Things to Know for Pediatric Practices
If your practice specializes in pediatrics, there are a few things you should know about Yapi Leap including how it handles communication for minor patients and the best practices you can implement to make sure Leap works great for you and your kiddos!
How Leap Sends Emails & Texts for Pediatric Patients
Leap is set up to send communications for minors differently than it does for adult patients so messages go to the person who needs them the most. If you simply list the minor patient's information in their own file in Open Dental, appointment reminders, recall reminders, review requests, and forms will go to them.
If you want a parent or guardian to receive communications instead, you have two options:
Option 1 (recommended): Enter the parent/guardian's contact information in the patient's file.
Option 2:
Leave the patient's contact information blank in their file in Open Dental AND
List the parent/guardian's information in their own file AND
Mark that parent/guardian as Head of Household in Open Dental.
How Leap Handles Communication for Multiple Children
If a parent schedules more than one of their little ones for the same appointment day, Leap consolidates a lot of their messages so families don't get overwhelmed:
Confirmation and Same Day reminders combine all the children's appointment information for the day into a single reminder each time a reminder is sent, listing the starting time for the first appointment. These reminders use the contact information for the patient whose appointment is first on the schedule. These, of course, can route to a parent or guardian if you follow our recommendations for pediatric patients mentioned above.
Save the Date, New Patient Welcome, and Premedicate messages still all send separately for each patient.
Review requests use the contact information for the child whose appointment is first on the schedule. Like appointment reminders, these can route to a parent or guardian if you follow our recommendations for pediatric patients How Leap Sends Emails & Texts for Pediatric Patients.
Forms Sent Before an Appointment:
Whether they're sent manually via the Pending Forms tab or via set automation, parents get a link from which they can view and complete all their children's forms. For forms sent via automation, this link attaches to the children's appointment reminders.
All children's paperwork is accessible via the single link that's sent.
For security, parents need to fill out forms for one child at a time by clicking the button for that child and entering the child's birthdate.
If the children have different contact information but they're all part of the same family in Open Dental, the link containing all the children's paperwork is sent to each contact.
Forms Sent During an Appointment:
When you select a patient to assign forms to, you'll see additional tabs for all other family members who have an appointment on the same day. This way, you can easily select the forms for every child in a family.
How you choose to send the forms determines how the parent/guardian can view and fill them out:
Forms sent to a Linked Device: The parent can view and complete forms for all children on the same device at the same time. If you have more than one parent/guardian present and several children, you can also split the work by assigning some children to one device and some to another so the adults can share the work!
Forms sent to device via QR Code: Forms must be assigned to a different device for each child OR the parent needs to return to you so you can assign forms to the same device for each child, one at a time, with a new unique QR code.
Forms sent via Text or Email: Leap sends a message with a link to all the children's forms. When the parent clicks on the link, they'll see buttons to access each of their child's forms separately. (For security, they need to fill out forms for one child at a time by clicking the button for that child and entering the child's birthdate.)
If children in the same family have different contact information on file (e.g. one child has mom's info and another child has dad's), both will receive forms for all children on the day's schedule so they can split the work as needed. 😊
Leap Settings for Pediatric Practices
Most of Leap’s settings that affect pediatric patients are automatic and don’t require any setup. We do it behind the scenes! There are a couple that you can adjust yourself, though, if your practice uses Leap's Online Scheduling. These are already covered in our Online Scheduling setup instructions, but we wanted to point them out so you know they’re available:
Child Age Limit for Online Scheduling: In your General Settings for Online Scheduling, you can set the highest age your practice considers a patient to be a child (often 16 or 17). This helps Yapi Leap determine what recall treatments can be booked based on their birthdate.
Patient age range for Online Scheduling: For each provider, you can set what age range of patients they’ll accept for online-scheduled appointments. If some of your providers specialize in older children and some only see the little ones, you can set their age range so parents don't accidentally schedule with the wrong provider.
Best Practices for Pediatrics
To get the most out of Leap as a pediatric office, here are some best practices we recommend:
If you want parents/guardians to receive reminders, review requests, and forms, make sure your entire team is consistently doing one of the following:
Enter the parent's phone number and email in the patient's file in Open Dental (recommended). This is the simplest option.
Leave the patient's phone number and email blank in Open Dental and make sure their parent is listed as Head of Household. This option is best if you already have parents listed separately in Open Dental with their own contact information.
If you want the patient to receive reminders, review requests, and forms (for example, if the patient is a particularly responsible teenager who makes their own appointments, drives themselves, and fills out their own paperwork), just list the patient’s contact information in their own file.
Sending Forms Before an Appointment: When sending forms manually via the Pending Forms tab, you must select each child separately but their forms will be accessible to the parent via a single link.
Select each child separately and assign forms to them.
The parent/guardian will receive a text and/or email (whichever you chose) with a link to all their children's forms.
Assigning Forms to In Office Patients: If a parent needs to fill out forms for multiple children in office, we recommend sending the forms to a linked device. This way the parent can fill out the forms for all children at once. When assigning forms:
Select one of the children to assign forms to.
Select Linked Device as the Send To option and choose a device to send the forms to.
Select the forms for that child but DON'T click the Send button yet.
Select the tab for another child in the family.
Select Linked Device and choose the same device you chose for the first child.
Repeat for all other children in the family, then click Send.
Once you hand over the device, the parent will see the forms they need to fill out for all their children that have appointments that day.