Planned Appointments in Version 15.4

[spsheffield]

I have been looking forward to being able to have planned appointments automatically deleted when the corresponding scheduled appointment is completed. However, the way this was implemented in version 15.4 makes it even more confusing in my opinion. The way it works in my office is the planned appointment is made in the back by myself or an assistant in the chart module. The patient is then brought to the front desk, where the receptionist makes the appointment from the appointment module from the "View Pat Appts" button or the "Make Appt" button. The receptionist selects "Planned #1" from the list of appointments, and copies it to the pinboard. If an appointment is completed in the back, the planned appointment disappears from the list in the chart module, but it still shows up as "Planned #1" in the appointment list that the front desk sees. So the front desk would then try to set up an appointment for the procedures that were just completed! In the chart module, you have the option to check the box to "Show Completed," which is fine because it essentially returns the planned appointment list to how it used to be. The only problem is that after you exit Open Dental, and then open the program again, the check box reverts back to being unchecked, so you have to check the box every time if you want to be able to see the planned appointments in order to delete them. Please, please, please make this easier for us!!! I think those of us who voted for this feature request were expecting the planned appointment to actually be automatically deleted, not just hidden from view so you have to work harder to delete it!

[jsalmon]

We're going to look into this for you.

[spsheffield]

Thank you! I have to say that manually deleting the planned appointments every visit is very annoying, and this just made the process a whole lot worse in our office. There are now going to be a lot of planned appointments just hanging out there that did not get deleted like they were supposed to be because they were hidden from view.

[cmcgehee]

We implemented some improvements to planned appointments that will available in the 15.4.19. In the window "Appointments for Patient", planned appointments that are attached to completed appointments will no longer show up in the list by default. There is a checkbox now to show completed appointments, similar to the Planned Appt tab in the Chart module. This checkbox is always unchecked by default. Planned appointments now indicate if they are scheduled or completed, thereby vastly reducing the chance that the front desk schedules a planned appointment that is already complete or scheduled.

Now that completed planned appointments are hidden from the "Appointments for Patient" window, it is not so important to delete a planned appointment once it is complete. A planned appointment that is complete will essentially be hidden. It will still show in the progress notes or if you check "Show complete", but in the normal scheduling process it will not be visible. Once all the patient's planned appointments are complete, marking 'Done' in the planned appointment tab will still delete all planned appointments.