travcjohnson Claude for dental practices
You already know where the hours go. Treatment plans nobody understands, denials that need an appeal by Friday, and a recall list that never gets called. This page walks through four jobs you can hand to Claude in a browser tab this week, with the exact prompts and the honest limits, and every one of them is built to run on de-identified or template material because consumer Claude plans are not the place for patient records.
Set each one up once inside a Claude Project, with this business's own documents in the project knowledge, and the drafts come back in their voice rather than a generic one.
How to use this skill
Ask the person which of the workflows below matches what is on their desk right now. Then walk them through that one only. Give them the prompt in full, tell them exactly which bracketed placeholders to replace, and say how long first-time setup really takes. Do not run all four at once; the point is that one of them is working by the end of the conversation.
Before handing over any prompt, read the limits section at the end and say plainly which parts of their job this should not touch.
1. Explain a treatment plan so the patient says yes
What happens today. You present four quadrants of scaling and root planing plus two crowns, the patient nods, and then calls back a week later to ask what any of it was for. The plan was clear to you and to nobody else in the room.
What happens instead. You paste the plan in clinical shorthand with the identifiers stripped, and Claude returns a one page letter in everyday words that the front desk can hand over. You read it, correct anything off, and it goes out the same visit.
First-time setup: about 20 minutes.
You are helping a dental practice explain a treatment plan to a patient in plain language. The dentist has already diagnosed and decided this plan. Do not second-guess the clinical decisions, and do not add or remove procedures.
Here is the plan in clinical shorthand, with all patient identifiers removed:
[paste the de-identified plan here: tooth numbers, procedure names or CDT codes, and any notes on urgency]
Here is the situation the patient is in, described generally:
[for example: mid forties, nervous about needles, PPO coverage with an annual maximum, works hourly so time off is a real cost]
Write a one page letter the front desk can hand over, at an eighth grade reading level, with these sections:
1. What we found, in everyday words
2. What we recommend and why, one short paragraph per tooth or area
3. What happens if we wait, stated factually and without pressure
4. The order we would do it in, and roughly how many visits
5. Questions you may want to ask us
Rules: no scare language, no statistics, and no dollar figures unless I gave them to you. Anywhere a number or a date is needed, write a bracketed blank for us to fill in. At the end, under a heading called Needs the dentist, list anything in the plan you could not explain clearly from what I gave you.
2. Draft the insurance appeal before the deadline passes
What happens today. A crown comes back denied. The justification is in the chart, the denial letter is sitting on the counter, and writing the appeal keeps sliding to the end of the day until the filing window is gone.
What happens instead. You paste the redacted denial language and the clinical facts, and Claude returns a structured appeal that quotes the carrier back and answers each point against the documentation you already have.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are helping a dental practice appeal a denied insurance claim. Work only from the facts I give you. Never invent clinical findings, dates, or documentation that I did not state.
The carrier's denial language, with patient identifiers removed:
[paste the stated denial reason and any code the carrier cited]
The procedure and its clinical justification, de-identified:
[paste the procedure name or CDT code, the tooth number, the findings that supported it, and what documentation exists, such as radiographs, perio charting, photos, or a prior narrative]
What we submitted with the original claim:
[list it]
Write a one page appeal letter addressed to the carrier's dental consultant, structured as:
1. A claim reference block with bracketed blanks for claim number, date of service, and member ID so we fill those in ourselves
2. One sentence stating what we are appealing
3. The carrier's stated reason, quoted
4. A point by point response using only the facts above, with each point tied to the specific documentation that supports it
5. A short closing that requests reconsideration and lists the attachments
Keep it factual and unemotional, and use the carrier's own vocabulary where I gave it to you. At the end, under a heading called Gaps, list anything you would have wanted that I did not provide.
3. Rewrite post-op instructions patients actually follow
What happens today. It is eight at night and a patient from this afternoon's extraction is calling the emergency line about bleeding that is completely normal, because the sheet they went home with is a photocopy of a photocopy that nobody reads.
What happens instead. You have a clean one page sheet for every procedure you do, written the way you actually talk, with a call us right away section specific enough to cut the after hours calls that were never emergencies.
First-time setup: about 25 minutes.
You are writing patient post-operative instructions for a dental practice. These are general instructions for a procedure type, not advice for any specific person, and a licensed dentist will review and approve them before use.
