2014 New Years Resolution - clean up your database

Is your New Year’s Resolution for 2014 to clean up your Dentrix Database? Do you find that you have duplicate insurance plans taking over your system? Do you have several unnecessary or duplicate medical alerts that have nothing to do with caring for a dental patient or you have maxed out your 64 limit and you need to find a way to create some space? My focus on the next few blog posts will be to help you straighten things out a bit.

I am going to first teach you how to clean up those unnecessary or duplicate Medical Alerts. Changing or deleting Medical Alerts can be a little tricky because the alert could be assigned to a patient. If you don’t detach it from the patient before you edit it, you will have a much bigger problem on your hands. If you want to edit your Medical Alert list, here is what you have to do.

First, you need to do a search of your patient base to see if the Medical Alert is attached to someone before you edit or delete it. Go to the Office Manager > Letters > MISC > Patient Reports by Filters > Edit > open up the Medical Alerts search and highlight the specific one you want to search for. Click OK, then click on Create Merge and select Create Data File only. This will just give you a list of patient names without merging the information into a letter. Now you can go into these patients accounts and de-select the Medical Alert you want to edit or delete.

 

After you have done a search for all the Medical Alerts you want to clean up, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Definitions. In the dropdown menu, select Medial Alerts and it will bring up your list. If you want to edit one of them, just highlight it and change the name then click on the Change button on the right. This will change the definition for anyone who had that Medical Alert assigned to him or her. If you want to delete the Medical Alert, you will need to highlight the alert. Click on the Delete button, then you will need to select a replacement from the list. This is why it was extremely important to do the search for anyone attached to that alert before you make these definition changes.

If you are using the Questionnaire Module for your patient forms and you have the Medical Alerts information as one of your fields that can be merged, it will update your Questionnaire form automatically after you click on the Close button when you are finished. Hope this helps!

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.

The end of the year is upon us

This time of year I usually get the same questions and concerns about the Year End, and my answer is always the same . . . it is just like running a Month End.  Whatever your routine is for running a Month End; either using the Month End Update or the Month End Wizard (both located on the Ledger), the steps are exactly the same.   Now there may be some reports that you may run that could be different from your Month End routine because we all like to know how we ended the year.  Here are some examples:

·         Analysis Summary Report – This report can give you a detailed summary of Production, Collections and adjustments for each provider.  Just select 01/01/2013 through 12/31/2013 as your date range (I always select procedure date). 

·         Production Summary Report – This might be a good one because it can show you year to date totals for specific categories in Production or Collection and you could also filter it by procedure code.  If you want to see how many dental implants you placed or how many quads of scaling you did for the year this report can give you that information.

·         Adjustment Summary Report – Now the doctors probably don’t want to see these totals but it is reality and this is a good way to see where they are writing off money. 

·         Referral Reports – This would be a good report to see where your marketing dollars for 2014 might be well spent.  This will show you how patients are being referred and if you should focus more on the newspaper or the next Valpak ad.  My opinion however, is internal marketing! 

You may also be asked from patients to send a ledger history for tax purposes.  This can be printed from the ledger by clicking on Print > Patient Ledger (or Family Ledger) > click on the beginning date 1/1/2013

If you want more information on Year End the Dentrix Resource Center is a great place to look.  There is great information in the Knowledge Base article #49812. Here you can click on a Dentrix Year End Webinar.

Also remember . . . always have a current backup that is free of any errors before you run Month End. 

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.

Three reasons you should be using Dentrix Mobile

Sometimes I feel like I am consumed by my mobile phone because it is with me 24/7. My mobile device, however, also brings my world together. It allows me to connect with my friends and family, share pictures with the world, and lets me surf and shop for just about anything. So how can your mobile phone help you in your dental practice? Here are three reasons your office should be using Dentrix Mobile.

1. Storms, power outages, and theft can happen at any moment. If you don’t have a disaster plan in place at your office, you are not only dead in the water but you are violating a major part of the HIPAA Security Rule. The HIPAA Security Rule states that we must have a disaster plan documented. In my office, having immediate access to my patient’s information is part of that plan. If our office is closed and I have lost access to my office computers, the most efficient and immediate way for me to contact my patients is through Dentrix Mobile.
2. If your office performs surgical procedures, I would highly recommend someone following up with those surgical patients in the early evening. You want to make sure they are following your post-op instruction protocol as written so they do not have any complications to the procedures. You can also see if they are having any reactions to any medications you have prescribed. This is also a great marketing tool. It doesn’t take very long to make this phone call and the rewards can be tremendous. With Dentrix Mobile, you can view your appointment book and have access to patient information so you can easily see the patients who need a follow-up call.
3. In every area of the country, you will have patients who will randomly call the on-call phone number seeking out drugs. Your doctor will inevitably get an after-hours phone call from someone making up a story that they were just in and having pain and could the doctor please phone in a prescription for Vicodin to the pharmacy. If the doctor is using Dentrix Mobile, he or she has immediate access to see if the patient is truly a patient of the office, the last appointment date, and the patient’s prescription history. This will save the doctor a trip into the office and the patient will have an answer quickly.

Our mobile devices can sometimes consume our lives, but they can also free up our lives if we use apps and programs appropriately. Dentrix Mobile is one program that every doctor and dental office with Dentrix software needs to bookmark on their homepage. For more information on how you can get setup with Dentrix Mobile, CLICK HERE.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.