Planned Appointments are irritating

[irfan]

Maybe we just dont use them correctly enough...

but it seems that "Planned Appointments" just make life more difficult. In order to show up on certain reports for unscheduled treatment, an appointment needs to be "planned" first... when that gets completed we have to manually go in and actually delete the "completed" portion of the planned appointments or else it still shows up on our Route Slips as a planned appointment- even though its already been done. Seems a little ass backwards sometimes?

Why cant unscheduled treatment just pull treatment that hasnt been scheduled, regardless of whether or not its "planned".... All of the treatment is "planned".. just not scheduled yet. If it wasnt planned, it wouldnt be on the tx "plan"...right?

Theres no way to have a route slip show you all actual Scheduled Treatment for a patient, if its not a "Planned Appt"... and even then it will show you completed Tx unless you deleted the planned appt.

quite frustrating.

[Hersheydmd]

Tried but gave up using Planned Appts.

[irfan]

Really wish all Treatment on the TxPlan got put into the planned list... and then it let you just group together your appointments however you wanted... if you want to make planned appts with multiple visits of certain lengths, great, you can... but if you dont, its still in that list and still shows up in reports/route slips.... just get them to stop showing in the routeslips if its completed !

i do like the concept of pre-setting the appts and lengths so the FD can easily schedule appointments without having to think too much, but i dont like how the system requires interaction when its not needed sometimes.

[KevinRossen]

We aren't using planned appointments yet, but I'm planning on utilizing it for scheduling purposes soon.

Is your main frustration with reports and route slips in regards to them? Or finding unscheduled treatment in general?

[irfan]

currently the route slips since that's my current project. Also had this frustration with treatment finder though.

[KevinRossen]

currently the route slips since that's my current project. Also had this frustration with treatment finder though.

Are you using the default route slip? I made a custom one that shows all unscheduled treatment.

[irfan]

No I have customized.

it can show all treatment needed, and all planned appointments , but I can't figure out what would show all scheduled regardless of planned ... and all unscheduled. The treatment plan list shows all regardless of scheduled or unscheduled. OD support couldn't figure it out for my office manager.

[drtech]

It would be very helpful if the program could make planned appt that are related to the priorities in the treatment plan without any extra editing.

[BHavenKidsDent]

We don't use the planned appointments feature in our pediatric office. With kids, it's very common to have incomplete procedures due to behavior, so we never tell parents how much work we will guarantee to get done on one appointment. I used to like the planned appointments feature with Dentrix, but our office doesn't want to use this feature. I guess if you don't use these features, you don't have to worry about the unscheduled list, and it makes it easy for me to pull incomplete OP from the Treatment Finder.

[Tante]

There is a query report you can run to list all unscheduled treatment. I have put this in excel and then organized treatment by procedures - only problem is you get Everything including prophets and exams. I'd like to use the planned apps but I agree it is not user friendly if we have separately add the procedure and then remember to remove it once it was done. I have enough trouble remembering to complete apps

I'm still trying to find the best option to get a nice report of unscheduled operative work

If anyone is using Planned apps successfully please reply
Thank you

[Nate]

I also have tried to use the Planned Appointments, but find it is Not User Friendly and gave up. I think at a minimum it reorganize as treatment is completed. It is true all treatment is planned, unless maybe you mark it as 'Declined by Patient'. So to manually have to add the planned appointment is troublesome, but then it gets worse because after you finish the treatment you need to delete the planned appointment (which is the last thing you are thinking about). Then you need to add the next planned appointment. Alot of steps. I dont know how other Practice Management Software deals with these issues but it might be useful to see and incorporate a similar overhall into Open Dental.

[spolevoy]

OK, so for those of you NOT using Planned Appointments - how are you following up on Unscheduled Treatment?

We tried using the Tx Finder - but then if the patient makes a recall appt, but not tx appointment, they are off the list....or, if we include Patients with Scheduled Appts, we need to look into each one what the appt is scheduled for.

It seems an extremely ineffective system.

Looking for a better solution...

steve

[irfan]

we're going back to paper cards for treatment. no joke.

[helliwell]

It would be helpful for someone at OD to chime in on this one, don't you think??? Seems to be a common complaint