Appointment requests by chat for dental and physio practices: free times from Outlook, no health questions asked

9:40 on a Sunday evening, someone types into your website chat: "Do you have anything next week?" Nobody reads it before Monday morning, when the phones are already ringing.

A chat can offer free times from your Outlook calendar without asking what the visit is for. This guide gives you the decisions to make first, a 2 week pilot and a checklist for your data protection officer.

Patients already want to book online

In a survey of 3,512 people with statutory health insurance in Germany, run for the GKV-Spitzenverband in spring 2024, 44% were unhappy with how well doctors' practices can be reached by phone.

In the same survey, 51% called booking online important or very important, up from 31% in 2022 (zm online).

In 2017 the booking platform Doctolib said just under 40% of its appointments were booked outside consultation hours or at weekends (vendor data, via Ärzte Zeitung).

A smaller step than a booking portal

Online scheduling for a dental office used to mean a booking portal or an extra module for the practice software. If your appointment book is an Outlook calendar, a chat that offers free times from it is a smaller step.

It still forces decisions a phone call never made you write down: which appointments patients may pick, what they are called, who says yes, and what your privacy policy must mention.

Why the chat should never ask what the appointment is for

At the front desk, "What is it for?" helps your team pick the right slot. In a chat, the answer becomes a written record about someone's health, stored in a tool you now have to account for.

What the GDPR says

Recital 35 of the GDPR counts information "collected in the course of the registration for, or the provision of, health care services" as data concerning health. Article 9 restricts how such data may be processed.

Where the UK regulator draws the line

Appointment details count as health data when they tell you something about a person's health, while a GP appointment on its own may be nothing more than a checkup.

The regulator's example: from someone's list of appointments at an osteopath clinic, you could reasonably infer health data (ICO guidance on special category data).

Secrecy rules for practices in Germany

Under § 203 StGB, dentists, doctors and other health professions with state regulated training must keep their patients' secrets. They may involve outside helpers such as an IT provider.

Under § 203(4) sentence 2 no. 1, though, the practice commits an offence itself when such a helper discloses a secret and the practice never made sure the helper was bound to secrecy.

The rule for your chat

The chat asks for 2 things: a name to book under and a way to send the confirmation. Patients may still volunteer details, but the chat never invites them.

In Deskwoot this rule is part of how Fynn books. He never asks why the patient needs the appointment and never asks for health details.

Deskwoot reads only when your Outlook calendar is busy (the start, the end and the busy status of each entry), never titles, notes or attendees. Fynn works only with the free times calculated from that.

One limit for readers in the US: Deskwoot does not sign Business Associate Agreements under HIPAA, so this setup is not for practices that need one.

Pick the appointment types patients may book themselves

Start with appointments where the patient already knows what they need and your team would book them without asking anything clinical:

• in a dental practice, usually the routine checkup and the hygiene appointment;
• in a physio practice, the next session for a patient already in treatment with you.

Keep the rest with your team:

• patients in pain;
• long treatment blocks;
• anything a clinician has to plan;
• first visits, if your team prefers to talk to new patients beforehand.

Name each type with care

The name travels. In Deskwoot it appears in the messages the patient gets ("Your [type] on [day and time] is confirmed") and in the email copy of those messages after a live chat.

It is also the title of the calendar entry, which reads type, colon, patient name. "Root canal review: Maria Silva" in a calendar the whole team can see says far more than "Checkup 30 min: Maria Silva".

So name types after the kind of visit and its length, never after a diagnosis or a body part.

Set bookable hours around the day you actually run

Bookable hours are separate from opening hours. If you keep the first slots of each morning for patients in pain, leave those hours out, so the chat can't give them to someone booking a cleaning.

A patient in pain gets what your website says: your phone number, your rules for acute appointments and the out of hours service. Fynn passes that on and decides nothing himself.

The settings that do most of the work

• Minimum notice is the shortest gap between booking and appointment. The default is 2 hours. A practice that plans each day the evening before may want 12 or 24.
• Bookable ahead caps how far out patients can book: 30 days by default, up to 90.
• Buffer keeps time free before and after every busy entry in the calendar, up to 4 hours.

One calendar for each dentist or therapist

If each dentist or therapist keeps their own Outlook calendar, connect them (up to 20) and give each a label patients see, so someone can ask for Anna by name. A private calendar in the same account can block times without ever being offered.

Fynn offers at most 3 free times at once, with the time zone, and books nothing before the patient says yes.

Which calendars work

This works with Outlook (Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com). Google Calendar is not available yet.

Fynn sees only what is in Outlook. If your appointment book lives in practice software, a time booked there still looks free to him.

Let your team confirm new bookings

Deskwoot has 2 modes, set separately for new bookings, cancellations and moves.

The default: your team says yes

In "Your team, with 1 tap", the default, the patient's yes creates a request that holds the slot. The patient reads "Your request for [type] on [day and time] is with the team. You'll get the confirmation here."

Your team confirms or declines it on a card in the conversation and gets a reminder after 2 hours. After 23 hours at most (sooner when the appointment is close), the request expires and the patient is told a teammate will reply.

