I was at the mall yesterday shopping for some curtains for
my mom’s new condo and the mall was bustling with kids shopping for back to
school clothes, shoes, and backpacks. When I was working in a practice, we had
a middle school directly across the street from our office and kids would walk
over from school for their dental appointments. Since these kids were usually
not with their parents, we would write them a note to take back to school so
they could receive an excused absence. For a long time, our office would photocopy
the excuse notes and write the name and date of the appointment on the note. Then
I got smart . . . I added a new Quick Letter so all we had to do was click on
the appointment, open Quick Letters, highlight the excuse note, and click
print. My team thought this was the coolest thing ever!
So how can you do this? First, go to the Office Manager >
Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences and then click on the Paths
tab. Look at the Letter Template path and click on Open Folder. This is the
location where you need to save your new letter so the Quick Letters can find
it. If you look through this list of letters, you will find a document called
dtxlm99.doc. Right click and open it. This document contains all the merge
fields that are available to create a new letter.
Now let’s create your letter. Since you already have
Microsoft Word open, click on new document to open a blank page. The excuse
note doesn’t have to be long and drawn out, it can be short and sweet. Maybe
something like this:
Please excuse <First Name>
<Last Name> from school/work. <First
Name> had
a scheduled dental appointment on <Appt
Date> with
Amazing Smiles Dental. If you have any further questions, please don’t
hesitate to call.
You can see the merge fields in the letter. There are two
different appointment dates you could use, <Appt_Date> which pulls today’s appointment date if it has
not been set complete or <Last Visit> which pulls today’s appointment
date if it has been set complete. You
need to select the correct merge field depending on how your appointments get
set complete. These merge fields can be
copied and pasted into your excuse letter from that dtxlm99.doc letter that you
opened. When you are ready to save your letter, make sure you save it in the
Letter Template Path from above. The letter name cannot have more than seven characters,
so my recommendation would be excuse.doc.
Now back in Dentrix, open Quick
Letters and let’s add your new letter to the list. Click on New. Enter the
description of this letter on the first line and the letter file name on the
second line. Click OK, then open template to make sure Quick Letters can find
the letter. You are now ready to use your new, custom excuse note for patients.
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.
