The Dentrix Office Manager Blog

My neighborhood had a community yard sale recently and it got me thinking about de-cluttering and spring cleaning. In our homes we tend to collect clutter over time and we also do it in our Dentrix database. The problem with clutter in your Dentrix database is that it can cause reports to be inaccurate. Let’s look at some of the places we tend to collect clutter in Dentrix and talk about some ways to clean it up.

1. Patient Database

Does your office have a protocol for inactivating patients after several failed attempts to schedule? For example, some offices will attempt to contact a patient three times before changing the patient’s status in the Dentrix Family File to inactive.

If you have attempted to contact a patient to schedule and have been unsuccessful, you can send them a letter letting them know you have been trying to reach them, and since they haven’t responded, you are going to change their status in your system to inactive.

When I sent the Inactive Patient letter, I was surprised how many patients responded. They did not want their status changed to inactive because they thought that meant they had to find a new dentist. Sending this letter enables you to clean up your patient database and may motivate some patients to schedule.

You can find the Inactive Patient letters in the Dentrix Office Manager. Click on Letters & Custom Lists, then click on Inactive Patient.

When you change a patient’s status to Inactive, be sure to delete their Continuing Care in their Dentrix Family File and to mark any outstanding treatment as Rejected, otherwise the patient will continue to show up on your Unscheduled Treatment Plan List and Continuing Care List.

2. Provider Database

Do you have old providers listed in your database? This can be frustrating when you are scheduling an appointment and must choose from many providers. You can inactivate old providers in the Dentrix Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup> Practice Resource Setup.

When inactivating a provider, you must choose a replacement provider. I recommend using a replacement with the same job classification, replace a doctor with another doctor, a hygienist with another hygienist.

To inactivate providers, all computers must be logged out of Dentrix and you should have a current back up.

3. Employer and Insurance Database

Employer and Insurance databases often get cluttered. Duplicate entries happen in almost every office. It’s a good idea to have an office discussion about how employer names and insurance carrier names should be entered to avoid duplicates. For example, do we want to enter the insurance carrier name as Blue Cross Blue Shield or BC BS?

When entering a new insurance plan into the Dentrix Family File for a patient, I recommend searching by group number first to see if that group already exists in your Dentrix database. This can help to avoid duplicates.

To clean up your insurance and employer database, you can join plans and purge plans. Open the Dentrix Office Manager, click Maintenance > Reference, and then either Employer Maintenance or Insurance Maintenance.

It’s important to note that Dentrix only allows you to purge insurance plans that are not attached to a patient and have no outstanding claims attached.

To find out which plans are not attached to a patient you can run an Insurance Carrier List from the Office Manager > Reports > Reference > Insurance Carrier List. Check Include Subscribers. This will provide you with a list of insurance carriers and the patients they are attached to.

To check for any outstanding claims, run an Insurance Aging Report. From the Office Manager, choose Reports > Ledger > Insurance Aging Report.

I recommend purging and joining employers and insurance plans on an annual basis. Make it a part of your year-end routine to get a jump on your spring cleaning. You may not have a need to do it that frequently if you and your team commit to preventing duplicate entries. Create a policy on how employers and insurance plans should be entered in Dentrix and train the team. Have them get in the habit of searching for an employer or insurance plan before entering a new one.

For more tips, read the Dentrix Magazine article titled 6 Ways to Clean up Your Dentrix Database.

Enjoy your de-cluttered Dentrix database! Please feel free to contact me with any questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. This old proverb can apply to dentistry. Typically, an office will have patients who have outstanding treatment plans on the schedule for a hygiene appointment. These patients are your bird in the hand. It can benefit both the patient and your practice to provide these patients with their outstanding treatment the same day as their hygiene appointment.

In my experience, a patient is most motivated to proceed with a treatment plan while they are in the office. They received an educational explanation from the doctor and clinical team and they understand the importance of their treatment plan and the consequences of not getting it done. They had a discussion with the financial coordinator and understand their payment options. But then they leave the office and life gets in the way. The patient’s outstanding dental treatment goes to the bottom of their priority list.

What if we could provide the treatment while they are in the office and they are motivated? This is good for the patient for a couple of reasons. We all know dental problems do not go away. Over time they only become more extensive and costly. Secondly, since the patient is already in your office they can avoid taking additional time off from work to come to the dentist. The dental practice also benefits by providing same-day dentistry which increases case acceptance and practice production.

The key to being able to provide same-day dentistry is communication within the office. Communication starts at the beginning of the day with a morning meeting or daily huddle.

During your daily huddle you can discuss the patients who are coming in that day who have outstanding treatment plans. You can plan which operatory, doctor and assistant will be available during that time and may be able to provide same-day dentistry for those patients. You can plan when the financial coordinator will have a financial discussion with the patient regarding their estimated insurance benefits and payment options. This type of planning can streamline the treatment plan presentation to the patient.

The Dentrix Office Manager has a Daily Huddle Report within the Practice Advisor that lists the patients coming in for appointments on a given day and which of those patients have outstanding treatment plans. Open the Dentrix Office Manager > Analysis > Practice Advisor > Daily Huddle Report.

Then click Scheduled Patients Setup and check Patients with Treatment Plans.

You can use the Daily Huddle Report while you are discussing your upcoming day to identify which patients have outstanding treatment plans.

Having a daily huddle can improve office communication and possibly allow the office to provide same-day dentistry for some patients. In my experience, offices that have been able to implement same-day dentistry have seen great success with it.

I am a big proponent of offices having a daily huddle to improve office communication. This is a topic I am passionate about because I have seen it improve workflow for many offices. If you have questions about how to implement this in your office or how you can improve what you are already doing, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Have you needed to find the date a referred procedure was completed? For example, a patient is in the chair and the doctor needs to know when the patient’s implant was placed, or a root canal was completed. Charting referred procedures in the Dentrix Patient Chart can help in several ways. The patient’s chart is more accurate, and it gives you the information you need quickly instead of having to search for it in a paper chart or the patient’s Document Center.

When you chart referred procedures, you can also help to generate production. Because the referred procedures are there in the Patient Chart, your doctor can easily see that an implant was placed 3 months ago and is ready to restore. Then you can schedule the patient’s appointment for the implant restoration while the outstanding treatment is still fresh in their mind and they are motivated to schedule. Or perhaps, if your office allows for it, you can provide treatment the same day. That can greatly increase your daily production.

