Open Dental’s free Web Forms can’t send a consent form. Its own manual says consent sheets aren’t allowed as web forms. Its digital forms page adds that Web Forms can’t ask a follow-up question based on an earlier answer.
So the sedation consent, the ortho financial agreement, and the “if yes, list your medications” question still land on a clipboard in your lobby. That’s where most of the morning delay starts.
That gap costs real money, too. eClipboard, Open Dental’s tablet option, adds $45 a month per location on top of the base support fee. You pay that and still hand a device to a patient who’s already late for their slot.
Open Dental earns its 4.6 rating on Capterra. Pricing is posted in public, the data is yours, and its API is about as open as dental software gets. Intake just never got the same care. One Capterra reviewer put it in seven words: “Sheets are hard to use and set up.”
Our view is simple. Paperless dental office intake only pays off when the forms are done before the patient parks. Forms filled out in the lobby, on paper or a tablet, still eat into the visit at your busiest hour.
Curogram sends the new-patient packet, the health history update, and the consent as a text link. Patients finish them on their phones the night before. Your front desk opens finished, legible answers instead of decoding handwriting while the phone rings. In a pediatric office, the parent fills out the packet at home, with both hands free.
Open Dental has real strengths, and they’re worth naming first. It posts its fees in public, down to the add-ons. It keeps your data on your own server. Its user rating on Capterra sits at 4.6 out of 5.
That’s why so many offices stay with it for years. Charting, the schedule, the ledger, and claims all live in one place your team knows well.
Intake is the weak spot. Forms ride on the Sheets framework, which was built mainly for print. Open Dental’s own Sheets page says its support team gives only “minimal assistance” with them. If you want help, its Sheet Design Service runs $55 an hour.
Open Dental Sheets forms setup asks a lot of a front desk. A web form needs fields named FName, LName, and Birthdate, or it won’t work. Once forms are live, someone has to click “Retrieve New Forms” to pull in what patients sent.
Web Forms also have hard limits, per Open Dental’s own docs:
eClipboard is the newer path, at $45 per month per location. Its app is built for tablets in your office. Patients can also use eClipboard Web from home, but texting that link to phones needs Integrated Texting at $20 a month plus a fee per message. Every one of these eServices also needs the eConnector running on your office server.
A new patient moves through a typical clipboard morning like this:
Each step is small. Stacked at 8:00 a.m., they push the whole first hour back.
New-patient intake on paper often takes 10 to 20 minutes, and it lands at the worst time of day. When a first visit starts late, the visit gets cut short, or the next one does. Sometimes it has to be rebooked.
The math below is illustrative, so plug in your own numbers:
|
Item |
Illustrative figure |
|
Late-start visits that get cut or rebooked |
1 per week |
|
Production lost per cut or rebooked visit |
$200 to $400 |
|
Weeks per year |
50 |
|
Yearly leak |
$10,000 to $20,000 |
Handwriting turns small slips into chart errors. Celebrex and Celexa look alike in a rushed scrawl, and one is a pain pill while the other treats depression. A dose written as “5 mg” can read as “50 mg” if the patient’s pen skips.
Your staff do their best with what they’re handed. Still, every hand-copied line is a chance for a mistake to land in the chart and follow that patient to every future visit. A typed answer from the patient removes the guessing step, so your team checks it once instead of decoding it.
Your front desk coordinator is retyping a list of six meds with one eye on the check-in line. Your office manager is saying sorry to the 8:30 hygiene patient because the 8:00 new patient is still on page three.
In an oral surgery office, the surgeon is ready, and the consent form is still on the clipboard. Every form lands in the same 15 minutes, in the same room, while the same two people work the counter.
Curogram is the paperless front desk that sits next to Open Dental. It’s a HIPAA-compliant patient texting platform, SOC 2 Type II certified, built for the talk between patients and your front desk.
Intake runs in the same text thread that already confirms the visit. The patient gets the booking text, then the packet link, then the reminder, all from one number. Nothing about that asks them to learn a new tool.
Pew Research Center found that 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone. That phone is with the patient at home, at work, and in the car before the visit. A tablet in your lobby is only useful once they’re already late for check-in.
Curogram sends three kinds of forms by SMS link:
Patients tap the link and fill out the form in their phone’s browser. There’s no app to download, no portal account, and no password to reset.
Your team builds each form once in Curogram’s form builder. You won’t need to match field names or lay out a sheet for print. Most offices start from the paper packet they already use. These are HIPAA-compliant dental intake forms, sent through a secure link so health details never sit inside the text message itself.
Open Dental stays your system of record for charts, the schedule, and the ledger. Curogram handles the intake conversation around it.
When a patient submits, staff see a complete, typed form. They review it and file it into the patient’s record as part of check-in. There’s nothing to rip out, and the clinical side of Open Dental doesn’t change.
