Open Dental Forum

Hello everybody,

We are looking into implementing diagnostic codes to systematically track patient health and trends through time. initially we used codes which we made up ourselves, however an expensive consultancy group penalized us for it in their analysis of our quality measures.

Currently our cheif clinician is most interested in DDS, which was formerly called EZCodes, however I understand SNODENT and ICD-10 are also being used in the wild.

Personally i believe its best to chose a system and stick with it, hence my question to the community:
Are you currently using a standardized coding system for diagnosing dental health, and if so which one?

Thank you.

If you are in the United States, Open Dental supports the coding systems listed on this page: http://opendental.com/manual/ehrcodesystemimport.html
The diagnosis codes have been developed for EHR customers, however anyone with a valid US Registration key has access to the code systems.
You can use ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED CT codes associations when setting up your medical problems. See: http://opendental.com/manual/problemmaster.html
Note that the CPT codes from the American Medical Association are supported, but need to be purchased. (You don't need them, I just wanted to add that disclaimer)

ICD codes and snomed codes are difficult to integrate in the workflow. I think DDS/EZcodes will be much more user friendly. To my knowledge they have so far only been implemented in Axium EHR software which is used by dental schools, I think DDS is the best candidate for open dental to implement diagnostic codes. They will be essential for anybody looking at quality and documenting necessity of treatment.. I created a feature request and suggest everybody interested to support that request by using the feature request option in OD, I think it is request 3949