When a procedure is treatment planned in the Patient Chart you can double click on the procedure and mark it as Referred To Doctor.

This will put a symbol (R>) next to the procedure to show it has been referred, and it will change the fee to 0.00. The referred procedure still prints on the patient’s printed Treatment Plan Case, which I like, because it communicates to the patient that procedure needs to be done and if you have set visits in their treatment plan, the patient knows in what order the treatment should be completed.

Once the treatment has been completed by the doctor you referred the patient to, you can mark the procedure as completed in the Patient Chart. Because it was done by another provider, the procedure will have an Existing Other status in the Patient Chart and show as Existing Other in the graphic chart.

For example, I like the visual of seeing the unrestored endo tooth because it reminds me that the crown still needs to be scheduled.

Plus, did you know you can print a referral right from the Patient Chart? This can save time having to hand write a referral and then scan that referral into the Dentrix Document Center. After you have marked a procedure as Referred To Doctor in the Patient Chart, click on File > Print > Referral Slip.

The date range will default to today’s date, but you can change the date range as needed to include the date of the referred procedure. You also have the option to write an additional note on the bottom of the referral if there is something you need to communicate to the referred to doctor.

Charting referred procedures in the Patient Chart can save you time. You no longer have to search for information, it will all be in one place. The Patient Chart will be more accurate with a record of all procedures including those that were referred out to another doctor. If you have questions or comments on this topic, you can email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

It’s summer time and school is out! Now is the perfect time to schedule appointments for children and college students who may have had limited availability during the school year. Throughout the school year many children play sports or participate in other after-school activities, and parents don’t have time to bring them to dental appointments. Summer is also the time when college students who have been away for school are back in town. This makes summer the ideal time for those patients to come in for their hygiene appointments as well as for any outstanding treatment.

In Dentrix, you can create custom lists of patients you can contact about scheduling their appointments using two different filters.

You'll want to narrow down your list to only include children and college-age patients based on their birthday.

Open the Dentrix Office Manager, select Letters & Custom Lists, and then select Misc. From the list, select Patient Report (by filters) and click the Edit button.

Make sure all filters are cleared out before you begin. Otherwise your list will be limited and incomplete. Then set the following filters a) birthday, b) continuing care, and c) procedures:

First, click the Search button (>>) next to Birthday, and enter a beginning date and ending date for the birthdays you want to search for. For instance, if you want to search for school-aged children between the ages of 5 and 18, you would enter 01/01/2000-12/31/2013. Be sure to check Search as Date Range so that your search finds all patients with birthdays within that date range, then select OK.

Then, click the Search button next to Continuing Care and enter a Due Date range. For example, to find patients due during the summer months, enter the Due Date from 06/01/2018 to 09/01/2018. Then choose PROPHY from the Continuing Care Type list, choose the option to include patients Without Attached Appointment, then click OK. This will give you a list of school-aged patients who are due for a prophy between June 1st and September 1st and do not already have an appointment.

Then, if you also want to find which of these school-aged patients are overdue for hygiene visits, and who also have outstanding treatment, you could add a third filter. Click the Search button next to Procedures. Check the Treatment Plan option, and leave the procedure code range set from <ALL> to <ALL>. And click OK.

Only patients that meet the three filtering criteria (birthdate range, overdue for prophy, and have unscheduled treatment) should appear on our list. We’ll generate that list using the List Manager.
The List Manager is an interactive workable list. From the list you can click a patient’s name and access other Dentrix modules like the Family File or the Patient Chart which can be useful to have accessible when contacting patients and scheduling appointments.

By using the Patient Report (by filters) to find a filtered list of patients, and then working with the list of matching results in the Dentrix List Manager, you can easily identify groups of patients like school-aged children and college students you can contact about treatment.

It’s beneficial for the patients and the practice to contact these patients and schedule their appointments while school is out. The patients have more flexible schedules which makes it more convenient for them to come in for appointments. Contacting these patients can help you fill open appointment times in your schedule. For more information or questions about Patient Reports or the Dentrix List Manager, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

An effective recall system is an important part of any dental practice. It is the key to a successful hygiene department. Although many offices try to pre-appoint patients before they leave the office, there are usually patients who don’t schedule or who cancel their appointments. It is crucial to have a good tracking system for patients so that you can follow up.

Dentrix Continuing Care is designed to do just that. It tracks when a patient last had a continuing care procedure, like a prophy or x-rays, and when they are due next. If it is set up correctly, Dentrix will prompt you to schedule the patient’s next appointment and patients will show up on continuing care lists which you can use to find patients without a scheduled appointment. I have found some offices don’t know how to properly set up continuing care initially so that Dentrix does the work for you.

A continuing care type is a term used to describe specific procedures that are completed on a recurring schedule for the patient. For example, a continuing care type named PROPHY could consist of a cleaning and an exam every six months. A continuing care type is tied to a procedure code. When you set that procedure code complete from the Appointment Book, Dentrix will ask you if you want to create a new continuing care appointment. You can use this feature to schedule the patient’s next appointment. If the procedure code is not set up correctly with the continuing care attached, Dentrix can’t function as designed.

To check which continuing care type a procedure code is attached to, open the Dentrix Office Manager. Click Maintenance > Practice Setup > Procedure Code Setup. Find the procedure code and click Edit. Highlight the Continuing Care Type you want to assign to this procedure code then click Select. Save the changes you made in the Procedure Code Setup and Close.

It is important to note that a procedure code can only be attached to one continuing care type. For example, the code D1110 (Adult Prophy) can’t be attached to both the PROPHY and PERIO continuing care types.

However, a continuing care type can be attached to multiple procedure codes.

For example, if you attached procedure code D1110 to the continuing care type PROPHY, you can also have procedure code D1120, a Child Prophy, attached to the same PROPHY continuing care type.

Once these procedure codes are attached to the PROPHY continuing care type, any time a patient has D1110 or D1120 set complete from the Appointment Book, Dentrix will prompt you to schedule their next appointment for those procedures and the Dentrix Continuing Care system will calculate their next due date according to the interval you’ve set up for that patient and that continuing care type.

Join me next week and we will talk about how to customize Dentrix Continuing Care intervals on an individual patient basis. As always, feel free to contact me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dentrix Continuing Care is the recall system for your office. It tracks when patients are due for routine procedures. Setting the continuing care system up correctly is the key to its success. Last week we covered how to assign a procedure code to a continuing care type. Each time that procedure code is set complete from the Appointment Book, Dentrix will prompt you to schedule the patient’s next continuing care appointment and Dentrix will update the patient’s due date information in the Family File.

