing. Patients gone longer get a different message and have their own page.
Pre-appointing works for the patients who say yes at checkout. The ones who say "I'll call you" leave with nothing on the calendar, and the ADA notes that a visit not booked months ahead is one patients are likely to put off indefinitely.
The standard advice is to run an overdue report each month and give one team member the job of calling. That works until the front desk has a full waiting room. Elva covers the follow-up your team can't fit in, every day, not once a month.
A six-month cleaning, a gum-care visit and a child's fluoride appointment need different timing and different words. Sending everyone the same template means the patient who needed a quick nudge and the patient who needed a call get the same message.
Appointment reminders protect visits that are already booked. They do nothing for the patient who is due and has no appointment. That patient needs someone to reach out, answer questions and offer a time, and to keep doing it until they book.
Illustration, not a result: a hygienist who can see 8 patients a day leaves 2 chairs empty on each of 4 days a week. That is 8 empty hygiene visits a week, or about 400 over a 50-week year. Multiply by what a hygiene visit is worth to your practice. Patients gone 18 months or more get a different message and have their own page, patient reactivation, and unused benefits reminders cover the end-of-year deadline.
Elva runs alongside your practice management system rather than replacing it, with real-time sync across Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Curve Dental, Denticon, and CareStack.
It reads your schedule and recall dates, and writes each booking back, so a patient who books drops off the overdue list and stops receiving messages, however they booked.
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Rules you can review. Who is included, how many touches and on which days, and what every message must say are all yours to set. Reports count sent, reached, booked and attended.
Human review where you want it. Read each step as three real patients would get it before anything is sent. Your team takes the personal calls, and on AI calls, whether Elva announces itself as automated is set per practice.
Limits that protect patients. A shared contact cap, quiet hours, one message instead of three, and instant opt-out. A patient can stop recall messages and keep their appointment reminders.
Handled to HIPAA standards. Patient data moves under a signed business associate agreement, encrypted at rest and in transit, and messages carry only what's needed to book a visit.
The hygiene schedule carries a large share of the practice. Industry benchmarks put hygiene at 25–35% of gross practice production, so an empty hygiene chair is a visible hole in revenue.
Source: Dianne Glasscoe Watterson, RDH, "The successful hygiene department: Understanding the numbers," Dental Economics, 15 July 2015. Retrieved 5 October 2026.
Six months is the traditional interval, not a rule. A UK clinical guideline recommends setting each adult's recall interval individually, between 3 and 24 months depending on risk, so a recall system needs more than one cycle.
Source: National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), "Dental recall: recall interval between routine dental examinations" (CG19), 2004. Retrieved 5 October 2026.
The ADA says some patients will never schedule their own recare, and that systems should be in place to track and engage them. Its suggested minimum is a monthly overdue report and a team member designated to make the calls.
Source: American Dental Association, "Recare Appointments," Guidelines for Practice Success (undated page). Retrieved 5 October 2026.
A dental hygiene recall system, also called recare, tracks when each patient is due for a cleaning or exam, contacts those who haven't booked, and gets them onto the schedule. Hygiene recall software runs that process automatically against your practice management system, so nobody has to build an overdue list by hand.
Appointment reminders go to patients who are already booked. Recall goes to patients who are due and have no appointment. Reminders protect a visit that exists; recall creates one. Elva Recall follows up until the patient books, answers their replies, and books the visit.
Six months is the traditional interval, but it isn't a rule. NICE's guideline recommends setting each adult's interval between 3 and 24 months based on risk. Elva lets you run different recalls on different cycles, such as a six-month cleaning recall and a three-month gum-care recall.
The day the patient is due. Elva checks your schedule and recall dates every night, contacts every patient who is due and has no appointment, and keeps following up until they book or the sequence ends.
The default sequence is a text, an email on day 5, an AI call on day 12 and a call from your team on day 21, and each step goes only to patients who haven't booked. You can change the steps and the days, and edit a recall while it runs without anyone receiving a step twice.
Patients on a three-month gum-care cycle get their own recall. When one runs two months late, Elva moves faster than it does for a routine cleaning: a text, a phone call three days later, then a call from your team.
Most practice management systems can list overdue patients and send a basic reminder. Elva follows up across text, email and phone, answers the patient's reply, books the visit onto your schedule, and hands your team a call list for the few who are left.
Elva syncs in real time with Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Curve Dental, Denticon, and CareStack. It reads your schedule and recall dates and writes bookings back, so a patient who books leaves the overdue list immediately.
No. Give Elva a short brief on what the message is for and how it should sound, and it writes each patient their own message using what it knows about them. You can also write your own. Every name, date and number is checked against the patient's chart, and you read each step before anything is sent.
Replies are answered in the patient's own language at any hour, and Elva offers times and books the visit in the conversation. Patients who never respond reach your Calls page with who to call and why. Phone calls are made by the Elva AI Receptionist; without it, recall runs on text and email and your team makes the calls.
Elva is built for dental practices and is HIPAA compliant. We sign a business associate agreement with every practice, data is encrypted at rest and in transit, and messages carry only what's needed to book a visit. Patients can stop texts instantly by replying STOP, and can stop recall messages while keeping their appointment reminders.
Hygiene recall is part of Elva Recall, which is included in ELVA Core. Elva is a paid platform; tell us your practice size and setup and you'll have a quote within 24 hours.
See the hygiene recall that is ready on day one, and read the messages your patients would get.
