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Lead Management Workflow Guide

A daily guide to managing new patient leads in Second Door.

Second Door's Role in Clinic Operations

Most practices manage new patient inquiries across disconnected systems: faxes in one place, phone messages in another, web requests in a third. There is no single view of every lead, no way to know how quickly your team followed up, and no reliable tracking of what happened between a patient's first contact and their first visit. Referrals get lost. Follow-ups slip. Patients who call and don't get through never call back. And there is no data to tell you how often any of this is happening.

Second Door's Digital Front Door centralizes every new patient lead (fax, web, phone, walk-in, or Petey) into one dashboard that your whole team can see. Every inquiry is captured, every contact attempt is logged, and every lead moves through a clear pipeline from first touch to booked eval.

This centralization also gives your practice visibility into your new patient pipeline. With Second Door, you can answer questions like:

  • How quickly is your team reaching out to new leads after they come in?
  • Where do most of your leads come from: fax, web, phone, or Petey?
  • What percentage of leads convert to booked evaluations?
  • When patients don't book, why not? Did they go elsewhere, choose not to pursue care, or simply never get called back?
  • Which locations or team members are converting leads most effectively?

This data helps your practice spot where leads are falling off and make informed decisions about staffing, follow-up processes, and growth.

How Leads Reach Your Dashboard

Depending on which features your practice has enabled, leads may come from any combination of the following sources:

  • Fax referrals: Second Door automatically creates a lead and extracts the patient's name, date of birth, and phone number from the fax. The original document is attached. No manual data entry needed.
  • Web requests: Patients who submit an appointment request through your online signup page (your "Digital Front Door") create a lead automatically with their submitted information.
  • Petey calls: Petey answers new patient phone calls and creates a lead with demographics, insurance, chief complaint, and booked appointment details.
  • Phone inquiries: When your front desk takes a call from a new patient who isn't routed through Petey, they create a lead manually so it's tracked. (Click "New Lead," select "Phone," enter patient name and phone number, and save.)
  • Walk-ins: Walk-in inquiries can be added as leads manually so they're tracked in the same system.

Not every practice has all of these channels active. The daily workflow below applies regardless of which combination you use. The only difference is which types of leads appear in your "New" column each morning.

workflow-diagram_1

 

Your Daily Routine

Each morning, a team member opens the Second Door dashboard and works through the leads that came in since their last check. Speed to contact is the single biggest driver of whether a lead converts to a booked appointment.

  1. Open your Second Door dashboard. Go to app.seconddoorhealth.com and make sure your default location is set. Bookmark this page for quick daily access.
  2. If using Petey, start with Petey leads. Filter for Petey leads with status "Scheduled." These are patients Petey booked since your last check. For each one, confirm the appointment in your EMR using the info on the lead card, then contact the patient to confirm and collect any remaining intake items (referral docs, insurance card, consent forms). Also check for escalations: leads Petey couldn't complete due to out-of-network insurance, no available slots, or the patient requesting a live person. See Working with Petey-Booked Leads for more detail.
  3. Check the "New" column. These are fax referrals, web requests, and phone inquiries that arrived since your last check.
  4. For each lead: new or existing patient? If they're already in active care, mark as "Not a Lead" (three dots on the lead card, then Not a Lead, then choose the reason) and attach any fax to their EMR case as usual. If they're new, move to the next step.
  5. Verify the AI-extracted information. Check the patient name, date of birth, phone number, insurance, referring physician, and diagnosis on the lead card. Correct anything that looks wrong.
  6. Reach out and schedule. Call or text the patient. Log the call (click "Log Call," enter result and notes, set a Next Follow-up Date if they didn't answer). For fax leads, click into the Referral Information tab to review the original document before calling. When the patient is ready, schedule the eval in your EMR. Second Door auto-detects the booking.
  7. Update the lead status as you go. Drag the lead card to the appropriate column ("New" to "1st Contact" to "Scheduling") so your team can see progress at a glance.
  8. Check "Needs Action." This filter surfaces leads with overdue follow-ups: patients you've contacted but haven't booked, or leads past their follow-up date. Work through them in priority order.

Best Practices

  • Dedicate a role or team to managing leads. Many of our clients find the most success when lead management is someone's defined responsibility, not an add-on to other duties. Depending on the size of your practice, this could be one person or a small team. Front desk staff who are also managing the EMR, answering phones, and checking in patients in front of them may not have the bandwidth to give leads the timely follow-up they need. If you are just getting started with Second Door, assigning a single point person for the first few weeks helps build the habit before expanding to a broader team.
  • Log every call, even no-answers. Log the attempt and set a follow-up date. This keeps your team informed so no one duplicates effort and ensures timely follow-up.
  • Confirm Petey bookings early. Patients expect a confirmation. Aim to review and confirm Petey-booked appointments in your EMR as early in the business day as possible.
  • Flag patterns to your Second Door team. If you notice recurring issues (a common carrier Petey doesn't recognize, a provider showing as unavailable, leads that should be filtered out), let your Second Door team know. Most are quick configuration fixes on their end.

Your EMR and Second Door

Second Door works alongside your EMR, not instead of it. Your EMR remains your source of truth for scheduling, documentation, and billing. Nothing about how you use your EMR changes.

  • Your EMR is your scheduling and clinical system. When a patient is ready to book, you create the appointment in your EMR exactly as you do today. Providers, time slots, appointment types, documentation, and billing all live there.

  • Second Door is your lead tracking system. It tracks the journey from "a new patient reached out" to "they're on the schedule": who contacted you, what they need, where they are in the process, and what follow-up is required. When you book an eval in your EMR, Second Door auto-detects that appointment and moves the lead to "Scheduled" without any extra steps on your end.

  • Petey bookings are the one exception. When Petey books a patient during a call, it creates a hold based on your providers' real-time availability. This hold is not yet an appointment in your EMR. It's a reservation that your team confirms by creating the matching appointment in the EMR. Until direct EMR write-back is available, this manual confirmation step is required for every Petey booking.

Common Questions

  • We already have an EMR. Why do we need another system?

    Second Door doesn't replace your EMR. Your EMR is still where you schedule, document, and bill. Second Door tracks the step before scheduling: making sure every new patient inquiry is captured, followed up on, and moved through your pipeline. Most EMRs don't have a way to track who called, who hasn't been reached yet, or how long it took to make first contact. That's the gap Second Door fills.

  • How do we get our team to use this alongside the EMR without it feeling like extra work?

    This is a common concern, especially for front desk teams who are already managing a lot. The key is understanding what Second Door does and does not ask you to do. You still schedule in your EMR. You still document in your EMR. Second Door adds one workflow: checking your lead dashboard, reaching out to new patients, and logging your contact attempts. For most practices, the biggest adjustment is building the daily habit of opening the dashboard. Once that's in place, Second Door reduces work overall because leads stop falling through the cracks and your team stops fielding "did anyone call that patient back?" questions.

  • Who on my team should be managing leads?

    It depends on the size of your practice. Some clinics have one person handling all lead follow-up. Larger organizations dedicate a team. What matters is that lead management is a defined responsibility, not something that happens only when someone has a free moment between patients. See the Best Practices section above for more detail.

  • What if a lead falls through the cracks?

    The "Needs Action" filter catches overdue follow-ups. Checking this filter daily is your safety net.

  • Can I see how my practice is performing?

    Yes. Your Second Door dashboard provides visibility into your lead pipeline: lead volume, conversion rates, response times, and more. Your Second Door team can walk you through these reports.