You can set default frequency intervals for a continuing care type for your office, using the frequency interval you use for most of your patients. For example, for PROPHY continuing care type most patients will be on a 6-month recall.

To set a default frequency for a continuing care type, open the Dentrix Office Manager and select Maintenance > Practice Setup > Continuing Care > Continuing Care Setup.

Then, highlight the continuing care type you want to edit, and select Edit.

In this screen you can adjust the default interval for each continuing care type for the office. Dentrix gives the option to add one day to the frequency. This is a nice feature for when insurance plans will only pay for a prophy every 6 months to the day, for example. By checking the +1 Day option, the patient’s next due date for a prophy be will calculated as 6 months plus one day from the completed date.

I would recommend leaving the Initial Status set to {None} because this is a default that will apply to all patients. If you want to assign a default provider for this continuing care type, you can select Provider 1, Provider 2 or a Specific Provider which you can select from the dropdown list. When you select Provider 1 or Provider 2, the patient’s designated provider from the Family File will be assigned to the continuing care type.

Once you have set up the default interval for the continuing care type, select OK, then close the Continuing Care Setup screen. Now each time the continuing care type is used, all your patient’s due dates will follow the default interval you set.

Although the default interval for a PROPHY continuing care type may be 6 months plus one day, some patients may require more frequent visits, for example every 3 or 4 months. You can also customize the frequency of an individual patient’s continuing care.

Open the Dentrix Family File and select the patient who needs a customized interval set for their continuing care. Double click the Continuing Care block.

Select the continuing care type you want to edit, and click Edit.

Click on the >> next to the Due Date and adjust the patient’s recall frequency as needed, and click OK.

You can also assign a continuing care Status for the patient, adjust the appointment time and assign a Provider for this continuing care type for this patient. You also have an option to write a Motivational Note which will print on the patient’s continuing care cards. Once you have customized the Continuing Care Type for a specific patient, select OK, then close the patient’s Continuing Care Setup window.

Once you have adjusted the continuing care type interval for the patient, when this continuing care type procedure is set complete from the Appointment Book, Dentrix will prompt you to schedule the next appointment based on the frequency interval you assigned. Also, the patient’s due date will be updated in the Family File according to the selected frequency interval.

Now that you know how to assign a continuing care type to a procedure code and how to set frequency intervals as default both for the office and for individual patients, your continuing care system can function properly.

However, you may have unused continuing care types that need to be cleaned up. Join me next week and we will discuss cleaning up continuing care types. If you have questions or comments on Dentrix Continuing Care, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about using Dentrix Continuing Care as an efficient recall system for your office. Using Dentrix Continuing Care you can schedule patients according to their customized frequency interval. For the patients who don’t pre-schedule their appointment, you can use continuing care lists to follow up. If continuing care is not set up correctly, it can’t function properly.

We have discussed how to assign a procedure code to a continuing care type and how to assign office default intervals for a continuing care type. We also discussed how to customize frequency intervals for an individual patient. For example, those patients who may need to be seen more frequently for a procedure, like a prophy.

Now that you have this setup, you may have continuing care types you will no longer use that need to be cleaned up. A continuing care type can be deleted, however to delete it, no patients can be attached to it. Let’s first look at how we can identify patients attached to continuing care type.

One of my favorite ways to identify groups of patients in Dentrix is using the Patient Reports (by filters) in the Office Manager. Open the Office Manager, select Letters and Custom Lists > Misc. Highlight Patient Report (by filters), and then select Edit.

In this setup screen you have many options for search filters. Dentrix will search your patient database using the selected search filters and create a list of patients that meet your search criteria.

In this situation, I would recommend searching for patients with the Status of patient, inactive, and non-patient to be sure we find all patients in your database attached to the continuing care type you want to delete.

Before you begin selecting your search filters be sure to check that all the filter fields are clear. Otherwise Dentrix will apply those filter fields and your report will be incomplete.

Select >> next to Continuing Care. Choose the continuing care type you want to delete to find which patients are attached to it. I would recommend leaving both the Due Date and Prior Treatment Date fields blank to find all attached patients and I also recommend selecting ALL in the Include box to view patients both with and without appointments. Then click OK to go back to the Setup window.

Click OK again to close the Setup window and then click Open List Manager. The List Manager opens and will show all patients attached to the selected continuing care type that you want to delete. From this list you can highlight a patient’s name and click the Family File icon on the toolbar.

In the selected patient’s Family File, double-click the Continuing Care block. Select the continuing care type you want to delete, click the Clear button, and then Yes to confirm.

Once all the patients attached to that continuing care type have been cleared, you can delete the continuing care type. To do this, open the Office Manager, Select Maintenance > Practice Setup > Continuing Care > Continuing Care Setup. Choose the continuing care type and select Delete. Then close the Continuing Care Setup window.

Using these steps, you can clean up your continuing care type and delete any that the office no longer uses. Now that your continuing care system is set up correctly you can use it to easily schedule the patient’s next appointment and you can generate lists from which you can contact patients that don’t have an appointment. Using and maintaining Dentrix Continuing Care is the key to having a successful hygiene department. If you have any questions regarding Dentrix Continuing Care, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

I hope I’m not telling my age when I say that I remember using an actual punch-style timeclock to punch in and out on a time card each day. As the office manager, I would have to manually add up each employee’s hours for each pay period. It was always a time-consuming process. Then we started using the Time Clock feature in Dentrix. It made the process much easier. Dentrix would do the work of calculating each employee’s hours based on a selected date range.

In order to use the Dentrix Time Clock, each staff member will need to have a unique user ID. You can set up each employee with a user ID in the Dentrix Office Manager. Select Maintenance > Practice Setup > Practice Resource Setup.

Remember when setting up employees in the Practice Resource Setup that dentists and hygienists should be entered under Providers, with dentists being primary providers and hygienists being secondary providers.

Assistants and administrative staff should be entered under Staff.

Once set up in Dentrix, staff can use the Time Clock icon located in the Dentrix Launcher to clock in when they arrive the morning, in and out for lunch, and clock out at the end of each day.

If an employee forgets to clock in or out, they can add a note to on their time card to communicate to the office manager they made an error.

At the end of each pay period, I recommend the office manager print the Time Clock report. Open the Time Clock Module and select Report. On the report, Dentrix calculates each employee’s hours and gives you a total number of hours for a specific date range. The report displays a list of employees and their hours.

