Supporting Clinics as a Third Party Software Provider

[mandmdiet]

We have an application that we have been using in a few offices for the past 5 or 6 months. However, we have only integrated with offices that are not currently using Clinics. We now have a requirement to integrate our software with a new client that has several clinics and we're not sure exactly how we need to support this different setup.

Users of our application can import a claim along with the patient and plan information for that claim, they can also submit that claim to be processed by a carrier. Updates to the claim or patient information can be made in our software and they will be written back to Open Dental to keep the data in sync. Currently whenever we read a claim from Open Dental using a particular API key, all of that data is just for a single office, but with clinics, data read using the API Key can be from multiple offices. So, for example, if clinic A is using our service but clinic B is not using our service, when we read data using the API, we need to make sure the data we read is only data for clinic A. This seems fairly straight forward, but I have a few questions.

• Is there a way when configuring the API in Open Dental to restrict API calls to just a specific clinic?
• When using the API do we have a way to specify the clinic for which we're making the request, for instance in the headers?
• We believe we saw a use case where a procedure created for clinic A can be attached to a claim for clinic B, is that correct?

In general we just need to know the ins and outs of how we can read data, using the API, and only pull data for the specific clinic we're interested in.

I have read this article on clinics but it didn't give me the entirety of the information I needed. I would be interested in other articles already out there that would help with this. https://www.opendental.com/manual/clinics.html

I appreciate your help.

[SLeon]

Good morning,

• Is there a way when configuring the API in Open Dental to restrict API calls to just a specific clinic?
• When using the API do we have a way to specify the clinic for which we're making the request, for instance in the headers?

You can currently refine your search to a specific clinic using the ClinicNum parameter in many of our methods. The Patients GET Simple method, for example, can be used to only return patients where patient.ClinicNum equals your ClinicB.ClinicNum. The assumption is that your application knows the ClinicNum of the clinic for which you want results.

This option is only available on tables in our schema that contain the ClinicNum column.

Similarly, any POST or PUT methods that insert into tables with a ClinicNum column will allow/require you to specify it in the JSON.

• We believe we saw a use case where a procedure created for clinic A can be attached to a claim for clinic B, is that correct?

Procedures are displayed in the main Account Module grid for the patient. These are the only procedures that can be selected to be added to a claim. This is true whether they were performed in ClinicA or ClinicB. The clinic that is selected in Open Dental does not affect the procedures in this list; your application should obtain procedures via the patient's PatNum.

[mandmdiet]

Procedures are displayed in the main Account Module grid for the patient. These are the only procedures that can be selected to be added to a claim. This is true whether they were performed in ClinicA or ClinicB. The clinic that is selected in Open Dental does not affect the procedures in this list; your application should obtain procedures via the patient's PatNum.

Thanks for the clarification SLeon.

Please bear with me as I try to make sure I understand this correctly. When you say "These are the only procedures that can be selected to be added to a claim" you're saying this is not a complete list of procedures in the application, right? Since only implies a subset of some larger whole? However you also mentioned that "This is true whether they were performed in ClinicA or ClinicB" which I take to mean that all procedures for all possible clinics are listed together in a single list on the main Account Module grid. Do I understand both of these correctly? If so, can you help me understand which procedures won't be shown here as implied by only above?

[SLeon]

I am happy to clarify this for you.

The procedures that can be attached to a patient's claim (and displayed in the Account Module grid) are a subset of:

• Procedures for all patients
• Procedures that are associated with production (not group notes)
• Procedures that are not treatment planned

[mandmdiet]

OK, thank you so much.

A few more simple questions then based on the documentation I found and what you've said.

Can a claim have procedures from more than one patient?
Can a claim have procedures from more than one clinic?

I think the answer to both of these is no, but I find myself wanting to be extra positive of this.

[SLeon]

That is correct.

Procedures must belong to the same patient to be attached to a claim.

Procedures must have the same procedurelog.ClinicNum to be attached to a claim.

There are other nuances for creating claims. We will document the ones relevant in our API documentation for the Claims POST method under development. I would also encourage you to try some of these scenarios in your development environment to get an idea of how all the pieces fit together and see the full picture.

[mandmdiet]

Thanks SLeon, we definitely will experiment as well and I apologize for asking a question that may seem like it could be answered that way, I just felt like the Clinics functionality may be complex enough that we might miss something if we didn't also run questions passed you on this.

[SLeon]

No need to apologize. Claims and accounting in general are complex areas of our software and have a lot of moving pieces. Visualization can be helpful. Clinics also have a significant impact on how data is presented to the user and worth taking the time to understand fully. We are happy to answer any questions you have.