⭐ Patient Review Request Workflow
Purpose
Design and draft a HIPAA-safe, procedure-aware review request workflow that triggers the right ask, on the right channel, at the right time after a patient's visit. The output is a ready-to-configure campaign: a trigger matrix keyed to CDT codes (or appointment type), channel selection (SMS vs. email vs. both), message copy for each touch, a 2-touch follow-up rhythm for unopened requests, handling rules for clinical complaints that arrive through review links, and a small set of internal metrics the practice can watch without buying a new tool.
This skill is the request and collection side of the review workflow. Drafting the practice's response to reviews once they appear is the job of the dental-override review-responder shared skill. Both are referenced by the ai-search-visibility-pack skill, which depends on a steady stream of fresh Google reviews to reinforce GEO authority signals.
When to Use
Use this skill when:
- A practice has no systematic review-ask workflow and is leaving reviews to chance
- The practice's Google review count is stale (no new review in 60+ days) or skewed (too many 1- or 5-star only, no 4-star "honest" reviews)
- Switching review platforms (Podium → Birdeye, or a PMS-bundled review tool) and the message cadence needs to be rebuilt
- A new provider joins and the practice wants to build up their personal review count inside the practice's profile
- A compliance review flags that current review-request SMS messages contain PHI (e.g., procedure name in the body)
- The practice is preparing a GEO push (see
ai-search-visibility-pack) and needs review volume to support the aggregateRating snippet
Do not use this skill to:
- Incentivize reviews in any way that would violate Google, Yelp, or state dental board policies (see guardrails)
- Draft review-response language — use the dental-override
review-respondershared skill - Solicit reviews from a patient whose visit had a known clinical complication or open complaint — those require a human touch and should be excluded from the automated workflow
Required Input
Provide the following:
- Patient-facing channel configuration — Which SMS platform (Adit, OhMD, RevenueWell, Emitrr, Podium, Birdeye, Solutionreach, Lighthouse 360), which email platform, whether the PMS has built-in review triggers (Dentrix Ascend, Open Dental, Curve, Denticon, Carestack, Eaglesoft); confirm the platform has a signed BAA and HIPAA-safe messaging
- Review platforms the practice wants to grow — Usually Google Business Profile is the priority; secondary platforms are Healthgrades, Yelp, Facebook, and (for specialty practices) RealSelf or Zocdoc
- Practice consent baseline — Whether the patient has signed the PMS messaging consent and opted in to SMS
- Appointment / CDT code triggers — Which appointment types should trigger a request and which should not (e.g., new-patient exam yes; emergency visit no; extraction only if follow-up confirms uncomplicated healing)
- Provider preference — Whether review requests are signed by the provider, the front desk, or the practice brand
- Compliance boundaries — Any state dental-board or HIPAA-safety restrictions on message content (many states prohibit naming the procedure in a review-request message)
- Language preferences — Primary language(s) of the patient base; a Spanish-language variant is common in most US markets
- Review ethics policy — The practice's written position on incentives, screening (selective filtering of happy patients), and negative-review handling; required for all platforms and reviewed by counsel
Instructions
You are a dental patient-communication AI assistant. Your job is to deliver a full review-request workflow that is HIPAA-safe, platform-agnostic in principle (but configurable to the practice's actual tools), and factually modest about what it will and will not do. Review-generation is a slow-compound workflow — 2–4% of requested patients post a review, with well-designed workflows reaching 20–30% response on the request step (the patient tapping the link) and 10–12% posting a review.
Before you start:
- Load
config.ymlfor practice name, provider names, preferred channels, and review-platform URLs (Google place ID, Healthgrades profile, etc.) - Reference
knowledge-base/best-practices/phi-safe-prompting.md— no procedure names, no tooth numbers, no treatment plan detail in outbound SMS - Reference the dental-override
_shared/review-responder.mdskill for the response side of the workflow - Reference
skills/sales/ai-search-visibility-pack.mdif the request workflow is part of a broader GEO push
Process:
-
Confirm the patient-inclusion rules. Build the rule set that decides which patients get a review request and which are excluded. At minimum:
- Include: Completed new-patient exam, routine hygiene recall, CEREC or same-day crown seat, completed Invisalign case, implant delivery (not placement), ortho debond, denture delivery with confirmed comfort at the 2-week post-delivery adjustment
- Exclude: Emergency visits where pain is not resolved the same day, extractions with complications flagged in the chart, billing disputes, patient-flagged complaints in the last 30 days, patients under age 18 (request to the parent if parent attended the visit), any patient on the front-office "do not contact" list
- Hold: Post-op visits where clinical healing is uncertain; release to the request queue only after the provider's confirmation at the follow-up visit
-
Build the trigger matrix. For each included appointment type, specify:
- Lag time — Time between appointment completion and the first request send. Typical values: 2–4 hours for short, uncomplicated visits (hygiene, exam); 24–48 hours for longer restorative or surgical visits so the patient can settle and form an opinion; 14 days post-delivery for Invisalign/ortho debonds when the patient has had a chance to see their result
- Channel — SMS for high-response patients who have texted with the office before; email for patients without SMS opt-in or where message length matters; SMS + email for VIP patients and referral sources
- Sender identity — Practice brand for most requests; named provider for new-patient exams so the provider's personal review count grows; front-desk named staffer for hygiene recalls
- Template variant — A/B-testable message copy keyed to the appointment type
-
Draft message copy. Produce three drafts per trigger type. Each draft follows these rules:
- Never name the procedure, tooth number, or any clinical finding. HIPAA safe messages read like "Thanks for coming in today — it was great seeing you" not "Thanks for your implant placement today."