Select the employees you want to include on the report, then select the date range for the pay period. Under the Select Report Types options, check the box to include notes. These would be notes that an employee wrote on their time card, for example, “I arrived at 9:00am, but forgot to clock in”.

Check to Exclude Days with no Punches/Notes so Dentrix doesn’t print days without punches like weekends. I recommend checking the New Page for Each Employee option and giving it to the employee to review. They can sign the time card to verify they have reviewed it.

I have found that allowing employees to verify their time card can eliminate future discrepancies regarding hours. You can keep the signed time card with the employee’s check stub, or you can scan it into the employee’s Dentrix Document Center.

If you have questions about the Dentrix Time Clock, check out the Punching the Clock and Set up Your Time Clock Dentrix Tip Tuesday posts, or e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

The number of new patients seen each month is an important statistic for every dental practice. Healthy new patient numbers ensure practice growth. Therefore it is imperative that these numbers be accurate.

There are several reports in Dentrix that show new patient numbers for each month. You can find new patients seen each month in the Practice Advisor Report, the Practice Analysis in the Office Manager, and even on the production calendar in the Appointment Book. I have been in offices that say they don’t think their new patient numbers are correct.

It’s important to understand how Dentrix calculates the number of new patients seen each month. Dentrix looks at the patient’s first visit date in the Family File to get these numbers.

The best way to schedule a new patient appointment, to ensure your new patient numbers are calculated correctly, is to double-click on the desired day, time, and operatory in the Appointment Book and when the Select Patient screen appears, clicking the New Patient button.

Enter the new patient’s name, phone numbers, e-mail address, home address and referral source and select OK.

In the appointment information window, choose Initial and select the procedures the new patient will be coming in for. Assign the appointment provider if necessary and select OK.

The new patient’s appointment is now scheduled in the Appointment Book and Dentrix indicates this is a new patient by showing NP in front of the patient’s name on the appointment.

When the patient comes into the office for their first appointment, select the appointment in the Appointment Book and go to the Family File. From the Family File, select File > New Patient with Appt. Select if you are creating a new family or adding to an existing family.

Dentrix pulls in the information you entered for the patient when you created their appointment. Fill in additional information as needed (including birth date, patient status, and gender). Dentrix will assign the patient’s first visit date as the date you are entering the patient into the Family File. This date can be changed manually if necessary. When finished, click OK to save the patient’s information.

Entering new patients this way will keep your monthly new patient numbers accurate. If you have questions about new patient numbers or how to enter patients into the Family File, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

One of the great features in Dentrix, by Henry Schein One, is the option to set up Appointment Book Views. Appointment Book Views allow you to customize what the Appointment Book looks like on an individual work-station.

You can select which operatories, providers, days, and times that are displayed when the Appointment Book is viewed. A recent Dentrix Tip Tuesday blog post explains how you can also select which type of information is displayed for each appointment, such as patient name, phone number, chart number, appointment reason, appointment amount, provider etc.

One of the things that I like about setting up Appointment Book views is you can set up a view for a provider to track their projected production for the month. For example, you can create a view for a hygienist or a doctor and be able to see their scheduled production at a glance by first selecting that provider’s view, and then clicking the calendar in the upper left corner of the Appointment Book.

On the Calendar screen, select Scheduled Production to view the scheduled production amount for the provider(s) associated with the Appointment Book view. Scheduled Production is a toggle switch you turn on and off showing a dollar amount listed on the selected calendar day.

By clicking the Options button in the Scheduled Production calendar, you can choose if Dentrix will calculate production with production adjustments or use the production from the Practice Analysis.

When scheduling a high production case, I recommend referring to the scheduled production calendar. You can quickly see which days have lower production and schedule a high production case on one of those days. This helps to ensure the office meets its monthly production goals.

If you have entered monthly production goals they will display on the scheduled production calendar with the variance of the scheduled production to the production goal.
To enter monthly production goals, open the Office Manager. Select Analysis > Practice. In the Dentrix Practice Analysis screen, select Setup > Goals. Goals are setup for each provider.

Select the provider and enter the year you are setting up goals for. Then click Read Selected Goals. You now have the option to add a monthly goal. Click the Add button and enter the month for the goal (for example, 8 for August) then enter the gross monthly production goal for that provider.

That goal will now display on the scheduled production calendar. Based on the providers you have selected in the Appointment Book View, Dentrix will display those provider’s production goals in relation to the scheduled production. If you have all providers selected, then you will be viewing the production goals for the entire practice.

You can use Appointment Book views to view your scheduled production which can help you schedule appointments in a way that helps you to meet your practice production goals.
Please reach out to me if you have any questions about Appointment Book Views and scheduled production. E-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dealing with dental insurance is a necessary evil in our profession. Tracking outstanding insurance claims is an important, on-going task in all offices that accept insurance payments. Having an organized tracking system can make this job easier.

A general goal for offices, except for ortho, is not to have any outstanding insurance claims over 60 days past due. To obtain this goal you must dedicate time daily to follow up on insurance claims. Once you have contacted an insurance company to find out the status of an outstanding claim, Dentrix has a specific place to record this information.

In the patient’s Ledger, double-click the insurance claim to open the insurance claim window.

Dentrix will automatically enter the date the claim was created and sent. Double-click the Status block to open the Insurance Claim Status window. There are fields available for you to make detailed notes regarding the status of this insurance claim. For example, you could make a note explaining that the insurance carrier is requesting X-ray, sent X-ray today. By adding notes in the Claim Status Note field, you or anyone else in the office can see when the last time the claim status was updated and what action was taken. You also have the option to check the box and enter the applicable date if Tracer Sent (meaning you attempted to track the claim), if the claim is On-Hold, if it was Re-Sent or Voided.

The advantage to making claim status notes within the insurance claim is that when you run the Insurance Aging Report (Office Manager > Reports > Ledger > Insurance Aging Report) you have an option to view the status notes on this report.

Printing claim status notes on the Insurance Aging report is beneficial because if you can see that a claim that was resent yesterday, you may not want to contact the insurance company again regarding this claim. This can save you a lot of valuable time.

Example of how claim status notes print on the Insurance Aging Report.

If you have questions about this topic or others, please contact me by e-mail at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

When I was growing up, my dad worked for a company that produced high performance sports cars. The cars had a Lamborghini engine and cost about $200,000. My dad took me on a sales trip once that taught me a very valuable lesson.

