Closed for Christmas: handling patient enquiries while the practice is shut

In 2026 Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so Boxing Day is a Saturday and the bank holiday moves to Monday 28 December. New Year's Day is Friday 1 January 2027. In Scotland, 2 January is also a bank holiday, and because it falls on a Saturday the day off moves to Monday 4 January.

That gives a lot of practices a natural shape: close on Thursday 24 December, open for a few days between the holidays or not at all, and be fully back on Monday 4 January. Whatever you choose, decide it now and write the exact dates down once. Every message in this post copies from that one note, so the website, the phone greeting and the auto-replies can't contradict each other.

Patients don't come through one door. Make a list of every place someone can contact the practice, and put the same message on each:

• —the website, as a short notice near the top of the home page and the contact page
• —Google Business Profile, using special hours for each day you're closed, so search and maps don't show you as open
• —the phone greeting and voicemail
• —the email auto-reply
• —web chat, WhatsApp and any social inboxes the practice answers
• —online booking, if it lets patients pick days you won't be in

Google Business Profile is the one practices most often forget, and it's the one many patients check first. Set the special hours a week or two before the break and check them again after you reopen.

Four things, in this order:

1. 01When you're closed, with dates rather than "over the festive period".
2. 02When you reopen and when you'll reply. Those can be different days, so say both.
3. 03Where to go for urgent care while you're closed.
4. 04What the patient can do now, such as an online booking link, if you have one.

For example: "Thanks for getting in touch. Northgate Dental is closed from Thursday 24 December and reopens on Tuesday 29 December at 8:30am. We'll reply to every message by midday that day. If you need urgent dental care while we're closed, call NHS 111, or 999 if swelling is affecting your breathing or swallowing. You can book a routine appointment online any time at [booking link]."

Adjust the urgent route for where you are. In Scotland, 111 reaches NHS 24. Practices in Northern Ireland should give the out-of-hours number their own Health and Social Care Trust publishes. Practices with their own emergency arrangements over the break should give those details instead, as long as they will really be answered.

Every practice will get some. A broken tooth on Boxing Day, a swelling on New Year's Eve, a child who has knocked a front tooth. The closure message has already given the route, so the job now is making sure nothing urgent sits unseen in an inbox for a week because it arrived through a channel the auto-reply didn't cover.

That's why the list of channels matters. If the WhatsApp number or the Instagram inbox has no closure reply, a patient in pain gets silence there, and silence reads as "nobody cares". Check each channel once by sending it a test message from a personal phone before you close.

If someone will be checking messages at set times, decide in advance what they can and can't do. Usually that means replying with the urgent route and offering the first appointment after reopening, not giving advice by message. Write it down so whoever is on the rota isn't making it up on 27 December.

Over a closure, the phone is where enquiries most often disappear. A caller hears a generic "please leave a message", hangs up, and never appears in any inbox.

Record a closure greeting with the same dates and urgent route as the written message, and change it back on the morning you reopen. If you use missed-call text-back, check how it decides when you're closed. Many systems, ReplyOS included, work from your weekly opening hours and don't know about bank holidays, so if text-back is set to run only out of hours, a closed Monday such as 28 December can still look like a working day. For the break, set it to run all the time, and make sure the text it sends carries the closure dates.

However well the closure goes, there will be a backlog. Plan who clears it, and in what order, before you close, because the first morning back is also when the phone is busiest.

Groups have the same problem multiplied, plus one more: practices that close on different days. Agree one closure template at group level, let each practice fill in its own dates and urgent arrangements, and have someone check every site's website notice, profile hours and phone greeting before the break, not just head office's. The first morning back is also a good moment to look across the group at which practices cleared their backlog quickly and which didn't, because the same gap is usually there the rest of the year.

ReplyOS answers new enquiries on web chat and WhatsApp using the facts the practice has set up, including its opening hours text and FAQs. It doesn't have a holiday calendar, so before the break, update the opening hours text with your closure dates and add a short closure FAQ with your urgent route. Replies will then give patients the right dates and the booking link while you're away. Remember to change both back when you reopen.

Messages with urgent or clinical wording, complaints or a request for a person are handed to the team rather than answered automatically. Over a closure that means they wait for someone to read them, which is exactly why the closure message and the urgent route need to be right before you go.

On the first morning back, the conversations from the break are in one inbox rather than spread across phones and mailboxes, so the backlog can be cleared in the order above.