Need an Audit Trail note for Lighthouse confirmations

[Smilesbypayet]

We recently switched to Lighthouse 360 for our automated confirmations, etc., which is very nice in many ways, but one thing we have found a bit confusing is this: when a patient confirms via text or email, the appointment is automatically marked in OD as "Confirmed." However, nothing shows up in the Audit Trail. Is there a way to get something noted when Lighthouse makes that change?

[nathansparks]

The third party (Lighthouse) is probably putting data directly into Open Dental, so there is no user logged in, Open Dental client is not even involved, so no way for Open Deental to put entry in audit trail. The only way to do it would be to have lighthouse change how it 'talks' to open dental, Lighthouse would have to put an entry in the audit trail (really it is just another table in the database), and that is much more complicated than editing the confirmation status of an appointment, so I doubt they would do it.

[jordansparks]

They are always making improvements. If there are enough Open Dental customers using Lighthouse, then they will probably get to it at some point.

[joelkoz]

Hi all -

I just joined the forum and replied to another post re: our product, and then after a search, I found this one.

I was unaware that Open Dental had a "communications audit trail" feature (I confess, we only have a certain amount of time to work with each PMS, since we integrate with 17 different ones). We DO have a small piece of confirmation code that is the "Open Dental Specific" code for doing confirmations, and I'm guessing it may actually be fairly easy to add this kind of additional auditing.

Jordan - is it a simple matter of adding a record to the "commlog" table?

[irfan]

hey chip we had the same issue.

What i did was i created a new color coded dot for lighthouse confirmations. typically the FD would select Confirmed and it turns orange for us..LH360 did the same and we couldnt tell... so I created a new one ( a new pt status button) termed LHConfirmed and colored it blue. Lighthouse set it up to mark the appointment with the LHConfirmed and at a glance we can see the blue dot and know it was autoconfirmed.

try that out. it wont be in an audit trail but you will atleast know that lighthouse confirmed it.

[jordansparks]

Yes, it's as simple as adding a row in the commlog table. But the CommType column is going to be different for every office, depending on how they have their Definitions set up. It could start crashing if you don't get that right. The UserNum column can be zero without causing problems.

[joelkoz]

Dr. Payet -

I was able to add this feature fairly easily, and it is now part of version 3.37 of our sync client (the program that runs on your computer and synchronizes Open Dental with our servers), assuming it gets activated (the default is to NOT do this). I set your office to use it, so any confirmations received on or after November 18 at 2:40 pm should make an entry in your audit log.

Please let us know how it goes. If it works well, we'll make sure ALL our Open Dental users get this latest version and let them know how to activate it.

If any other people here on the message board wants to get an early copy of this, please sent an email to our support staff asking for an upgrade to 3.37.

As mentioned by an earlier poster, another "best practice" for Open Dental users of LH360 is to create a custom "Appt Confirmed" definition by going to Setup -> Definitions in Open Dental and assigning it a special color. Create something like "LH360" or "Electronic confirmation". You can then set which confirmation code you want LH360 to use by running the "\lhds\bin\configure.bat" program on your server. That will run our configuration GUI, and on the "Confirmation" sub-tab of the "Open Dental" tab, you'll find the option labeled "When auto-confirming, change status to". If your using version 3.37, you'll also see the new "Auto confirm audit log entry" option on that same tab.

Enjoy!

[Jay]

Hi Joel. I am reviving this old thread to ask if LH reads the patstatus variable in OD. As you know ARCHIVED patients have patstatus=3 which can be easily used to flag them (and exclude them) when we are trying to activate patients who (for example) haven't stopped by in two years or more. ARCHIVED patients may be deceased, may have moved out of state or may simply not wish to be bothered by us, so we'd like to exclude them from any automated campaigns.

[joelkoz]

Hi Joel. I am reviving this old thread to ask if LH reads the patstatus variable in OD. As you know ARCHIVED patients have patstatus=3 which can be easily used to flag them (and exclude them) when we are trying to activate patients who (for example) haven't stopped by in two years or more. ARCHIVED patients may be deceased, may have moved out of state or may simply not wish to be bothered by us, so we'd like to exclude them from any automated campaigns.

Jay - sorry for the long delayed response (I haven't visited the forums in a while).

Yes, we do read the patstatus variable. I just checked our code, and we DO have a configuration option that will mark patients as "Do Not Contact" if their status is one of a set of options you (or we) select. So, we CAN configure LH360 to "do not contact" a patient if their status is ARCHIVED, INACTIVE, DECEASED, etc. This feature was added back in September, but it does require a configuration change. If you (or anyone reading this post) is having issues with patients getting contacted who should not, this option probably needs to be modified. Contact our support department. Or, you can alternatively run the "configure.bat" mentioned above, and update the configuration yourselves. Its on the "Open Dental" tab, and the option is called "Do Not Contact patients when status is".

[Jay]

Thanks Joel. As far as I know this feature was activated for us by LH support staff quite some time ago.