Two prospective buyers came to look at the car which we had brought to a high-end car dealership in Houston. The first prospective buyer was a well-dressed man with an expensive looking watch who already owned an earlier year model of the car. The second prospective buyer was a man in dirty overalls and a cowboy hat who drove a beat-up pickup truck. At the end of the day my dad asked me who I thought was going to buy the car. I answered naively, “The first man, he’s the one who can afford it.”

My dad informed me that the man in the overalls was in fact one of the wealthiest land owners in Texas. That was a lesson in sales and about people in general that I have carried with me ever since.

I’ve referred to that experience many times over my dental career. It taught me to never assume what a patient may want or be able to afford. It’s our job as the dental office to offer every patient all available treatment options. Present the cost for each treatment option and discuss the pros and cons. Allow the patient to make an informed decision about their dental care.

The Dentrix Treatment Planner allows you to create different treatment options for a patient by creating multiple treatment cases. For example, a patient may have a missing tooth. They have several options to replace the missing tooth. A partial, a bridge, or an implant. When creating a treatment plan, I like to use the Treatment Planner Layout within the Patient Chart because it allows me to do multiple tasks from one screen. To switch to the Treatment Planner Layout, in the Patient Chart select the View Menu, then Chart Layout, then Treatment Planner.

First, you should treatment plan all of the options for the patient in the Patient Chart. These procedures will automatically go into the default treatment case in the Treatment Planner. The default case will be the one with the bold title.

Create a new treatment case by choosing the New Case icon in the Treatment Planner Case Setup panel.

Click on the partial procedure within the default case, and drag and drop it into the new case folder. You can right-click on the word Treatment Plan next to the folder and select Rename Case. Rename this case “Partial”.

Next create another new case and move all procedures associated with the bridge option from the default case to the new folder and rename it “Bridge.”

Repeat these steps for the remaining procedures associated with the implant option, renaming the new case “Implant.”

Dentrix gives the option to link these cases. Select the Link Alternate Cases icon on the tool bar and a menu will appear for you to choose which cases you want to link together.

When one or more cases are linked together, one of the cases is designated as the recommended case. The recommended case is shown with a yellow star on the link symbol. You can change the recommended case as needed by right-clicking any case, and then selecting Set as Recommended Case.

Once you have presented the options to the patient you can accept the patient’s chosen treatment plan. To accept a treatment case, select the folder and then click the Update Case Status button and choose the Accepted option.

My favorite part about linking alternate cases is that when you accept one treatment case that is linked to other treatment cases, Dentrix will give you a warning message that this case is linked to others and it will automatically reject the other treatment options. Select OK to accept the selected case and reject the others.

Rejected cases no longer show in the graphic chart or in the treatment planner unless you check the box to include rejected cases.

I like this feature because although we may not want to always view rejected cases, Dentrix has kept a record in the Patient Chart that additional options were presented to the patient. Rejected cases will not show on unscheduled treatment plan reports.

Linking cases is a great feature when presenting a patient with more than one treatment option. If you have questions or comments on this topic, or any other, please E-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

It can be difficult for a new front office team member to learn the ins and outs of scheduling. It can be even more challenging if they have limited dental experience. To effectively schedule patient appointments, it’s important to understand where the doctor and assistant are during an operative procedure.

Scheduling is such an important task in the dental office. I’ve seen offices that are very busy but unproductive. The goal is to maximize the doctor’s time and be as productive as possible.

In Dentrix you can schedule provider time and assistant time. This can help a new front office team member to understand where a doctor can be double-booked to maximize their schedule and where they can’t. Using this system can also help a new doctor to know where they need to be and when to effectively manage their time.

You can adjust provider, assistant, and chair time within a patient’s appointment.
When scheduling a new appointment select the search button (>) next to Appt Length in the Appointment Information window.

The Appointment Pattern Time window will appear. Select the time units, then whether those time units should be designated as Provider, Assistant or Chair Time.

In this example, the fist 10 minutes of the appointment is designated as assistant time for the assistant to seat the patient and place topical anesthetic. The next 10 mins is designated as provider time for the doctor to anesthetize. The next 10 minutes is assistant time while the patient gets numb, and the final two 10 minute time frames are provider time for the doctor to perform the procedure.

Scheduling using dedicated time units allows the doctor to be most productive because instead of waiting for the assistant to finish their part of the procedure they can be working in another operatory. For example, doctor could anesthetize a patient in one operatory and while waiting for that patient to get numb, they can work on another patient. I’ve seen this work well in offices, especially during procedures that require a lot of assistant time, such as a crown prep. While the assistant is making the temporary, the doctor can work on another patient in another operatory to be most productive. Time is money as they say, so it’s important for dental offices to be as productive as possible.

Time units dedicated to a provider (X) can’t be booked in more than two appointments at a time. This eliminates the doctor being booked in more than two operatories at once.

Not only can you can adjust appointment time patterns within an individual appointment, but you can also set them for specific procedure codes, so they will be pre-set when you are scheduling an appointment for that procedure code in the future.

Let’s take the crown code D2740, for example. In the Procedure Code Editor, you can select how the time units are set up for this procedure code.

Once you have allocated the Provider, Assistant, and Chair Time for the procedure, save your changes. And the next time you schedule that procedure for patients, it will be easy for your providers to know where they need to be, and you can better manage their time.

Scheduling appointments and properly assigning provider, assistant, and chair time can help the front office team to schedule more effectively. It gives them the ability to know where they can double-book a provider, and more importantly, where they can’t.

For questions on this topic or others, please email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dentrix G7 is here and it is awesome! It includes some exciting new features. One of my personal favorites is the new Dentrix Health History.

In previous versions of Dentrix we had Medical Alerts that we could add and edit in the patient’s Family File. Dentrix G7 has replaced Medical Alerts with a Health History module which is still accessible through the “red cross” button throughout Dentrix.

The new Dentrix Health History is much more comprehensive than what we had in the past. My favorite part of the Dentrix Health History is the ability to inactivate medical conditions. This is such a great improvement because you will have a comprehensive list of a patient’s past and present medical conditions. It’s important to have an accurate medical history for patients so that the doctor can see if the patient has a condition that could cause a contraindication with the treatment they are providing or a drug they are prescribing.

When you add a medical condition for a patient, you have the option to enter a both a Reported Date (when your practice became aware of the condition) and a Start Date (when the condition started) for the condition.

