Open Dental Email

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drfredc
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Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:10 am

Yes, while it's possible to send emails via Open Dental, there seems to be a couple large disconnects in how it operates.

* It seems there should be an email folder in the Pt's document folder for emails that are sent to the pt via Open Dental. This could be apt reminders, or before and after photos of whitening or something, or a how some proposed veneers might make them look better.
* One should be able to send a referral to a specialist for the pt, and have that referral plus attached photos and xrays stored in a 'referrals' folder in that patients documents. You know, like how one does it in paper charts?

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:44 pm

The emails show in the Chart module. You can create a view for just e-mails if you wish.
I understand your second point. We're always working on making it better.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:33 pm

The issue I have with emails showing in the chart module may be I see the Images module more as the document folder. If I send. Pt a before and after cosmetic proposal or result, it seems better placed in the document module. The chart moduleseems more about treatment and scheduling than some emails.. Particularly emails that might have images in them or attached to them. How are these images or links shown in the Chart module?

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:59 pm

Request #97 is to show images as line items in Chart module. It has zero votes.
#429 is to email html format instead of plain text with attachments. It has zero votes.
There isn't yet a request for emails to show in the images/documents module.
One nice thing about eventually having images show in Chart is that the chart has a lot of filtering. Now that it has views, it can be used to quickly see different kinds of information. There are some good reasons to have a separate Images module, but it's never been great at showing a running history of conversations. That's not really how it's optimized. I'm more interested in getting things out of the Images module and into other places. That's why the Patient Forms window now pulls from the Images module. The medical window has always been planned to pull from Images. The Chart has a section at the bottom primarily designed for radiographs. Etc. It's inevitable that Open Dental will someday have very strong email sending and receiving capabilities, whether internal or through an email client. It's very important to be able to aggregate all of these conversations. Keep in mind that we use Open Dental here at HQ to manage our customers. So Open Dental is also a full-blown CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. Better email is DEFINITELY coming, because it's so critical to keeping our own business running at peak efficiency.

You can currently double click an email in the Chart, then double click an attachment to view.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Sat Feb 25, 2012 9:10 am

Ok, let's move onto "OD as a CRM" perspective, and how OD deals with referral emails, with xrays and other images possibly attached.

I mucked around yesterday with trying to email a bogus specialist (using one of my 'spare' email accounts) from a bogus OD pt (without email) to see how email specialist referrals might work -- I never got it to work because it seems my bogus pt is a Ludite without email so you can't email the specialist from her chart module, or something.

Using my personal OD pt chart, which has email, I was able to click the referral button in email and send myself an email with some pictures from my image module -- (could I also grab images from XDR from OD? who knows...?) However, I never could figure out how to send this email within OD, with pictures to my bogus specialist's email.

Or was the problem I didn't locate some magic button somewhere in OD for emailing specialist referrals from the pt chart module?

I gather the Kludge OD CRM solution might be to create an OD pt file for Dr Bogus Specialist that included an email. Then, in the Dr Bogus's chart module click on email, and, if I can access any pt's XDR images from within Dr Bogus's chart, I could attach those images and send that to Dr Bogus and have that email stored in Dr Bogus's chart module. However, my guess is there's no way in this Kludge to attach or copy and paste some pt's XDR images into Dr Bogus's email referral? All I might currently do within this Kludge is email Dr Bogus a written referral from within OD...?

Seems there's some more work to do as a CRM too.

===========

FYI, as a previous long time Dentrix user (started out as user 243 or so), I was never impressed with the notion that the collective ignorance of the dentists using Dentrix was what was guiding Dentrix's development. After a couple decades of this unguided confused development, Dentrix evolved into a Swiss army knife with about 739 attachments reflecting the collectively confused vision of it's barely computer/software literate user base. As such, I'm not particularly impressed with the notion that OD claims to be following a similar track. While it's important to have input from one's user base to guide development, the user's limited expertise and vision may be self limiting to ODs future if taken too literally.

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:28 am

Right. The feature request system doesn't literally determine what features we add. For one thing, we guide the feature requests by editing, approving, rewording, etc. And we try hard to understand why users are asking for a particular feature rather than taking it at face value. But the constant input does result in a more intelligent development process.

Just to the right of the email button in the main toolbar, there is a dropdown arrow. That's how you email to the referral. I just tested it, and it still works even if the patient has no email. I don't seem to remember any other way to send an email to a specialist. How were you doing it?
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:05 pm

I was doing it as you describe, but all that comes up clicking referral button seems to be the option to add an image to the pt email, not some list of specialists to email. I checked the specialist list, and there are some there with email accounts listed. Perhaps something is goofed up with how we've set things up? Wouldn't be the first time. I'll check that out to see if that is the problem and talk to support if we need more help.

thanks for your replies.

