From plan to conversation

Start with the plan

Chairside begins where the appointment ends: with a treatment plan. You do not write anything new for it. You take the plan you already have, choose what the patient sees, and make a link.

Make the link

From the plan you set the items, the stages and their timing, and whether fees appear. You can add a note in your own words. A rough one is fine: "crowns for the cracks, fillings for the decay" is tidied into plain patient wording, in your voice, and tied to the plan items.

Chairside gives you a short link and a four-digit code. The whole thing takes under a minute.

What your patient opens

At home, your patient opens the link and enters the code. There is no account, no app, and nothing to install. Five wrong codes lock the link.

They see their plan as a list, a tooth chart with their teeth marked, and the stages and timing you set. If you chose to include fees, they see the fees as written in the plan. There is a reading list you picked from your practice's pages.

What your patient can ask

Anything about the treatments in their plan, in plain language, any time the link is open. Answers come from your practice's published patient information and the plan, and they are given in your name. When a question is about a treatment outside the plan, the assistant points to your practice's page on it. When it has nothing on a topic, it says so.

After each answer the patient sees a few suggested questions, written the way a patient would ask them. They can ask for a summary of the conversation at any point.

The patient is told, clearly and early, that nobody reads the chat as it happens, that it is not a way to reach the clinic, and that you may read it later to improve the tool. They are asked not to type personal details.

What it refuses

The assistant does not diagnose, propose different treatment, or quote or estimate a cost that is not in the plan. It does not draft messages for the patient to send. It does not book, reschedule, or pass anything to the clinic, and it never claims a message has been seen. It uses nothing beyond your pages and the plan.

If a patient describes an emergency or distress, the reply points them to the clinic, an after-hours service, the emergency department, or 000 and Lifeline, before anything else.

What you read afterwards

You see every conversation for your own patients, folded by conversation. Each one carries flags where they apply: safety, urgent, wants to book, and "no answer" where the assistant had nothing on a topic.

Stored conversations have names, dates of birth, phone numbers, emails and addresses removed before they are kept. Appointment dates stay.

What you control

Every page the assistant answers from is yours to edit, one paragraph at a time. Your wording outranks the shipped wording. Chairside updates the defaults over time; your edits stay, and you are told what changed. The reading pages carry your practice's name and logo.

Links close on their own after 90 days without use and are removed 90 days after that. You can close or reissue a link at any time.