Your daily intake routine
A simple routine for the team that contacts and books referred patients. Watch the video once, then use the steps below as a reminder.
1. Every morning: answer patients first
Open Patient Engagement → Conversations → Reply inbox. Everything listed is a patient who wrote to the clinic and is waiting for an answer.
The goal is to answer every patient the same business day. A message that arrives on a weekday before 4 pm (clinic time) gets a reply that day; anything later, or on a weekend, by the end of the next weekday. We aim to meet this for 9 out of 10 messages.
- Each conversation shows how long the patient has been waiting. Due today (amber) means the deadline is today; Late (red) means it has passed. Hover over the time to see the exact deadline. Work Late first, then Due today.
- Click a conversation to read it, type your reply and press Send. Your message waits a few seconds before it goes, so you can press Stop if you spot a mistake. The inbox then moves you to the next patient.
- Done is for messages that need no answer, like "Ok, thanks". Use it only then: conversations marked Done without a reply are counted each week.
- Snooze is for patients who ask you to get back to them later. The conversation comes back on its own, or straight away if the patient writes again.
More detail: Conversations inbox.
2. Then: work referrals in the right order
Open Intake → Prospects and the In-Progress tab, then press Suggest best order. It reads each referral's history (how old it is, how many times you have reached out, what the patient wrote) and puts every referral in one of four groups, each with a one-line reason:
| Group | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Respond now | The patient is waiting on the clinic. | Start here: reply or call, and book. |
| Follow up | It's time for the next attempt. | Work these next. |
| Wait | You just reached out, or the patient asked for time. | Leave them for now. |
| Likely close-out | Months of silence, or the patient said no. | Tidy up: see below. |
- Read the reason before you act. A star means the AI read the messages; a list icon means it came from the simple rules. The suggestion never changes a record.
- The buttons above the list show one group at a time, with how many are in each.
- Likely close-out is for tidying up, not a target. Patients who said no carry a Patient said no label: close those referrals as Withdrawn or Returned so the referring doctor is told. For the silent ones it is only a flag. A referral younger than 60 days is never suggested for closing, because many patients still book late.
- The whole team works from the same order. It is refreshed in the background early each morning (from 6:00 am Eastern, or when the portal is first opened that day), and it stays when you open a patient and come back. A patient who replied since the ranking moves up straight away and is marked Changed since ranking. Press Refresh whenever you want the changed rows read again; it runs in the background while you keep working.
- Back to normal order returns the list to how it was.
More detail: Prospect management & outreach.
3. Once a week: check that it's working
The team lead opens Suggestion impact (the link next to Suggest best order):
- What happened after each suggestion: how quickly staff contacted each group, and how many patients booked or were closed within 30 days.
- What the AI added: the patients it moved to the top, and how many flagged as likely close-out booked anyway. That number should stay close to zero.
- Replies and the inbox: the same-day goal week by week (weeks below 90% are highlighted), how many conversations were marked Done without a reply, and which screens replies were sent from.
The routine on one line
Every morning: clear Late and Due today in the Reply inbox. Then: Suggest best order, work Respond now, then Follow up. Once a week: check Suggestion impact.
Availability
This routine uses the Reply inbox and prospect management, which are enabled per clinic. If you don't see Reply inbox or Suggest best order in your portal, ask your Fertiligent contact to enable them for your plan. Suggestion impact is available to staff who can open the Prospects list; its Replies and the inbox section shows only for staff who can open the Reply inbox.