For a practice this default is the right one. The calendar knows when a chair is free. It does not know that the "next session" was picked by someone who has never been to you, and a person catches that in seconds.

When a time doesn't work

Your team can decline it and offer up to 3 other free times in the same step. Fynn books the one the patient picks if it is still free.

The other mode, for later

"Fynn, after the customer's yes" books immediately and tells your team afterwards. It suits a salon better than a practice.

If you want it at all, try it for moves after the pilot. Either way, Fynn changes an appointment only for the patient it belongs to.

Channels, and the phones in your team's pockets

Website chat and email

On live chat, Fynn asks for an email address before he books. The patient gets every message about the appointment by email as well, so a confirmation still arrives after they close the tab.

The same booking works when patients write to your practice email address.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is a separate decision. Deskwoot's setup for practices starts with email and the website chat and adds WhatsApp only if you pick it, with a note about health data.

Whether it suits your practice is a question for your data protection officer.

Pushes without patient names

When you set Deskwoot up as a practice, pushes on your team's phones leave out names and messages, appointment requests included.

They show the conversation number and a short line such as "Appointment request to confirm", so a phone lying face up on the front desk shows no patient's name.

Your teammate taps the push and confirms on the card in the conversation (pushes without content).

A 2 week pilot

Week 1, before you tell patients

1. Connect the Outlook calendar of one dentist or therapist, add 1 or 2 appointment types with neutral names, set bookable hours for a few mornings and leave all 3 decisions with your team.
2. Hold the Preview on the settings page, which lists the times Fynn would offer right now, next to the real calendar.
3. Have 2 teammates book under made up names in the website chat and by email. Read every message they get and open each entry in Outlook.
4. Agree who confirms requests on which days, and who covers when that person is off.
5. Start a tally sheet of phone calls about appointments, so week 2 has a number to compare.

Fynn offers times in every inbox where he answers, so a patient who asks this week may already get some. With your team confirming, nothing is booked without you.

Week 2, with patients

Tell patients on the appointments page of your website that they can ask the chat for a time. Then count every day:

• requests, and minutes from request to confirmation;
• declines, with the reason;
• requests that expired (the target is zero);
• phone calls about appointments, on the tally sheet from week 1;
• how often patients send health details nobody asked for.

If that last number is high, add a sentence to the chat's welcome text asking patients not to share health details there.

At the end of week 2, decide whether to add types and practitioners, and whether to tell patients they can ask for a time by email too.

A checklist for your privacy policy and your DPO

Privacy policy

Article 13 GDPR asks you to name the recipients of the data and any transfers to third countries.

Name the website chat, Deskwoot as your processor and the fact that an AI assistant answers (Fynn's replies are marked as AI on every channel).

List what the chat collects for an appointment (a name, the chosen time and, on live chat, an email address), and say that your calendar runs on Microsoft.

Where the data goes

Deskwoot runs in EU data centers in the Netherlands. Some service providers work outside the EEA, and the DPA lists each with its region.

For Fynn's answers, conversations go to Anthropic, which does not train its models on them.

The DPA

You sign the data processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR in your dashboard (how to sign it).

For practices in Germany, it has a section on professional secrets under § 203 StGB. That section binds Deskwoot and the service providers it lists to secrecy, down to the mere fact that someone is your patient.

Impact assessment

The German data protection authorities keep a list of processing that needs a DPIA. Its no. 11 is AI that steers the interaction with the people concerned, with a system that talks to customers as its example (DSK list, PDF in German).

Ask your DPO whether your setup needs one. Deskwoot supports DPIAs on request.

Channels, calendar and pushes

• Decide on WhatsApp and on email with patients together with your DPO.
• Decide which Microsoft account Fynn books into and who can see it.
• The entries Deskwoot creates are marked private and have no attendees, so nobody gets an invitation email. Each holds the patient's email address or phone number, when known, and a link to the conversation.
• Check that pushes without content are on, and that staff answering in the chat follow the same rule as Fynn.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules differ by country, and your DPO knows your setup.

What it costs to try

You can connect a calendar on every Deskwoot plan, the free Hacker plan included. Fynn offers and books times on every paid plan, starting with Startup at $4 per agent per month, or $3.20 billed annually.

Startup includes 50 AI conversations a month for the whole workspace. Each extra one costs $0.07 from a prepaid balance.

For the patient from Sunday evening, that means up to 3 free times the same evening. On Monday your team confirms the one they picked with 1 tap, and the entry sits in the Outlook calendar you already use.

To test it, start the trial with the practice setup, which also switches pushes without content on. Connect one dentist's calendar and add a single appointment type. The Preview shows the times Fynn would offer before any patient sees them.

The trial runs 7 days on the Enterprise plan, includes booking and needs no credit card, for up to 30 seats including yours. That covers week 1 of the pilot. When it ends, choose a plan or stay on the free Hacker plan.

The launch post on appointments walks through the setup screens. The page for medical and dental practices shows what Fynn answers besides appointments.

Practices that run Cliniko can read how Fynn books there.