Disabled Recall

[savvy]

Somehow, patient recall is being disabled.
This has happened before.
It effects multiple, unrelated, patients.
What causes this?
Can someone post a query that will list All Patients With Disabled Recall (Prophy)?

[jordansparks]

Also sounds like something that should be added to permissions and audit trail. "Somehow" isn't good enough.

[savvy]

I was hoping you would know the "somehow."
Basically, about 30 patients, that I know of, that were seen for prophy and exam 6-8 months ago did not appear on the recall list, nor were they scheduled in the future.
All were "Disabled".
It was only brought to our attention when a few of them called asking when their next appt was/should be, since they had not yet been notified.
To my knowledge, the only way to disable recall is to manually go into a patient's recall section and place a check in the disabled box. I can absolutely guarantee that was not done for the 30 or so patients known to be affected.

So,.......
What else might cause this?

[jordansparks]

As far as I know that is the only way. I have spent a few hours reviewing the code and can't see any other way it could happen. There is a chance that it was an old bug that is no longer present. I think there's a query shows you which patients are disabled. Using that list, it should be easy enough to un-disable them.

[snoozedentist]

We are having a similar problem. We have been coming across several patients whos recall has been disabled without any reason we can come up with. Is there a way to run a report that shows patient's with disabled recall so we can correct it?

[Jay]

Here's one possibility. Check SETUP>>RECALL and the bottom right of the Window there should be an item:
Max # Reminders (e.g. 4):
Check the entry. If it is not blank then after the maximum number of reminders sent to a patient, Recall gets disabled. This max is quickly attained if you have a software like Lighthouse 360 doing your reminders.
Best to blank it out.
This happened to us.
Check the last item on: http://opendental.com/manual/recallsetup.html

[snoozedentist]

Well, I wish it would have been that easy. We already have it blanked out.

[Jay]

Oh well, I tried. Maybe now I'll find that we are having the same problem and haven't even realized it.

[bpcomp]

I'm unable to test the query at the moment but you can try it. If it doesn't work then I'll have to debug it later.

SELECT patient.FName, patient.LName, recall.IsDisabled, recall.Note
FROM patient, recall

INNER JOIN patient.PatNum ON recall.PatNum

WHERE recall.IsDisabled = TRUE

[savvy]

Query no workie

[Tom Zaccaria]

Try this:

select PatNum, IsDisabled from recall
WHERE IsDisabled ='1'

Assuming 1 = true

drtmz

[mowgli]

Well, if I set a patient "inactive" it automatically disables their recall. When I set the patient "active" again, the disabled recall has to be re-enabled manually, and there's nothing in the audit trail. Version 13.1.8.

[jordansparks]

I think that may be the answer. Savvy, are you regularly setting patients inactive as part of your office processes? If so, that would explain why it's a problem for you, and not anyone else.

Here's a query to identify patients with the problem:
SELECT patient.PatNum AS PtNum, LName, FName
FROM recall,patient
WHERE recall.PatNum=patient.PatNum
AND recall.IsDisabled =1
AND patient.PatStatus=0

I have added it to our bug list and we will look into changing these back to enabled as patients are set active.

[boboffice]

I think that may be the answer. Savvy, are you regularly setting patients inactive as part of your office processes? If so, that would explain why it's a problem for you, and not anyone else.

Here's a query to identify patients with the problem:
SELECT patient.PatNum AS PtNum, LName, FName
FROM recall,patient
WHERE recall.PatNum=patient.PatNum
AND recall.IsDisabled =1
AND patient.PatStatus=0

I have added it to our bug list and we will look into changing these back to enabled as patients are set active.

We were also having the same problem. I now realize it may be related to setting patients inactive. We are using the inactive status to indicate patients who are not active but are likely to come back in the future. Archived patients are the ones who are very likely not to come back. The reason we are doing this is so we can quickly identify from the patient list who is overdue despite a few attempts to contact. I think recall should NOT be disabled on inactive patients just like they are not removed from the patient selection list. If this is the incorrect way to use inactive status, then what really is inactive status for? If anything the "not a patient" people should be removed from the patient selection list.

Partly, this comes back to the patient selection list in my opinion. It really needs to be able to be customized. The ability to customize lists and their appearance is my absolute favorite thing about open dental. It makes sense to be able to customize this list too. It would be nice to see color to indicate whether they have an appointment or not and how far overdue they are, whether they have an outstanding balance, et cetera. There are so many things that could be done to improve the functionality of this list. I guess this is beginning to sound like the existing feature request, huh?

For now can we get a option to have inactive status disable recall? I personally would turn this option to OFF.

[jordansparks]

The bug fix that we released reenables the recall when changing the status back to patient.