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Howard Speaks Howard Farran, DDS, MBA, MAGD

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After-Hour Dental Emergency Procedures


Howard Farran, DDS
MBA, MAGD
Publisher,
Dentaltown Magazine
You’re sitting down for dinner, or putting for par on the ninth green or cutting the cake at your kid’s birthday party when you get the call. It’s Mr. Smith, one of your patients, and he’s frantic. He’s calling because he knocked out a tooth while playing basketball with his son this afternoon. This situation is made even more pressing because he has to give a speech at tomorrow morning’s board meeting. “I can’t give a presentation tomorrow with my tooth knocked out,” he says. “I’m desperate! Can you help me?” I’m betting, at least once during your career as a dentist, you’ve taken a call like this. As with most healthcare professions, after-hours emergencies come with the territory. Every dental office has to deal with emergencies, and the way each office handles them is different.

At Today’s Dental, when an after-hours emergency arises, our patients have a couple different options they can choose from. Before patients leave our office, they are handed a card with the doctors’ home phone numbers in case they need to reach them directly, or patients can call our main office line and they will be referred to our Front Office Supervisor Dawn Boerio. When Dawn receives emergency calls on her cell phone from patients, she assesses their concerns and makes a decision whether or not she can answer their questions directly or if they will need further attention from a dentist.

Dawn has access to our SoftDent computer system from her home, so she is able to look up information such as, when the last time a patient was at our office, which dentist that patient sees, what procedure was recently done, or whether or not the caller is a patient of record. Dawn can also check drug allergies and call in prescriptions (if needed) once given approval by the dentist. All clinical notes can be entered into the chart and X-rays can be viewed if necessary. If the patient has never been to our office before, we do not prescribe any medications for them. We will instead offer them an appointment during the week at our office or refer them out to get immediate assistance. With non-patients, in an emergency there is always the opportunity to make them new patients.

Most of the time, patients who call in simply have a question or just want peace of mind that their concern is going to be taken care of. Putting someone like Dawn in charge of screening our emergency calls means more time for golf on the weekends for us docs! In all seriousness though, we all make ourselves available to come into the office if the need arises. The majority of our assistants live a good distance away, so another benefit of having someone like Dawn field our emergency calls is that she can assist, bill insurance and collect the patient’s portion.

Some of the typical emergency calls or questions that we receive are when a temporary crown or bridge comes off, when a patient is experiencing swelling, or when a patient is still bleeding one hour after an extraction. Most of our patients choose to wait until the next day the office is open to have their temporaries re-cemented. We always offer them an appointment first thing in the morning to accommodate their busy schedules. We take it very seriously when a patient experiences swelling. Dawn will get the necessary information from the patient and relay it to the treating dentist who can then make the decision whether the patient needs medication or if the patient should be referred to the emergency room. If a patient is bleeding for an extended period of time following an extraction, Dawn has given them the advice to run any type of teabag under water, squeeze out excess, place it in the extraction area and bite down for approximately 20 minutes. The tannic acid in the tea should stop the bleeding.

Since Dawn takes our emergency calls, the office pays her cell phone bill because it is the only number we leave on our recorder for patients to call. We also reimburse our staff for their time if they need to come into the office on the weekend to treat an emergency. Emergency patients we do see are charged an after-hours emergency fee, which they are notified of prior to their visit.

Having someone like Dawn screen after-hours emergency calls has been a great help for us at Today’s Dental. Dawn addresses all of our patients’ and non-patients’ needs, assesses the situation and then helps us (and the patients) determine the best path to take. With this system in place, we can provide the best information and care possible for our patients, while saving us time.
Dentaltown Magazine
September 2025
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