For example, if a patient has gestational diabetes, you can add that medical condition to their Health History, with the Start Date of when they were diagnosed.

Then, once the condition has been resolved, you don’t want to simply delete the medical condition from their health history. It’s important for offices to keep a record of these medical conditions even if they no longer apply because they are a part of the patient’s medical record. Similar to when we had paper charts, we always wrote in pen, never pencil and we would never erase anything that was written in the chart.

With Dentrix G7, you can inactivate a medical condition, and doing so you still have a record that the patient had this Medical Condition in the past. If the condition were to reoccur, or a subsequent condition were to develop, you would have the date the condition was initially reported to your office.

To inactivate a medical condition, in the Health History module, highlight the condition, and then click the Inactivate button from the toolbar.

A warning message appears, letting you know that you this action cannot be undone. Click Yes to continue and inactivate the condition. The current date will be listed as the inactivation date for the condition, but this can be edited if needed.

Now you can keep a truly accurate record of the patient’s previous and current Medical Conditions. You can quickly identify Inactive medical conditions by looking at the Status column for the patient.
The Health History module is just one of several new features in Dentrix G7. For more information, you can watch the Dentrix G7 New Feature Preview video titled Health History.

If you have any questions, you can contact me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

When a new patient calls to schedule an appointment, I recommend getting as much information on that initial phone call as possible. I’ve found that this can help to provide the most comprehensive care to the patient at their initial appointment.

Here are some questions I like to ask a new patient on the phone and why:

"How did you hear about our office?"
This one’s easy. Tracking referrals can help the practice decide where best to spend advertising dollars. For example, if we placed an ad in a magazine, what was the return on investment? Internal marketing can also be beneficial for the office. Track which patients are referring their friends and family. Send them a thank you note. Some offices give a small gift or offer free teeth whitening to the patient with the most referrals.
You can track referrals in Dentrix by entering in the Referred By source in the New Patient Information window in the Appointment Book.

"When was the last time you had your teeth cleaned?"This helps to determine several things. If the patient had their teeth cleaned six months ago, it’s likely they will just need a prophy and not periodontal treatment. This helps to know how much time to allow for their appointment. Also, the patient may have had X-rays taken recently at their last dental office that can be transferred to your office.
If it’s been ten years since their last cleaning, the patient may need scaling and root planing or more extensive periodontal treatment and the hygienist and doctor can be better prepared for that patient.
Also, this question typically gives the patient an opportunity to tell you about their attitude toward the dentist. For example, they may say something like, “It’s been ten years since I had my teeth cleaned. I’m afraid of the dentist.” This lets you know up front that the patient has a fear and may require a little more TLC.

Medical history questions such as: "Do you have any replaced joints? Do you have any heart problems like Mitrovalve Prolapse?"
Getting this information ahead of time can help the office determine if this patient may have a need to pre-medicate prior to dental appointments. This avoids having to delay or reschedule the appointment which is annoying for the patient and lost production for the practice.

What type of dental insurance do you have?
There are so many types of insurance plans. It can be hard for dental professionals to keep up and understand all the requirements, let alone the patient. I recommend verifying a patient’s dental insurance benefits before they come to your office. This way you can find out if the patient’s plan allows them benefits at your office before they arrive for their appointment.

I’ve found spending the time to get this information before the patient comes to the office makes the patient’s new patient appointment go more smoothly. By asking these types of questions you can avoid the problems that may delay or cause the office to have to reschedule the patient’s appointment.

If you have questions or if you would like an example of a new patient call-in sheet, please e-mail me atvectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Now that we’re headed into fall, it gets me thinking about all the things that need to be done at the office before towards the end of the year. There’s always a push at the end of the year for those patients who want to get treatment done that the doctor diagnosed months ago, and patients who want to use their outstanding insurance benefits before they renew in January.

This can be a very productive time for the office, but also a stressful one. You must find appointment times for all these patients. I recommend that you start scheduling those patients now. That way you can control the flow of your schedule. You can spread the patients out over the next few months, instead of trying to jam them all in December. December tends to be a shorter work month with the holidays and many patients will be out of town. It’s more beneficial for your practice to start scheduling these patients now, in the fall.

You can find all the patients with outstanding treatment in the Dentrix Treatment Manager. The Treatment Manager is available from both the Appointment Book and the Patient Chart.

The Treatment Manager allows you to generate a list of patients that have outstanding treatment plans through filter options.

I like to generate a list of patients that is filtered by procedure code range. This allows me to search for a specific procedure codes like a crown or bridge and get an idea of how many patients have those procedures treatment planned, but not scheduled. Another reason I would search for a crown or bridge is because those procedures take two appointments two weeks apart. Many insurance companies pay based on the seat date so it’s important to get both appointments completed before the insurance renews.

Another useful filter is a minimum treatment plan dollar amount which can help you find high production cases. High production cases will result in higher revenue for the practice, so I like to contact those patients first.

You could also use filters to view only patients whose insurance renews in January. These patients are going to be motivated to schedule an appointment before their insurance renews on January 1st.

Once you have set your filters and generated a list of patients, you can display the insurance benefits each patient has remaining, letting you know which patients might be more likely to schedule.

The Show Columns option allow you to choose which type of information is displayed for each patient. For example, if you wanted to contact patients with treatment plans and outstanding insurance benefits, I would recommend viewing columns for:

Patient Name
Last Treatment Plan Date - shows you the last date treatment was diagnosed.
TP Total Amount - allows you to see the total amount, so you can contact the higher production treatments plans first.
TP Dental Ins Estimate - shows you the estimated insurance portion of the treatment plan. You can use this to educate your patients. For example, I could explain to a patient that the estimated insurance portion for the treatment plan is $1000. If the patient doesn’t use that benefit before January 1st, they will lose these benefits.
TP Patient Estimate - gives the patient portion of the treatment plan.
Pri Dental Ins Benefits Rem - shows the amount of primary insurance maximum remaining.
And if your office accepts secondary insurance benefits, you could also view Sec Dental Ins Benefits Rem as one of your columns.

Once you have the list of patients that fit the filtering criteria you’ve set, it’s nice to have all this information in front of you so you can answer any questions they have regarding their treatment plan when you contact the patient. The Treatment Manager also allows you to select a patient’s name on the list and go directly to other Dentrix modules like the Patient Chart, so you have easy access to their clinical notes if the patient asks you a clinical question.

