New Patients

[a10n1]

We are new to OpenDental and have been working with EZDental so far. In EZDental, we have been inserting a stub on schedule for all New Patients by right clicking on the schedule and just giving minimal New patient information like their name, address and phone number. This patient will not become an active patient unless he/she comes for treatment.

How do we do that in OpenDental? We really do not wish to add a new patient as active to our patient list until then come to treatment at least once. Is this even do able, or we should always create a new patient entry?

Please help. Searching on key words "New Patient" in this forum ignores my search as these two words are treated as very commonly used words. This prevents me from searching this forum's archives. Thanks.

[Jorgebon]

In our office when a new patient makes an appointment we fill out minimal information (usually name and phone number and in some cases insurance id) and classify them as "Non Patient" until the patient actually shows up. Only then do we fill out all the information and change them to "Patient" status. So basically it's very similar to what you used to do in EZDental.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[jamesx2]

We have created a patient called "New Patient". If a new patient calls we use the patient called NewPatient on the scheduler. We then put the patients name, phone number, and anything else we need in the appointment notes section. If the patient shows we create a chart for him. If he does not show we just delete the appointment.

[a10n1]

Jorgebon, we like you idea. However, this will create a new patient record in the database and so, it is not exactly how EZDental works.

We like jamesx2's approach, in that, there is only one patient record "New Patient" and several "Schedules" in the database, each having its own little information about the schedule. We plan to put patients name, their phone number, and may be their address along with any Insurance information available. This is good enough to keep the schedule view the way we want. We can always create a new patient record if the patient arrives and only delete schedule entry if the patient does not show up. This helps keep the active patients list lot more clean. We do understand that you can always delete a patient if they do not show up, however the number of steps involved is little more involved then we like.

Thanks to both of you for responding.

[jordansparks]

I think using a dummy "New Patient" is a terrible idea for most dental offices. It might work for jamesx2, but if I remember, his situation is very unusual. There are many acceptable ways of handling a new patient no-show. The simplest is to just break and delete the appointment and call it good. Some offices might want to get rid of that patient for whatever reason, so you could try to delete them, or archive them, or mark them as a non-patient.

[DavidWolf]

I could see why you would not want to make a paper chart...but why worry about making a digital record?
Do that many new patient's schedule and not actually show to justify so much extra work and risk of confusion.

I must be missing something?

[drtech]

I have no idea if this is what he is thinking, but I think the worry is probably coming from thinking that the more patients you have the more "cluttered" the database will be. This used to be a bigger concern, but with MySQL being a very efficient database this really isn't a concern as with old databases. So, a10n1, I wouldn't worry about it and just add them in the system, make the appt, and if they don't show, then delete the appt and don't worry about them again!