Open Dental in a Perio practice

[jdramsey]

My wife is going to open a new practice and we are considering Open Dental for the PMS. Can any periodontist currently using the program give me comments or tell me about any limitations for a periodontal practice?

[jordansparks]

We have periodontists using the software, but I'm not sure how many of them are going to be on this forum. Our perio chart should work great in a perio office. Our letters to referral sources are not entirely automatic in the sense that there will be some editing involved. For example, descriptions of the prognosis for each tooth are something that will have to be pasted into the letter. Actually, I'm not sure there is any dental software that will do this, but I've seen some ortho software that does something similar.

[jdramsey]

Jordan, thanks for the reply. We did see an online demo of Perio Exec and it does a really nice job of letter writing. After I saw the cost I told her we could find better uses for our money starting up. Anyway, on that subject is there a source for existing letter or sheet templates that we could start with for perio? We also spoke to one of the support techs at Open Dental last week and the help was excellent he was very nice.

[jordansparks]

We don't have any premade templates. So you'd have to make your own templates using inspiration from other sources such as internet searches.

[Ralph McElmurry]

I've been using OD in my perio practice for a couple of years. Most parts work well for us. The letters to referring docs is still sort of primitive. I've a number of semi-automatic letters in the sheets format and they work OK with some minor editing. It would smooth out a lot once the referring doc's familiar name is added to the referral table and screen and then the sheets framework. She sheets feature allows for a lot of customization. The perio chart is fine and usable. The messages-alerts-notes features are as good or better than other systems. Support and responsiveness of the company is the very best.

[jdramsey]

Thanks for the information Ralph. The letters to referring docs is one of her biggest concerns. I'm going to have to do some more research online to see if I can find some templates or sheets she can use as Jordan suggested. Do you know if there is any way to track number of referrals from each individual referring doc automatically or by doing a query?

[Ralph McElmurry]

Sure, there are queries to identify the number of referrals and the income from each referral. I can send screen shots of the sheets setup for some of the letters we use. I'm not sure how to export the actual setup of a sheet.

[jdramsey]

Ralph,

Any screen shots you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Have you done any medical cross claims?

[jclaydds]

I am a GP and I like to write referral letters to each of the specialists that I refer to when I send them a patient. I have never quite got the hang of the "Sheets" feature in Open Dental. Perhaps, I would have tried to learn the Sheets feature if I were not so happy with Open Dental's "Letter Merge" function. I have set up templates for each one of the specialists I refer to. In each template letter, I have merge fields in the template for the patient's name, address, date of birth, etc. There are many merge fields to pick from so you can customize the template letter to suit your needs. I then simply select the patient and then the letter from the letter merge feature and Presto! --- I have my letter with today's date, the Specialist's name and address, patient's name and address, DOB, salutation and closing. The body of the letter is blank because each of my letters are unique. If there were repetitive content that was usually in each letter, I would input that into the template as well. This is a huge time saver. It would take a lot of time to look up all the name/address info for each letter. It took a few hours to set up all my templates but now I save a lot of time on every letter I write.

The beauty of the feature is that it works in conjunction with Microsoft Word. For my letter writing skills, if I can't do it in Word, it doesn't need to be done. You get all the features that are found in Word. It is my understanding that this is one of the problems with the Sheets feature -- lack of editing/formatting features as compared to Word. I am told that Letter Merge also works with Open Office but I haven't ever tried it.

Here is Open's Dental's link to instructions on Letter Merge

http://www.opendental.com/manual/lettermerge.html

[jordansparks]

The letter merge doesn't work with Open Office.

[Ralph McElmurry]

The sheets feature isn't difficult to program and is quite flexible. With an additional few fields out of the database there would not have to be any editing for routine automatic letters. One downside, though, on a letter that has a lot of hand entered text, there is no spell check. I prefer to have the letters created and saved within the system where they can be looked at from the treatment notes screen which sheets allows. We don't have to keep hardcopies of outgoing letters. If you send me your email address, I'll try to get some screenshots of output and the sheets layouts to you.

[jdramsey]

I sent you a PM with my email Ralph.

Thanks again