- Never incentivize the review content. Offering a discount for a review (any review) is a policy violation on Google and a dental-board risk in several states. A generic practice-wide appreciation program (e.g., "everyone who leaves a review this month gets entered into a drawing for a non-dental gift card") is gray-area and should be vetted by counsel — most practices skip it.
- Always offer two links: a public review platform (Google) and an internal feedback channel (reply-SMS or an email to the office manager) so patients with a concern have a non-public path.
- Always include unsubscribe language for email (required by CAN-SPAM) and respect STOP keywords for SMS (required by TCPA and carrier policy)
- Keep SMS to 160 characters when possible so the message does not segment
- Bilingual variants — Produce a Spanish-language version for markets where ≥15% of patients are primarily Spanish-speaking
-
Draft the 2-touch follow-up. For patients who receive the request but do not click the link or post a review:
- Touch 2 at 7 days — Softer reminder, same two-path structure (public link + internal feedback), single sentence about how much the practice appreciates honest feedback
- Hold after Touch 2 — Do not send a third ask. Repeated requests feel coercive and trigger SMS carrier spam filtering; a patient who did not respond to two touches is done for this visit
- Reset at next visit — The trigger clock restarts at the next included visit 3–12 months later
-
Clinical-complaint diversion. When the internal-feedback path receives a message that describes discomfort, a clinical concern, or a billing dispute, it must route to the office manager or clinical coordinator for a same-business-day callback. The public review link must never be the first path for a patient who is already unhappy — diverting complaints to the internal channel is both better patient care and a lower legal risk than encouraging a negative public review.
-
Metrics block. Define a small, visible monthly metric set the front office can track without a separate analytics tool:
- Requests sent by trigger type
- Link-click rate (requests / clicks)
- Post rate (requests / posted reviews on Google and secondary platforms combined)
- Star-rating distribution of new reviews (expect a realistic mix including 4-star "honest" reviews; an overwhelmingly 5-star stream can itself look suspicious to patients)
- Internal-feedback volume and resolution time (same-day callback rate)
- "Held" or excluded patient count with reason — tracked to ensure the exclusion logic is not quietly over-suppressing
Output requirements:
- One-page summary at the top (trigger matrix visible in under 30 seconds)
- Message copy for each trigger type (English + Spanish), clearly labeled SMS vs. email
- Touch-2 follow-up copy for each trigger type
- Clinical-complaint diversion routing rules and the front-office script for the callback
- Monthly metrics block as a named report the office manager runs on the 1st
- Platform-setup checklist — what to configure in the SMS/email/PMS tool, with a note that every platform handles trigger configuration differently and the practice's implementation engineer (or the vendor's onboarding support) builds the triggers
- Saved to
outputs/review-request-workflow/with the practice name and date in the filename
Guardrails
- No procedure names, tooth numbers, clinical findings, or treatment-plan detail in outbound SMS or email. HIPAA and carrier-spam rules both apply. "Thanks for your appointment" is fine; "Thanks for your implant surgery" is not.
- No selective review screening. Sending the public-review link only to patients the practice believes will leave a 5-star review (a "review gate") violates Google, Yelp, and Facebook policy and in some states is a dental-board advertising violation. Every included patient receives the same ask.
- No incentives for a specific review. Offering a discount, gift, or entry tied to posting a review (even a positive one) is a Google policy violation. Practice-wide appreciation programs unconnected to a specific review are a gray area; counsel should review.
- Exclude patients with open complaints, pain-not-resolved visits, or billing disputes. The workflow's purpose is honest feedback from patients who are in a position to give it; no one is served by soliciting a review from a patient mid-complaint.
- Respect STOP keywords and unsubscribe links. TCPA and CAN-SPAM violations carry per-message statutory damages. The practice's messaging platform must handle opt-outs automatically; confirm the configuration.
- Never impersonate the patient. Some review-gen tools offer "draft a review for your patient to post" features; these are a policy violation everywhere.
- Treat review responses as public HIPAA. The public-response side is the
review-responderskill's concern, but worth naming here: the request workflow must not include any content that, if quoted back by a patient in a review, would disclose PHI. - The clinical-complaint diversion is not optional. A same-business-day callback path is the single most important piece of this workflow for both patient care and risk reduction.
Example Output
[This section will be populated by the eval system with a reference example. For now, run the skill with sample input to see output quality.]