Recall Frustration

[savvy]

I love Open Dental.

However, in this man's opinion, the recall feature has a lot to be desired. On the other hand, perhaps I think differently than others, at least so says my wife.

My recall schedules are set up pretty straight forward. Those that are once a year (full denture patients); Every 9 months (those super clean, no restoration patients); Every 8 months (those that alternate between the periodontist and me every 4 months); Every 6 months; Every 4 months; Every 3 months; Every 2 months ( I treat some developementaly and physically disabled). Then there are my implant patients that have 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 3 month, 6 month
recalls.

We send out two types of recall cards every two weeks. 1) those with scheduled appointments, and, 2)those who don't have scheduled appointments but are now due.

There is, however, a third group. This group may have had an appointment scheduled but either was a no show or had to cancel and was unable to reschedule at the time of cancellation, AND, those folks whose previous due date has past without yet scheduling an appointment.

There is huge room for human error when more than one individual is responsible for sending recall cards.
In my opinion, when one runs a recall (patient's that need to schedule an appointment) report , there should be a quick way to see if a card had been previously generated and when it was generated (yesterday, last week, 8 months ago, etc.) (I know it is listed in the Comm Log, but that requires one to check each chart manually).

Ideally, I would like to get a list of patients that are due that have not had a card sent within the last 30 days. Instead, according to my staff, one has to weed these patients out manually.

Yes, in an ideal world, every completed recall patient schedules a future recall appointment prior to leaving the office. However, this does not happen.

It would be REALLY SWELL, if one could print a report limited to only a certain recall schedule or selected days/weeks/months past due.

My previous PM program (Intellident, may you rest in peace) understood this and handled it terrifically.

We are now going back to the shoebox/ index cards/months of year......the way it was before computers.

There must be a better way to keep this organized.

I welcome any comments.

Cheers!!!!!

[drtech]

Yes, I vote for improvement in this section soon...(as well as unscheduled and planned tracking...if we could make those lists work together a little better and also be able to jump directly to charts from the lists and go right back to where you left off.)