Unscheduled List Makes No Sense

[savvy]

I have a 5 page Unscheduled List.
I was told that to clean up the list I need to go through it name by name.

That is insane!!

There are dead people, moved people, previously scheduled and completed treatment people, archived people, inactive people. Tons of people!!

I'd rather delete the whole frickin' list than pay a staff member $26/hour to line item veto this thing.

Christ!! I'm even on the list for an October 2005 prophy appointment.......I've had a bunch since then.

Scenario Questions:

Joe Smith has an appointment on Jan 10 which he is a no show for. What do you do?...Broken or Unscheduled?

Joe Smith has an appointment on Jan 10, which on Jan 7 his wife cancels. What do you do?........delete, broken or unscheduled?
Mrs. Smith comes to her appointment in Aug....informs us that poor Mr Smith croaked. What do you do? Classify as Deceased, .......

Mr and Mrs Smith cancel their appointment for Jan 10, they will call back. What do you do?
Six months later, the recall card comes back, "Moved"....What do you do?

Kid Smith has an appointment for Child Prophy Fluoride in January, which she needed to cancel. What do you do?
Kid Smith reschedules for March, but now she is 15. What do you do?

Sgt Smith schedules in advance a series of restorative appointments. Sgt Smith cancels because he is called back to Iraq. What do you do?




Better yet.......I can I delete my whole frickin' Unscheduled List?

[jordansparks]

From the manual:
"This list should be kept very short and reviewed frequently, because if it gets too long it becomes unmanageable."

It's a general housekeeping task that seems to have been neglected for quite a while. As your staff person goes through the list, the typical action will be to delete each appointment. But before deleting, they will generally check to make sure that the appointment is properly listed as the planned appointment and that no notes are going to be lost by deleting.

Scenarios:
1. Break. Within a few hours, either delete or send to unscheduled. Don't leave it on the unscheduled for more than a few weeks.
2. Canceled appointment: It's not broken, because more than 24 hrs notice. So either unscheduled or delete.
3. Death: Clear his planned appointments. He likely won't have any unscheduled appointments because that list will be short.
4. Call back: If they are still on the unscheduled list, you schedule from there, otherwise, you schedule from the planned appt.
5. Delete their address, including city/state/zip. Call them to get the new address. This should not affect any appointments.

[drtech]

We have the same thing, because no matter how many times I go over how to manage the unscheduled list, it always fills up with too many useless appts.
We need a better system for tracking patients that is all integrated. Recall, unscheduled, planned..all need to work together. I don't have the answer on how, but it needs to be done.

[opensource]

Looks like we all share the same Pain / Challenges...

After being on open-dental for more than 4 years now and trying to make the Recall / Unscheduled / Planned Treatment..etc work..Finally decided to setup my own "Hygiene_Treatment_Followup" process..which includes a spreadsheet that list all active patients and the status of their Hygiene / Treatment status with us... have done some color coding (auto color changing based on dates). Basically, Open-Dental is still the one-source of truth for all information and communication with the patient but the spreadsheet acts as a "Tracking" sheet to help get clarity on where exactly we are in the Patient Treatment / Hygiene and the number of follow-ups done with them since their last appointment..etc.

It has very quickly become a great tool which helps us get a view of how many patients have not scheduled their Hygiene or who have a treatment pending with us. For details, we refer to open-dental. For now, we do not use the 'Unscheduled' , 'Recall' , 'Planned Tracker' as such. I think they are all great features but it does not give me (as an office manager) on where exactly I stand in terms of pending Hygiene Patients..etc..etc.

With some programming help, it would be great if the spreadsheet can be made to directly integrated with open-dental with some kind of color coding / customization but for now..the spreadsheet works great and I have an entire process defined to work around it.

Cheers,

OpenSource

[jordansparks]

What are the columns on your spreadsheet?

[opensource]

PatNum (We used it as chart Number)
Last Name
First Name
Patient Status
Hygiene Scheduled For - Date
Hygiene Scheduled On - Which day did we schedule it
Treatment Scheduled For - Date - Date of atleast one appointment in the future
Treatment Scheduled On
Number of Followsup - We followup with each patient once every 2 months..for X tries..before we Inactivate the Patient
Last Followup On - Date of Last followup
Next Followup On - DAte of next Followup - This turns red color when the followup is overdue (passes today's date)
----

The above are the key columns...we have a similar spreadsheet to track even the date on which the last time the "Benefits" and "Eligibility" of the Patient was verified by calling insurance carrier.

We have certain ruled defined in the office which help us update the above columns and use it effectively. Hope this helps...


Cheers,

OpenSource

[aboval]

Reviving this post as I'm facing the same issue right now. What I would like to get is a query that shows me who does not currently have a next appointment scheduled as I would like to see 98% of all my active patients with a next appointment scheduled. I'm sure someone has already created an even more elegant way to track these items but I'm looking for at least the basic to start.

Thanks,
Alan Boval

[jordansparks]

Locking this topic. It's too old.