By starting this process now, using the Treatment Manager to filter patients who have outstanding treatment plans and whose insurance renews in January, you can contact patients and explain to them the advantages of using their insurance benefits before it renews. By starting early, you have more control of your schedule, and can spread the production out over the next few months instead of trying to squeeze all the patients in December. If you have questions about the Treatment Manager please email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dental emergencies are always going to happen. How we handle scheduling those patients can dictate the entire day for the office.

For example, I visited an office recently where the doctor had four patients scheduled back to back for an emergency exam and X-ray. He only had 30 minutes scheduled for each of these emergency patients. One patient needed an extraction and two others needed a root canal. He didn’t have enough time to treat the patients within the 30-minute appointment and they had to be scheduled for another day. It was a stressful situation for the doctor, frustrating for the patients, and unproductive for the office.

I’ve found that if you ask certain questions when scheduling an emergency appointment, you can schedule an appropriate appointment length.

For example, if a patient has a broken crown, chances are they’ll need a new one. If you schedule enough time to do the new crown that day, the patient doesn’t have to come back for a separate appointment, and the office increases production.

Here are some of the questions you can ask a patient on the phone to better plan for their emergency visit. While I would never suggest trying to diagnose a patient over the phone, you can ask certain questions to give your clinical team more information and be better prepared.

What type of symptoms are they experiencing and are they in pain?
I would always schedule a patient who’s in pain the day they called. But often when they call, they aren’t in pain, for example they may have chipped a tooth. If they’re not in pain, it’s not a true dental emergency. I may try to schedule the patient the next day or at a time that is more convenient for the office.

Is the pain constant? And is there sensitivity to hot or cold?
These questions can help you determine if it may be an endodontic situation. If you refer out for root canals, it may be a good idea to find out what availability the endodontist has.

How long has the tooth been bothering them? Where is tooth located?These questions give the clinical team an opportunity to look at the patient’s chart and X-rays ahead of time to be better prepared.

If a crown came off, do they have the crown? Is the crown broken or intact?
This helps to determine if it will be a re-cement or new crown and can help you gauge the amount of time to schedule.

How old is the crown?
This gives the administrative team an opportunity to research the patient’s insurance replacement periods.

Did the tooth have a root canal?
If an endodontically treated tooth is broken it may not be restorable. This may result in the patient needing to have the tooth extracted, so you can schedule the appointment length accordingly.

Asking these types of questions up front when the patient calls can be a little more time consuming, but it saves time and stress when the patient is in the office. I think it’s important to be as prepared as possible when treating patients. Getting more information from the patient helps the front office team and the clinical team provide the best treat possible to the patient. Document the information you gather during the phone call in the Office Journal so that each member of your team can access the information when they need it.

If you have questions about this or other topics, please email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Hygienists play an important role in a practice. They can be an asset as producers for the office. As office managers, if we can give the hygienists tools to be more efficient with the software, they could have more time to spend on patient care, explaining treatment, and ultimately creating more production for the practice.

During the patient’s appointment, there are certain tasks we expect a hygienist to perform. One important task is to chart the patient’s existing restorations and treatment plan procedures. Having a hygienist chart and treatment plan effectively can help the front office create a treatment plan to present to the patient. I think it can be helpful for the hygienist to chart and enter treatment in the operatory, that way the front office team has an opportunity to review the patient’s treatment plan before the patient comes up front.

Here are a couple of ways to help your hygienist chart and treatment plan more effectively.

Procedure Buttons
Procedure buttons can save the team so much time when they’re charting. Think of these buttons as short-cuts. Instead of having to scroll through procedure categories to search for a specific procedure code while they have a patient in the chair, it’s much faster to select an icon from the procedure buttons list.
As an office manager, you may be very familiar with the ADA codes and where to find them, but typically hygienists are not. Procedure buttons can help hygienists to select the correct code for the procedure. I’ve seen offices chart a crown code for the wrong type of material because the hygienist wasn’t familiar with the ADA codes. Creating procedure buttons can help to decrease these types of errors.

In Dentrix you can create a customized set of procedure buttons that works for your office. Once you’ve created the customized buttons your office uses the most, they are accessible from any workstation in Dentrix, meaning the team can chart existing restorations or treatment plan procedures quickly.

Auto-State Button

The Auto-State button in the Patient Chart provides a fast and convenient way to chart procedures. The hygienist can chart multiple procedures that will have the same status (treatment plan, existing, existing other) using less mouse clicks.
To use the Auto-State button, choose the light switch icon in the Patient Chart and then choose the procedure status, for example, EO (existing other). Dentrix puts a box around the selected status. Once activated, all the procedures you chart will be assigned this status.
Think of the Auto-State button like the Caps Lock button on your keyboard. Once you turn it on, all the letters you type are capitalized. Similarly, once the Auto-State button is turned on, all the procedures you chart will be assigned to the selected status.
During Dentrix training I suggest to hygienists they use the Auto-State button. It’s especially beneficial for new patients. They can use the Auto-State to chart all the patient’s existing restorations, then switch to the treatment plan status when the doctor comes in to do the exam.

Probing ShortcutsAccurate probe depths are an important part of the patient’s record. Regular probing is important to catch signs of periodontal disease. Many offices have their hygienist probe patients once a year. Here are a couple of tips to share with your hygienist that can make the process of probing quicker.
Many hygienists use the number pad on their keyboard to chart probe depths. They can also use the keyboard to chart, bleeding, suppuration, and bone loss. When the cursor is on the tooth and surface they want to chart bleeding for, they simply need to press B on the keyboard (and S for suppuration and L for bone loss). Using the keyboard saves the hygienist from having to switch from the keyboard to mouse, which saves time when periodontal charting.

Clinical Note Templates
Using clinical note templates when writing notes is a huge time-saver. My favorite part about using templates is that they are completely customizable. They can be as detailed (or not) as you want them to be. Using clinical note templates ensures that all the clinical notes for a procedure are consistent throughout the office. That way you can be sure the clinical notes your doctor wants are included.

For more information read this Dentrix Tip Tuesday post: Adding Clinical Notes using Templates and Prompts.

Hygienists are producers for the office. If we can give them ways to use Dentrix more efficiently and save them time, they can spend more time on patient care discussing procedures that can profitable for the office. If you have questions on this topic or others, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Insurance companies are becoming more and more particular about the type of attachments and documentation they require to process a claim. For example, I was in an office recently that had submitted a claim for a crown with a periapical film. Typically, this type of x-ray would be adequate, but the insurance company sent an explanation of benefits back to the office stating that to process a claim for a crown, the office must submit both a periapical film and a bitewing x-ray.

