Organizing Patient Notes

[dentalba]

I am trying to find the "best" way to organize notes in opendental. We use the procedure note and comlog for most, but when we want to watch a tooth or note something to follow up with the patient next time we generally will also put this in the box just below the tooth chart. Other suggestions? I feel hings like the watched tooth get buried and lost in the chart note and are not followed up with well. Also, little factoids about the patient. Things like "pt is going to greece" or "pt adopts dogs" or "son is in college at ...", notes that help me remember who the pt is what they are doing so I can be personable with them next time they are in. When we were using the paper charts we had a simple place to put those but now we dont really have a place for those notes. Any ideas or suggestions?

[Cheryl Stern]

What I did was make another type of CommLog type and call it Family Info. Now up until tonight I could not see all my CommLog notes because when I clicked on Show, None, CommLog all I got was a list of the dates that I had added a CommLog note. Tonight I realized that if I click on Show, None, CommLog and Proc Notes all the contents of my CommLog notes are visible without all my other chart and procedure notes. I do a quick read before I see the patient. Then I click on Show, All and everything is back. I can also do this to read my group notes which is how I do my procedure notes, and I do this If I want to see all my notes for a certain tooth.

[Jorgebon]

You can save that as a chart view on that same tab, and then assign an F key to it so when you press F3 for example, you get your commlog notes.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[Manny Ramirez]

1 > Click Setup > Patient Field Definitions
2 > Add (Factoids or whatever name you want) and click close
3> Click Setup > Display Fields > DoubleClick "ChartPatientInformation"
4 > Select "Patient Information" from the right pane and add it the Field Showing pane on the left (use directional arrows in the middle). Use Up and Down arrow to position the field in the desired order
5 > The additional field will appear in the Patient Info section in the chart module
6 > Double click on the field and TYPE AWAY!

Sharing is Caring!

[Cheryl Stern]

Thanks,
When I get to Select "Patient Information" on the right pane the only fields available are Pat Fields, Birthdate, City, Ask to Arrive Early and Super Head. Should I pick Pat Fields or do I need to add Patient Information to the right pane and if so how do I do that?

[MKM]

We enter a "watch tooth" code in diagnosis. Under our quick buttons in the chart module, then under the category of exams and xrays, we added a tooth watch code which is code D4129.
Now when we have a tooth we want to watch, we select the tooth, select treatment plan, select the diagnosis (abrasion, caries etc) then add the watch procedure. A "W" appears over the tooth in the chart module.
That tooth is now treatment planned as a watch. To make it stand out in the treatment plan, we added a priority of Watch, so now a W appears in the treatment plan too.
Works like a charm.

We also added a tooth watch that has surfaces on it, so if you want to watch a particular area of a tooth, you can be that specific.

In terms of personal notes about folks, we simply put those in the service not section of the chart module. Easy and quick to see. We put the most recent one on top.
We keep the white area under the chart for clinical info only. You know...."gagger" "very hard of hearing" "high anxiety" etc.
Using the comm log for this info caused too many screen clicks for us, as we don't have comm log show in our chart module in the clincial areas. This way it is easy to see at a glance what the most recent entry was.

I also added this service note section to the router so it prints right out on the router.
Love our Open Dental Routers we created. Waiting anxiously until the EHR certification is complete so I can have a few tweaks made on them.