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wjstarck
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by wjstarck » Sat Feb 25, 2012 2:28 pm

Fred -

It works for me as it should, but I am on 12.1 (beta).

I made sure the referral had an email address listed, and when I clicked on the arrow (that brings up the dropdown list) it brought up the email sending window as it should. What version are you on?
Cheers,

Bill Starck, DDS
Big Idea Software, LLC
Developer, EASy(Electronic Anesthesia System) for Open Dental
817-807-1709
TX, USA

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Sat Feb 25, 2012 7:06 pm

We are on v 11 something, last I checked. I'm in the process of updating our network and moving the fd server to W7 64 box w i7 core. The previous one died during some sort of power flux during Jan snow we had. Whatever happened took out two boxes and made it past the battery backup surge protection. So I moved the hdd from the dead server to the staff box, and got things running again after some minor driver changes for the different MB.

Anyways, when I get thru messing around with boxes and wires and moving data and programs, I'll have the staff run an update to the beta and see how that works. Some stuff, like messing with referral emails I can do between pts, some stuff like network foolery requires non clinic time. I don't want to add a beta variable until things get resettled.

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:20 pm

Is the specialist attached to the patient as a referral? You wouldn't see anything in that dropdown list otherwise. I don't think anything changed in this area in the latest version.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Sun Feb 26, 2012 8:45 pm

hmm, not in my tests. But then the reality is there are plenty of times when I contact a specialist about a pt without a referral involved.

For example, I've got a nice 10 year old on Medicaid in need of braces. So I recently put together an email to send to an orthodontist to see if they might be interested in a pro bono case. If they pick it up, I'll refer the pt. In another case, a periodontist contacts us about previous fmx, or perhaps one pa. We email it to them. Or a lab wants a picture of something...

In other words, not every email contact about a pt is a pt referral. However, all emails on the pts behalf should be contected to their record. It seems ODs email evolving email system should take this into account.

Intuitively, it seems if I click on email/referral then I should get a list of emails to select from, or be able to enter one, then put together and send the email, with a copy stored somewhere in the pt records.

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Hersheydmd
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by Hersheydmd » Sun Feb 26, 2012 11:26 pm

You are right, but unfortunately, that isn't how it is set up.
You can only send an e-mail from within OD to a patient with an e-mail address, or to a referral that is attached to the patient, either because they referred the pt to you or you referred the pt to them, and you set up the referral in the Family Module.
When I can't do it from inside OD, I use my email editor (Outlook). Then I copy and paste the text of the email into a progress note and date and sign it. (I use "Existing Other", for all my communications with other doctors, so it stands out with a different color (green) on the chart. Likewise, when I receive an email regarding a patient I do the same thing, providing it is only a small paragraph or two. Otherwise I print it to a pdf and save it in the images specialist folder.
Robert M Hersh DMD, FAGD
Univ. of Penn 1982
Brooklyn, NY 11234
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-M ... 1471599429

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Mon Feb 27, 2012 7:26 am

Ah, well that just sounds like a simple feature request to add another menu item to that dropdown. When you click on it, it would let you pick any referral source, even if they weren't attached to the patient yet.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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Hersheydmd
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by Hersheydmd » Mon Feb 27, 2012 4:17 pm

Jordan, you make it sound so simple. Is it?
Robert M Hersh DMD, FAGD
Univ. of Penn 1982
Brooklyn, NY 11234
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drtech
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drtech » Mon Feb 27, 2012 6:01 pm

while you are editing the email drop down, it would be nice to be able to bring up the email dialog with a blank "to" field when you want to send an email to someone else (and attach a pt's photo or something) and paste in the e-mail address yourself. currently, email is disabled unless the pt has an email address in the family file.
David Fuchs
Dentist - Springfield, MO
Smile Dental http://www.887-smile.com

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Hersheydmd
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by Hersheydmd » Mon Feb 27, 2012 8:41 pm

David,
Unless someone creates a Feature Request, that's not happening.
Robert M Hersh DMD, FAGD
Univ. of Penn 1982
Brooklyn, NY 11234
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-M ... 1471599429

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drfredc
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by drfredc » Mon Feb 27, 2012 9:58 pm

Ok, who's going to make the request?

I go thru this silly routine with the staff all the time. They like to gripe about how something should be done this or that way, but ask them if they've submitted a request to change things and they give you this blank stare -- It's got to be some sort of a variation of the HoneyDew list, I figure... They don't want to do anything that might actually reduce the amount of griping they can do... Or Something...

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jordansparks
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Re: Open Dental Email

Post by jordansparks » Tue Feb 28, 2012 10:14 pm

#2279 approved.
Jordan Sparks, DMD
http://www.opendental.com

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