A patient calls at 9:47 pm. Their tooth just got knocked out at their kid's soccer game. They don't need a menu, a callback form, or "press 1 for emergencies." They need to talk to someone, now.
That's the job Salva is built for.
What counts as an emergency
Salva classifies every inbound call as routine, urgent, or emergency based on what the caller actually says. The emergency tier is triggered by specific words a patient in distress would naturally use:
- pain that's severe, excruciating, or throbbing
- visible trauma — knocked out, broken tooth, bleeding
- soft-tissue signs — swelling, swollen, abscess
- functional impact — can't eat, can't sleep
These are picked up regardless of whether the caller leads with "I have an emergency" or just describes what's happening to them.
What happens when an emergency is detected
The instant Salva classifies a call as emergency, two things happen in parallel:
- The call is transferred to your emergency line. Not your main office number — the dedicated line covered in Transfer destinations: main vs. emergency. Typically that's an on-call dentist's mobile, an answering service, or a managing partner.
- A notification fires. SMS and email to every contact on your alert list, with the caller's phone number and a short summary of why it was flagged. Configure these in Notification channels.
Hi — my son just had his front tooth knocked out at soccer practice. He's bleeding. What do I do?
That's a dental emergency. I'm connecting you to our on-call line right now. Keep the tooth in milk or saliva and don't touch the root. Stay on the line.
The handoff happens before the conversation ends — the patient doesn't have to repeat themselves.
Why not just route everything to your main line?
Because emergencies aren't most calls. On a typical day, the overwhelming majority of inbound traffic is routine: insurance questions, booking, billing, hours. If every call rang the same number, your on-call dentist would have their evening interrupted constantly — and they'd start ignoring it.
Every call rings the front desk, including evenings and weekends. The on-call dentist gets paged for routine after-hours questions, and real emergencies get lost in the noise.
Splitting the two lines means the on-call number rings only when it should — and your team trusts it when it does.
Setting it up
Emergency detection is on by default for Pro and Growth plans. The only field you need to fill in is the emergency destination phone number — covered step-by-step in Transfer destinations: main vs. emergency. The 20-second transfer timeout is automatic; if the line doesn't pick up, Salva falls back to taking a detailed message and firing the alert so a callback can happen quickly.
And if there's genuinely no one to reach — you haven't set an emergency line, or it doesn't answer — Salva never leaves the caller hanging. It tells them in plain terms to call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room. A dental emergency always ends with a clear next step.
What's in the alert
Every emergency notification includes the caller's phone number, the timestamp, and the snippet of conversation that triggered the classification — so the responder knows what they're walking into before they call back.
For deeper context on transfer behavior and how main vs. emergency destinations differ, read Transfer destinations: main vs. emergency. For after-hours callback collection (when an emergency line doesn't pick up), see After-hours call handling.
Published April 22, 2026 · Updated June 16, 2026