Smart routing
Getting a patient to the right specialty from a description of a problem.
Patients describe symptoms, not departments. Routing is what turns "my jaw clicks when I chew" into the right specialty without asking them to know your organisational chart.
Rules
A rule is a set of phrases and the specialty they should reach. Rules are checked in priority order and the first match wins, so put your most specific rules highest.
Example
A three-rule set
- Priority 10 — "brace, aligner, crooked, straighten" → Orthodontics
- Priority 5 — "swelling, abscess, severe pain" → Emergency
- Priority 1 — "clean, check-up, scale, polish" → General dentistry
Confidence
Where no rule matches, the assistant may still suggest a specialty on its own — but only above the confidence threshold you set.
| Threshold | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| High | Suggests only when it is quite sure. More handovers, fewer wrong routes. |
| Medium — the default | A working balance. |
| Low | Almost always suggests something. Fewer handovers, more wrong routes. |
When it is unsure
You choose what happens below the threshold:
- Ask more — it asks a clarifying question. Good when your specialties are genuinely distinguishable by one question.
- Hand over — it passes the patient to a person. Good for clinics where a wrong route wastes a real appointment.
- Suggest a default — it offers a catch-all specialty. Good when one department triages everything anyway.
For anything where a wrong specialty means a wasted visit or a delayed diagnosis, choose hand over. The cost of a handover is a minute of staff time; the cost of a wrong route is a patient who came in for nothing.
Offering more than one
The assistant can offer several specialties rather than committing to one, up to a limit you set. Two or three is useful; a list of six is the same as no suggestion at all.
Common questions
- Do I need routing rules if I have one specialty?
- No. With one specialty there is nothing to route between.
- A rule is not firing.
- Check priority order first — a broader rule above it may be matching. Then check the phrases against how patients actually wrote it in the inbox.