New user looking for answers

[Janet Century]

Not expecting to get any responses today as it's Christmas, but I'll ask for tomorrow.

Just did the conversion from Practice Works to Open Dental on Friday and I'm planning on spending my week "off" getting ready to start the year. I'm doing this by customizing the forms, notes, etc.

The biggest thing I'm either not seeing or it's not available are pre-defined appointments. I'm used to being able to request a "typical" CEREC appointment, or a 2 quadrant root planing appointment, or a composite appointment (etc). Those I can work into the treatment plan in Open Dental, but I'm having a real problem with recall hygiene. We have a pretty robust and also customized recall system. Our appointments are longer than typical, different patients have different length appointments and we have quite a few patients who have expressed a preference for one of the two hygienists. I'm accustomed to (in Practive Works) the recall appointments automatically color coded for hygiene rather than the doctor, which makes it easy for the front desk to make the appointment correctly or move it later. Is there a way to customize on the patient's chart how long their specific recall appointment is, and which hygienist they see? I have tried putting the specific hygienist into the secondary provider box but the appointment still pops up looking like it's for the doctor.

Thanks for any help.

Happy New Year!

Janet Century
www.lakesidedental.com

[jclaydds]

Janet,

Welcome the Open Dental Community and Open Dental Forum. You will find a lot of people here that are willing to help. I realize we are in the Christmas Holidays so people are likely a bit scarce right now. You will also find Open Dental Tech Support to very helpful as well as you get through this learning curve.

Let me take a crack at trying to help you a little.

Pre-Defined Appointments: Not exactly sure what you mean. Maybe customizing time lengths or patterns for particular procedures. For example, you want to define the time for a 2 surface composite. Go to Lists ~ Procedure Code.

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

Notice the Time Pattern Bar on the left of the screen. The / stands for assistant time. The X stands for provider time. Assuming 10 minute appointment units. You want to give your assistant 10 minutes to prepare the room and seat the patient. You want 30 minutes to do the composite. You want to give your assistant 10 minutes to clean the room. Your time pattern will look like: /XXX/ Open Dental does a pretty good job of "calculating times" when you combine multiple procedures in an appointment. I remember reading in the Open Dental Online Help how it does these calculations but can't seem to locate it right now. Of course, you can always change the time that Open Dental calculates if the time that Open Dental caluculates is too short or long.

As far as selecting which hygienist a patient sees. Put that hygienist in as the secondary provider. Then when making the appointment, make sure the small box is checked: " Is Hygiene" and then when you put this appointment on the schedule, it should show up in the hygienist's color and not the doctor's color on the appointment schedule.

As far as a patient needing extra time, in our office, we use the box right below the 3d tooth chart in the chart module to record information that we need to see on an ongoing basis.
Examples: Pt gags easily. Wants to see Hygienist, Betty, only. Needs 70 minutes for Periodontal Maintenance Visit. Needs a neck pillow. Pt can't hear well. Pt on Fluoridex. Alternate 3 months recalls with Dr. Doe.

You can also use the Pop Up Notifications for some of these notes but the Pop Ups are going to be seen/endured by everyone who opens that patient's record -- even your front desk staff. The Pop Ups are in your face and hard to ignore. The box can be used for information that clinical staff can refer to easily but doesn't necessarily need to pop up for everyone to see every time they open patient's record.

You can click on my name and send me a PM (private message) If you provide me some contact information, I can even call you and maybe help you out a bit with some of these issues. I am unsure if Open Dental is open on 12/26 or not.

[Janet Century]

Thanks so much. Will try tomorrow.

Have a great holiday!

[Janet Century]

I've been working with support today and one answer is easy (selected hygienist). The person I was working with was very helpful but we're not finding an answer for the time issue.

TheI am curious as to how others work this. We certainly don't schedule the same amount of time for a three year old as and 11 yo with ortho and bad hygiene, yet it's still the 1120 code for both. If the next cleaning is set that day it's easy for the hygienist to mention how long the next visit should be, but if they call in another day, the scheduler needs to know the correct amount of time for that person, ideally without having to look it up on another page.

Is there a work around for this? Or do most of you routinely schedule the same amount of time for each patient in hygiene?

Thanks for any input.