Curogram is cloud-based, so form delivery doesn’t run through the eConnector on your office server. If that server reboots overnight for an update, tonight’s packets still go out on time.
|
Web Forms |
eClipboard |
Curogram text link |
|
|
Monthly cost |
Free |
$45 per location |
Part of Curogram plan |
|
Consent forms |
Not allowed |
In the apps |
Yes, with e-signature |
|
Main place patients fill it out |
Browser link |
Lobby tablet or browser |
Their phone, by text |
|
Needs eConnector |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
The biggest change is when the work happens. Today, intake work piles up between 7:45 and 8:30 a.m. With forms sent by text, most of it shows up the evening before, spread across the day.
Your coordinator’s tasks shift like this:
Most offices keep one tablet or a paper copy at the desk for the patient who can’t use a phone.
Some chairs feel the clipboard queue more than others. The pain grows when a packet runs long, needs a signature before treatment can start, or has to be filled out by someone other than the patient.
A parent can’t hold a toddler and fill out three pages at once. With a text link, the parent finishes the packet at the kitchen table the night before. Allergies and past care get typed out calmly, and nobody has to chase a crayon across the waiting room.
Sedation day runs on signed consents. When the consent comes back signed the day before, the surgeon can still talk it through in person. Nobody has to wait for the patient to reach the last page on a clipboard.
A new ortho start brings records releases and a financial agreement. Getting both signed before the consult frees that visit for the plan, the timeline, and the parent’s questions.
Across all three, the visit opens with “good morning” and a name, and nobody hands over a pen.
Text-based workflows only work if patients actually use them. Based on our internal data, Covina Arthritic Clinic averages more than 1,100 text-confirmed visits each month on Curogram.
That number matters for intake. A patient who confirms by text will open a form link in the same thread. That habit is already there, so the packet rides along with a message they were going to read anyway.
Let’s follow one new patient. Maria books a Thursday 8:00 a.m. new-patient exam by phone on Tuesday afternoon. She has a dental plan through work and a penicillin allergy.
Tuesday, 2:15 p.m. Your front desk enters the visit in Open Dental. Maria gets a booking text from your office number with a link to her dental new patient packet online.
Tuesday, 8:40 p.m. Maria opens the link on the couch. She types her insurance details and lists her penicillin allergy. She also signs the financial policy and the HIPAA notice. The whole packet takes her about 12 minutes, on her own time.
Wednesday, 9:00 a.m. Her completed packet sits in Curogram, typed and signed. Your coordinator reviews it between calls and catches the allergy. It goes into Maria’s Open Dental record before lunch.
Thursday, 7:56 a.m. Maria walks in. Your front desk greets her by name and confirms one detail. There’s no clipboard, and nothing is left to sign.
Thursday, 8:00 a.m. Maria is in the chair. Her hygienist already knows about the penicillin allergy, because it was in the chart a full day earlier.
If Maria hadn’t opened the link by Wednesday morning, her 24-hour reminder would carry it again. Staff can also resend it with one click from her text thread.
|
Step |
Clipboard morning |
Text-link morning |
|
Forms finished |
8:10 to 8:20 a.m., in the lobby |
Night before, at home |
|
Allergy entered |
During check-in, by hand |
Day before, from typed answers |
|
Seated |
About 8:20 a.m. |
8:00 a.m. |
Moving to text-based intake doesn’t need a big launch. Most offices follow a short sequence:
Start with new patients only for the first two weeks. Your team learns the review step on a small number of forms, then you add recall history updates and consents.
Secure Online Forms is the Curogram feature that sends intake, health history, and consent forms to patients as a text link. It’s the core tool for digital intake forms without eClipboard, built for the way Open Dental offices already run.
Your team builds forms once in the form builder. That covers new-patient packets, recall-visit history updates, and consents with e-signatures. Each form asks what your paper packet asked, in the order your team already reviews it.
Each form goes out inside the patient’s existing text thread with your office. Patients fill it out in their phone’s browser. They don’t download an app, make an account, or set a password.
On your side, finished forms arrive typed, signed, and ready to review. Staff check them and file them into the Open Dental record during check-in. If a patient hasn’t finished, one click resends the link, or the reminder text carries it again.
Curogram is HIPAA-compliant and SOC 2 Type II certified. It works under a Business Associate Agreement with your practice. Health details stay behind a secure link and never sit in the text itself.
Since Curogram runs in the cloud, form delivery doesn’t depend on the eConnector service on your office server. Packets keep going out when that server is down for an update.
Open Dental runs your charts, schedule, and ledger well. The intake conversation happens earlier, on the patient’s phone, before they reach your building.
Sheets and eClipboard are built around your office: your forms, your server, your tablets. Curogram forms are built around the patient’s evening, when they have time to type a full medication list and read a consent. Getting the forms done before the visit is what keeps the 8:00 slot at 8:00.
You can keep paying $45 a month per location to move the clipboard six feet, from the counter to a tablet. Or you can move it to the patient’s kitchen table, where it gets finished the night before.
Schedule a demo with our team and bring your real intake packet and schedule. We’ll send a new-patient packet by text while you watch.