Conditions on Tooth Chart

[jclaydds]

Back in the days of using paper charting before getting Open Dental, it was our habit to chart exisitng conditions such as decay, , incipient decay, cracked teeth, etc. I understand that capability has been added to Open Dental a few versions ago but I am now just trying to experiment with it and start to utilized this feature. I have created a couple of conditions in my Procedure List and numbered them C0001 Tooth Decay and C0002 Watch/Incipient Decay. I have assigned them a Paint Type (Filling Dark) and also assigned an override color to these codes.

It seemed to be working as planned until yesterday. Since starting to use Open Dental, we would chart existing restorations. When the restorations were defective and we treatment planned a new restoration, the new "treatment planned" restorations would always cover the existing restoration in the tooth chart. This made it simple to look at the tooth chart and visually see any treatment planned restorations. Yesterday, I charted the decay (conditions) and then I treatment planned the restorations to restore the decay. Unfortunately, the treatment planned restorations did not "trump" or cover up the decay. I can't visually see the treatment planned restorations on the chart - I still see the conditions (the decay).

Is the program functioning as designed? I would think the treatment planned restorations should cover the conditions on the tooth chart.

Thanks

[jordansparks]

Most people don't use the conditions and instead simply use the diagnosis field of each procedure as the TP. But yes, that does sound like a problem with the way it's currently written. I will spare you all the technical discussion and say that our planned solution is to have a time field added to each procedure. That way, if the procedures/conditions all have the same date, they will still end up on the chart in the sequence that you enter them. Until then, try to trick the program into showing them in a different order in the Progress Notes. For example, you might backdate the conditions by one day. I know that sounds like a lame suggestion, but I still think this falls under the heading of an enhancement rather than a bug fix. The main reason I say this is that if we "fix" it, there will be many annoying subtle consequences. It would cause many more bugs to try to guess what order the user wants the procedures to be layered. At least the way it is now, you have control over the order of the layers by setting dates.