Janet

[Rickliftig]

Hi Janet -

Welcome to our forum. The workaround is very straight forward. Add a letter to the 1120 code (ie: 1120a and 1120b). Then you can customize each code, right on down to the description. So, 1120a could read Prophylaxis - child (under 5) and 1120b could read Prophylaxis - child (over 5). Then you can also customize the time for each. When the claim is sent electronically, the suffix will be stripped off.

[drtech]

ditto...making separate codes with a suffix is how we do it (and then of course you want to use auto codes (correction..Procedure buttons with multiple codes) to insert multiple items at once to help you with automatic appointments so to speak.)

[jordansparks]

I don't think you meant auto codes.

[drtech]

Jordan, you are correct... I meant "procedure buttons" with multiple codes at once...

[Janet Century]

Thanks for the input! I like the different codes with the fifth digit - that will enable me to charge differently too.

But the question I still have is how does the scheduler know WHICH one to schedule. For the child example it's simple - just go by age. And if the hygienist walks the patient up and says "I need 8 units for him next time" it's easy to do. But if a patient calls on the phone, is there a way to set the 1110C (80 minutes) as their default? And will they trigger the recall system?

thanks for any input - this one is driving us nuts.

[jclaydds]

Janet,
I think Rick's idea of the putting that extra letter on the ADA code was a great idea and solution to your dilemma. We use this trick with several codes in our office. For example, D9630a might by Fluoridex. D9630b might be OmniGel. D9630c might be PerioMed. They all can be a different fee and different description and if applicable for an actual procedure - different time pattern.

I suggested this work around in a previous post on this thread but I'll elaborate. I would suggest you put a patient's requirement in the box below the 3D tooth chart in the chart module.

Here is what we do in our office. If it a young child with a clean mouth, the hygienist might put 2u in the box. This signifies that my hygienist wants 2 units for the prophy only. My front office staff knows that if the patient is due for x-rays, doctor exam, etc, they may need to add a unit or two to whatever the hygienist has put in the box. A teenager with braces may have 3u in the box. If the patient is a normal adult with a clean mouth, the hygienist may put 4u in the box. If the patient is the type of patient that has a tenacious calculus bridge that forms within 3 months, the hygienist might put 6u in the box. Keep in mind that we understand that we might need to add time to this appointment if the patient needs to have x-rays or a doctor exam. This allows the appointment times to be customized based on the time that the hygienist has determined that the patient needs for their appointment plus you can add time if the patient needs the exam or x-rays. When a patient calls to schedule an appointment, your front desk can refer to this box to determine how much time to schedule. You need to start having your hygienists define the time they need for each patient they see and enter this in the box. If you don't want to enter time units in the box, you might even elect to put in the box that this patient needs a 1110c prophy. There may be a slicker way to do this but this works well in our office.

I would assume that 1110a, 1110b, 1110c, etc would trigger a recall in the recall system if 1110 was set as trigger. Hopefully, someone else can chime in to confirm this.

[jordansparks]

Customized recall appointment lengths per patient is not a feature of Open Dental. You could do that in Practice Works? Are they mostly the same except for a few people, or are they all over the board? One workaround might be to start using Planned Appointments for recall as well. I can't think of any reason why that wouldn't work well as long as the staff knew to look in planned appointments for a patient first without just jumping right into a boilerplate recall.

[Janet Century]

Thanks for the input - will try jclay's and Rick's suggestions with recall, and also Jordan's with planned appointments. I'm also thinking of putting it into the special "Default Hygienist" field.

I didn't realize what we did was so out of the ordinary.

Yes in PW on the back of their "Clipboard" you could set:
- the hygienist (usually HYG for any hygienist, but we have a significant number of people who always want to be seen by the same one)
- the interval between recalls (usually 6 months, or 3 or 4)
- the amount of time for the hygiene appointment - and they are ALL over the board for both kids and adults in our practice -
- didn't track x-rays due - we are loving that in OD

Thanks!!

[irfan]

does the letter suffix automatically gets stripped off no matter what? Can i set ceramic crown codes with an e for emax, b for bruxzir, etc? Do i need to go into a setting or checkmark anything additional to make sure they get stripped off? Also, will the claim revert back to the generic wording? like would my "2740e- e.Max crown" be completely changed to "2740 crown-porcelain/ceramic substrate" for me on the claim, or would it read "2740 emax crown"?

[jordansparks]

It only strips off the suffix if it starts with D####.