Appointments Disappeared - not recorded in Audit Log

[Rickliftig]

Jason, Arna et al:

Over the last month, we have had four incidents where an appointment was made and then later on, disappeared from the appointment view.

I would generally blame this on operator error, but here is the evidence:

1) in the audit log, the appointment was listed as created. It was never moved or deleted after that. Still, it didn't show on the appointment view.
2) My staff still uses a paper appointment book as a backup (it may be redundant, but it worked this time) and the appointment has been physically recorded in there.
3) The appointments did not show up in the "View Patient's Appointments" window either

I have run a database check and fix - nothing there. Have you ever seen this behavior before? (We are keeping a close track on this for the future)

Thanks in advance.

[jsalmon]

We've actually had this complaint recently and are actively looking into if there are any places in the program that could possibly delete the appointment without making a log entry.
What is the exact version of Open Dental that you are currently using?
Do you have any 3rd party programs that "reverse bridge" to Open Dental (not trying to place blame elsewhere, just informational)?

[Rickliftig]

Jason - Version 15.4.24. - I'm not sure what a reverse bridge is - we are using a VIXWIN bridge.

Rick

[jsalmon]

Reverse bridges are companies that directly access the Open Dental database without Open Dental's "knowledge" that they were ever accessing the database. Typically this is with software that does things like Lighthouse 360 would.

[spsheffield]

I just had this happen to me today. Had a patient show up for a hygiene appointment that wasn't in the schedule, but he had his appointment card that we had printed when we made the appointment, and sure enough, it was scheduled for today. I ended up doing his prophy since the hygienist had gone home thinking there was no one in the schedule Couldn't find anywhere in the audit trail where the appointment had been moved/deleted/etc. It just simply was gone.

[Rickliftig]

Ruh-roh.... All hands on deck.

[allends]

The problem has been found and will be fixed with the next release.

[Rickliftig]

Allen - that's great news! I know of other dental software companies that would have ignored the problem or delayed taking action until many docs had lost data. This is one of the many reasons that I have so much confidence in the OD team.FWIW, this is the first time in eight years that our office has ever experienced data loss with the program.

Many thanks!

[spsheffield]

I have a question about this. Even if the problem is fixed for the future, can I expect that maybe there were other appointments that have already been deleted without our knowledge, and that we may end up with another patient showing up when we aren't expecting them? Does the "fix" include restoring the appointments that were deleted? Is there any way for us to know what was deleted?

[allends]

The problem really only occurred when two different workstations were adding or editing and appointment at the same time, for the same patient. I hope it isn't happening too often.

Since the appointment is deleted, there is no real way for us to bring it back. We wouldn't know what it looked like before it was deleted.

[tgriswold]

"Appointments were being deleted when multiple users were concurrently modifying appointments for the same patient sometimes." fixed in version 15.4.40 and 16.1.11. As Allen mentioned, we can't recover what was already lost sadly. But in this case this was happening because user1 had the appt edit window open when user2 added an appointment. Then when user1 clicked OK (they could have it open for a very long time, and not even change anything) it undid that appointment that what just added. This was an unforeseen concurrency issue and after those versions mentioned above there should be no issues with multiple people looking and editing appointments at the same time, as long as they are not editing the same things.

[Rickliftig]

Travis - out of curiousity, how many versions has this affected? The reason I ask is that this behavior has only been seen in our office over the last month (out of eight years)

[tgriswold]

The code with the bug was first introduced in 15.4 with the appointment reminders feature. Though I could easily see an office not having run into the bug through normal use for an extended period of time.

[allends]

I was able to track the issue back to 15.4. Most likely, why this hasn't been a huge issue is because two workstations would need to be on the same patient, editing/adding an appointment, at the same time. Or, as Travis stated, they would need to leave an Edit Appointment window open for a long enough on a patient that an appointment had been added or edited in the meantime.