These types of situation happen daily. Sometimes, when you send an insurance claim for a crown and a crown build-up, the insurance company may pay for the crown build-up, but not the actual crown until additional information has been received. If the insurance company is paying for one procedure now and waiting on additional information before it pays for the second procedure, you should post the payment for the crown build-up when it’s received and not hold the payment until all the procedures have been considered.

When this happens, you want to keep the crown procedure as an outstanding claim to the insurance for two reasons: 1) you can continue to track the outstanding insurance claim for the crown using the Insurance Aging Report in the Dentrix Office Manager, and 2) if you were to post the payment for the build-up and post a $0 payment to the crown, the patient’s ledger would reflect a larger patient portion of the balance than is actually due.

Dentrix has a solution for these types of situations. When you receive a partial payment for an insurance claim, split the primary claim to post payment to the paid procedures and leave the procedure that requires more information as an outstanding claim.

There are a couple of advantages to splitting the claim:

If you were to post the payment for the build-up procedure, but post to a $0 payment for the crown, the entire claim would then be closed. It will no longer appear on the Insurance Aging Report, so you lose the ability to track it and it could easily slip through the cracks. By splitting the claim, you are still able to track it.
Splitting the claim keeps the original narrative in the remarks for unusual services. You may need to refer to the narrative on the original claim if you have to appeal the claim, and by having a record of the original narrative you’ll know what you wrote and what information you may need to add if further action is required by the office.
The original sent date will be accurate, and any claim status notes you made on the claim will remain with the claim. I wrote a blog post in August about the value of using insurance claim status notes. Once you’ve spent time tracking insurance claims and making notes, you would want to ensure those notes are saved.

To split a primary claim, open the patient’s Ledger. Click once on the claim you want to split so it is highlighted. Then select Insurance > Split Primary Claim. Select the procedure(s) to be moved to the new claim, then click the down arrow to move it to a second claim.

Once the procedures are split into individual claims, you can post payments to the claims as you normally would.

The ability to split insurance claims is a feature that I find particularly useful that many offices aren’t aware of. Splitting claims helps to keep accurate claim tracking during times when insurance companies request additional information. If you have questions on this or another topic, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

When patients come to the front desk following an appointment, they often will schedule their next appointment. But because that appointment can be six months or more in the future, they may at some point between now and then have the need to cancel or reschedule that appointment. Dentrix can handle appointment cancellations in different ways based on the situation. Here are two different ways to cancel or reschedule an appointment and my thoughts on when it’s appropriate to use them.

Breaking an Appointment

Breaking an appointment is what I consider to be a negative cancellation--if the patient is a no-show or cancels within 24 hours of the appointment. Each time an appointment is broken, it counts as a missed appointment in the patient’s Family File. Dentrix tracks the date of the last missed appointment and keeps a running total of how many appointments the patient has missed.

When scheduling appointments for patients, the Missed Appointments number is a good reference for the office to look at because you may not want to give a patient with lots of missed appointments a prime appointment time, like late in the afternoon.

When you break an appointment, the patient’s appointment is moved off the schedule and Dentrix places it on the Unscheduled list. You can use the Unscheduled List as a resource to fill holes in your schedule. If the patient wants to reschedule their appointment at the time they are canceling, I would still recommend breaking the appointment first, so that Dentrix tracks the missed appointment. Then schedule the patient a new appointment.

When you attempt to schedule an appointment for a patient who already has an appointment on the Unscheduled List, Dentrix will alert you that the patient has an unscheduled appointment and ask you if you would like to view the patient’s appointment list.

It’s important to answer “Yes” to this message. Choosing “Yes” opens the Family Appointment List for the patient where you can view any unscheduled appointments.

Choose the <Unscheduled Appt> from the list and click the View Appt button. The appointment information window will appear with the unscheduled procedures. Then you can choose to Pinboard the appointment and reschedule the patient.

The reason it’s so important to answer “Yes” when Dentrix asks if you would like to view the patient’s appointment list, is because when you reschedule the appointment the way I described above, the appointment will be moved off the Unscheduled List. I find that many offices are just creating new appointments instead of rescheduling them through the appointment list and it results in their Unscheduled List being inaccurate. Patients continue to be on the Unscheduled List for appointments that have already been rescheduled. The Unscheduled List is not a functional tool for the office when this happens.

Wait/Will Call

If a patient calls and can’t make their appointment two weeks from now, I don’t consider that to be a negative cancellation because the patient is giving the office plenty of notice. If the patient can reschedule, you could simply move their appointment to the Pinboard and find another open time for their appointment. If they are unable to reschedule at this time, use the Wait/Will Call option. Double click on the patient’s appointment, then in the appointment information window, select Wait/Will Call.

This will remove the patient’s appointment from the Appointment Book and move them to the Unscheduled List. This gives you the ability to follow up with the patient to get them rescheduled. When you view the Unscheduled List, it shows whether the appointment was broken or marked as wait will call.

When you are contacting patients to reschedule, I recommend contacting the Wait/Will Call patients first, since they had given you advance notice when they cancelled their appointments. Dentrix does not consider appointments marked as Wait/Will Call to be a missed appointment in the Family File, so use this feature when it’s not a negative cancellation.

Try using these Dentrix features for the different types of cancellation situations you have in your office. I recommend using the Break Appointment option when patients no-show or cancel within 24 hours of their appointment. I recommend using Wait/Will Call option if the patient is unable to reschedule at this time and they have given the office at least 24 hours’ notice. If you have questions, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Spring Cleaning for Your Dentrix Database

A Bird in the Hand Is Worth Two in the Bush

Charting Referred Procedures

School’s Out, Get Those Patients In!

Dentrix Continuing Care, Part 1 of 3

Dentrix Continuing Care, Part 2 of 3

Dentrix Continuing Care, Part 3 of 3

Using the Dentrix Time Clock

New Patient Numbers

Appointment Book Views and Scheduled Production

The Value in Using Insurance Claim Status Notes

Presenting Alternate Treatment Plans

Maximizing a Provider's Time in the Schedule

Dentrix G7 Health History - My Favorite New Feature

The New Patient Phone Call

Scheduling Patients with Outstanding Treatment - Beat the End of Year Rush

Questions To Ask When Scheduling an Emergency Appointment

Give Your Hygienists Tools for Success

How to Handle Partial Insurance Payments

How I Handle Cancellations