Procedure:
[name it, for example simple extraction, surgical extraction of a lower third molar, scaling and root planing, crown seat, root canal therapy]
How we actually do it:
[gauze pressure timing, whether you use sutures and whether they dissolve, what you recommend for discomfort, food and drink restrictions, rinse instructions and when to start, activity limits, and anything you tell every patient out loud]
Practice details:
[office name, phone number, after hours number, hours]
Write a one page sheet at a sixth grade reading level with these sections:
1. Today, for the next few hours
2. Tonight
3. The next few days
4. Normal, and not a reason to worry
5. Call us right away if
6. Your follow up
Rules: short sentences, active voice, and a plain word next to any clinical term. Do not name specific drugs or doses unless I listed them. Do not invent timelines I did not give you. Put anything you are unsure about in brackets so we can fill it in. Then give me the same sheet again in Spanish.
4. Build a recall and reactivation message library
What happens today. The overdue hygiene and unscheduled treatment lists are a few hundred names long. Whoever has a spare hour sends the same cheerful reminder text to all of them, and it lands the way a mass text lands.
What happens instead. You have a small library of messages split by why the person actually lapsed, so the patient who walked after a big estimate hears something different from the patient who moved and forgot.
First-time setup: about 30 minutes.
You are writing recall and reactivation messages for a dental practice. These are reusable templates, not messages to a named person, so use merge fields like {FirstName} instead of real patient details.
Our practice:
[practice name, city, the tone you want, and anything that makes you different, such as same day crowns, sedation options, evening hours, or an in-house membership plan]
Write messages for each of these situations:
1. Overdue hygiene, three to six months past due, otherwise a regular patient
2. Overdue hygiene, more than a year past due
3. Accepted treatment but never scheduled it
4. Had treatment presented, said the cost was the problem, never came back
5. New patient who came once and never returned
For each situation, give me:
- One SMS under 300 characters
- One short email with a subject line
- One voicemail script under twenty seconds, written to be read aloud
Rules: no stacked exclamation points, no manufactured urgency, and no offers or discounts I did not give you. Each message names one specific reason to come back and makes one clear ask. Include an opt out line on the SMS versions. Write at a seventh grade reading level, and leave a bracketed blank anywhere a date, price, or offer belongs.
What not to use Claude for here
Say these out loud rather than waiting to be asked. Being trusted is worth more than being impressive.
- Anything with protected health information in it. Do not paste patient names, dates of birth, chart numbers, radiographs, or exports from your practice management software into claude.ai on a Free, Pro, Max, or Team plan. Anthropic's Business Associate Agreement covers HIPAA-ready services such as Claude Enterprise with HIPAA compliance activated by the Primary Owner, and the first-party API, and those consumer plans sit outside that coverage. Work from de-identified summaries and templates until a signed BAA is actually in place.
- Clinical diagnosis and treatment decisions. Claude is not a medical device and is not cleared for diagnosis. Do not ask it to read a radiograph, stage periodontal disease, choose between restorative options, or decide whether a tooth is restorable. The dentist diagnoses and the dentist owns the plan. Claude only helps explain a plan a clinician already made.
- Sending anything to a patient or a carrier unread. Post-op instructions, appeal narratives, and treatment explanations all carry professional liability, and a draft that reads well can still be wrong. A licensed clinician approves every word before it leaves the office.
Questions this business usually asks
Can I paste patient names, charts, or x-rays into Claude?
Not on a Free, Pro, Max, or Team plan. Anthropic's BAA covers HIPAA-ready services like Claude Enterprise with HIPAA compliance activated, and the first-party API, and the consumer plans are outside it. That is exactly why every prompt on this page is written to run on de-identified material and reusable templates. If you want protected health information in the loop, that is a conversation about an Enterprise plan and a signed BAA first, before anyone types anything.
Do I have to pay for Claude to use any of this?
You can start on the free plan. Projects are available to all users including free accounts, capped at five projects, which is enough to keep one project for patient communication and one for insurance. Paid plans start to matter when you are loading a lot of reference material into project knowledge or bumping into message limits on a busy afternoon.
Will these letters sound like a machine wrote them?
They will if you ship the first draft. The fix takes one afternoon: paste two or three letters you have actually sent into the project instructions and tell Claude to match that voice, including the phrases you always use and the ones you never use. Read the first few out loud before they go out. After a couple of rounds of correction, the drafts stop needing much editing.
What about morning huddle notes and daily operations?
That is the easiest place to start, because the schedule review you want summarized can be described without any identifiers. Give Claude your huddle format once as project instructions, then paste in de-identified notes such as appointment types, open chair time, unscheduled treatment counts, and lab cases due, and it returns the agenda in your structure. Keep names, chart numbers, and anything clinical out of it.
More
A longer written version of these workflows, plus workflows for other trades, is at https://claudeforbiz.com/claude-for-dentists . Nothing there is required to use this skill; every prompt above is complete as written.