Easy Dental to Open Dental

[joshuab]

Hello all,

Would anyone comment on their experience moving from Easy Dental to Open Dental?

We've been using Easy Dental for 10+ years but just looking for something new. Always a fan of open-source and the options that come with it. What are common problems, missed features, or new features you've found moving from Easy Dental to Open Dental?

Thanks for any feedback as we consider the switch also.

Happy 4th of July!

[jordansparks]

You're talking about the Windows version, right? The one that is the simplified version of Dentrix? The conversion is very complete. The layout is obviously very similar also, with the module buttons along the left side. So I think the learning curve is going to be low.

[drawab]

I moved from Easy Dental to Open Dental about three years ago - after having used the Easy Dental software for eons [im thinking I was probably an ED user since 91 or 92 if not more]. The last purchase i had made was for the Easy Dental 2002 version used it for about four more years and finally in 2006 / 2007 jumped ship - as OD is truly awesome - a constant stream of updates, to an extent that I am amazed at how Dr Sparks and his team get into new developments and quickly move out to newer projects after ironing out all the bugs and issues. As compared to any proprietary software on the market this is without doubt hands down the best and on the cutting edge of dental technology.

My move to OD was glitch free, I did it myself, using a tool which was available here on open-dent.com (cant find it now) the exercise was a little hairy but was perfect. I suppose due to the advance nature of the process - I would now prefer to advise that you let Dr. Sparks team handle the conversion. http://www.open-dent.com/manual/convertdentrix.html

Moving from Easy Dental to Open Dental - the user interface just takes a moment to get used to, the front desk as usual screams the loudest as it takes them a day or two to get running in full steam. I remember that a week later I asked the front desk team if they might want to go back - her response was 'can i please hit you with a frying pan' - she was actually having more fun then me as she was also learning and discovering the new tricks that was never possible before with Easy Dental. For me personally the biggest advantage was the clinical charting [which was only possible if I forked over 15-20K for the move to Dentrix] - that alone for me was priceless otherwise moving to Dentrix would set me behind an arm and a leg, and I practice in a third world market Pakistan where the average cost of a root canal is barely $80-$100 and a crown $125

Living in Pakistan - I was using the accounting system in Easy Dental for internal purposes only as all their walk-out statements and other items had US specific information and the DOLLAR sign would creep the heck out of our patients - I had asked Easy dental team repeatedly to help me customize the currency symbol - BUT it was a never ending spiral with one excuse after another, how could they change the code in the system for one measly user in Pakistan - with Open Dental using clean cut coding this issue was the easist to solve - OD used the currency symbols from the Settings I select in my windows installation - it was such a simple change but ED could not dive in and alter millions of lines of code - with this out of the way my staff actually got down to issuing proper billing cycles.

I would strongly recommend the switch over - with Easy dental you are literally bogged down to using a very stripped down version of Dentrix - Open Dental should be a definite contender - and as I said the conversion is a walk in the park