Tracking New Patients with Pipelines

A pipeline gives your front desk a visual board to track every new patient from their first inquiry all the way to an appointment on the schedule. This article walks you through setting up a pipeline, moving patients through stages, and keeping your team aligned so no interested patient slips through the cracks.

What a Pipeline Is and Why It Helps

Think of a pipeline as a simple kanban board with columns that match the steps in your new-patient process. A typical dental practice might use stages like New Inquiry, Contacted, Appointment Scheduled, and In the Chair. Instead of relying on sticky notes or mental tracking, every contact card sits in the column that reflects where things stand right now. Anyone on the team can open the board and immediately see which patients need a follow-up call and which ones are already booked.

Pipelines live inside the Contacts section of your dashboard and work alongside the patient record so nothing is siloed. You can learn more about what information lives on each record in Understanding the Patient Record.

Creating Your Pipeline

1. Open the Contacts tab from the main menu and click Pipelines in the left sidebar.
2. Click Add Pipeline and give it a descriptive name, for example New Patient Tracker.
3. Add your stages by clicking Add Stage for each column you want. Name each stage to match your real workflow steps.
4. Drag the stage cards to put them in the order patients actually move through your process.
5. Click Save. Your pipeline is now ready to use.

Adding Patients to a Pipeline

Once a pipeline is saved, you can place any contact into it directly from their patient record.

1. Open the patient's record. (See Contacts Overview if you need a refresher on finding a contact.)
2. Look for the Pipeline section on the right side of the record and click Add to Pipeline.
3. Choose your pipeline from the dropdown, then select the starting stage, usually New Inquiry.
4. Click Save. The patient card will now appear in the correct column on your pipeline board.

You can also add a new patient directly from the pipeline board by clicking Add Contact at the top of any stage column. If you are bringing in a list from another system, add them through the import tool first and then assign them to the pipeline. The Adding and Importing Patients guide covers that process.

Moving Patients Between Stages

Open the Pipelines view to see your board. Each patient appears as a card showing their name and any notes your team has added.

• Drag a card from one column to the next as the patient progresses.
• Or open the card and use the Stage dropdown inside it to move them without dragging.
• Either method updates the record immediately so the change is visible to everyone on the team right away.

Filtering and Searching Your Pipeline

As your board fills up, use the search bar at the top of the pipeline view to find a specific patient by name. You can also filter the board by the team member assigned to each contact, which is useful in a multi-provider office where different staff handle different inquiries. If you need to build more targeted lists across your entire contact database, Building Smart Lists and Filters gives you additional options for segmenting patients.

Keeping the Board Clean

A pipeline only works if it stays current. Build a quick daily habit into your front-desk routine: at the start or end of each day, open the board and update any cards that moved. Patients who booked can advance to Appointment Scheduled. Patients who came in can move to In the Chair or be marked as won and archived so the board stays focused on open opportunities.

Use tags alongside your pipeline to add context without cluttering the stage name. For example, tag a patient Needs Insurance Verification while they sit in the Contacted column. The Organizing Patients with Tags article explains how to create and apply tags quickly.

Next Steps

Once your pipeline is running, consider setting up automated appointment reminders so patients who book an appointment get a confirmation and reminder without any extra effort from your team. If you want to pull a list of patients currently in a specific pipeline stage for a follow-up campaign, the Smart Lists tool can filter by pipeline stage and give you exactly that group.