RECALL with a hundred exclamation points

[savvy]

OD Forum stated "Subject: RECALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Invalid Format Submitted, thus the change to current Subject description.

I got a call on Friday from a patient that had not been to my office since switching to OD. He wanted to know why he hadn't received a card or a phone call. I ran a Recall report going back to 01-01 1901. He was not on the report.

Why?

BECAUSE THE REPORT LOOKS FOR PATIENTS THAT HAVE HAD A PREVIOUS RECALL APPOINTMENT SET COMPLETE IN OPEN DENTAL.
He had not had one...THEREFORE HE IS NOT ON THE REPORT.
MY STAFF HAD NO IDEA HE EXISTS.
HE IS LISTED.....Complete with Insurance info. BUT NOT ON A RECALL LIST!!!!!!!

HOW MANY MORE OF THESE PATIENTS ARE THERE?

Thank you Debbie for letting me vent.

I have been an OD user since 2004, and I am still waiting for a decent Recall management feature.
For all the talk about how "customizable" OD is...well it isn't.
Sorry Jordan and Company, but this is my livelihood that is at stake.
Perhaps I was spoiled or perhaps I was just lucky in the past.
DOS based DENTALIS could do it.......25 years ago
My windows based INTELLIDENT could do it even better.......10 years ago.
Open Dental can't do it at all.....for me.

I'm sure I will receive a reply stating that if one does this, and that one can get almost what you want, but not exactly what I want.

I asked Debbie if there was a way to get a listing of my patients along with a total. She was very kind to try and help me. She emailed me a query. It was a query that gave me a total...a single number. Thank you! However, that is only part of my search. I want to have a report that lists all the names that add up to the single number.

The number is of great concern. Before switching to OD my practice had thousands of patients on this list. This recent query, provided by Debbie, only listed 735.

In a computerized system, the following info should be readily and easily available:

Patient List: A list of every single patient in the practice, grouped by Family if applicable, complete with address, phone number, Insurance, Recall Interval, Last Visit Date, Last Recall Visit Date. Ending with a numerical total.

Recall Report: A listing of all patients based on their recall interval, (ie: all once a year, All 8 month, All 6 month, All 4 month, All 3 month, All 2 month, No Recall, etc.) Either in date order or Name order. Ending with a numerical total.

Recall Report specific to recall interval: ie: All patients on a 6 month recall, All patients on a 3 month recall, etc.)Either in Date order or Name order. Ending with a numerical total.

Recall Past due report: All patients that are past due, ability to specify all patients past due with a specific recall interval.Either in Date order or Name order. Ending with a numerical total.

Ability to print recall specific notices: ie: Dear Patient, You are on a 4 month recall. You were last seen on DATE. Your next recare appointment should be after DATE.
The printing of such a notice should set the patient's digital file such that another such notice will not be printed until a specific amount of time passes or is manually generated, SIMILAR TO PATIENT STATEMENTS.

I'm reasonably sure most of this is possible in OD. However, I'm also reasonably sure that to do it, one needs to program it. For those of us that are just dentists and have no idea how to write a query in the proper format, we (I) become frustrated because this really great program has a really crucial Achilles Heal.

If one wants to create the best dental practice management program, one should create one that is friendly enough to be used by the digitally challenged, but powerful for the digitally gifted.

It should be like a digital shoe box.

Before the advent of computerized practice managment programs, the Recall System was "the shoe box". The shoe box was divided into 12 months, patients would fill out a post card for their next recall appointment and that card would be placed in the appropriate month section. A second card listing the patients vital information (address, phone, insurance, recall interval), past and future appoints was placed in a second shoe box that had been divided into recall intervals, 12mo, 8mo, 6mo, 4mo, 3mo, etc. In very short time, recall cards could be mailed or past due patients could be determined. I AM ABOUT READY TO RETURN TO THE SHOE BOX.

I'm not familiar with Dentrix, Softdent, PracticeWorks, Mogo, EagleSoft, or any of the other PM
programs, so maybe the way OD handles recall is similar and users that have switched to OD from them don't know any different. I have had experience with only 3 computerized practice management programs, the previous first two handled recall fine, the recent third does not.

If it can, then I can't figure how to do it. And that is a problem.
A HUGE PROBLEM

A side example: I recently wanted what I knew as an Analysis of Procedures. Stupid me didn't realize that part of what I wanted was already listed in OD reports as "Procedures". My wife learned about my plight. She is a biostatistician, she programs using something called SAS. She said she new a little about Mysql. She took on the task and created almost the same query as the above mentioned Procedures Report, albeit after about 2 hours. I'm sure she could come up with reports similar to the ones I am desiring, but I can't and I'm pretty sure most dentists can't either.

Case in point is that there are way more OD users than there are OD Forum users. Why. I don't know, but a pretty good guess is that they don't know there is a forum or haven't figured out how to get to the forum yet.
This forum is a great reference, perhaps it too should be more user friendly, like placing a direct link in the HELP drop down menu.

I get phone calls from prespective OD users requesting info and feedback on OD. I tell them as I see it. OD is a GREAT program, however, there is a HUGE weakness and it is the Recall.

Someday I hope to state, "OD is the greatest PM program you will ever use!!"...........Someday.

[jordansparks]

Hmm. Tell me a little bit more about this patient who wasn't on your recall list. Has he even been seen since your conversion from Intellident? In other words, would he have been on the Intellident recall list, but not have made it onto the OD recall list? If that is the case, then it's a matter of transferring that "shoebox" to your new "shoebox". Run the old recall list from Intellident to find those patients.

If he is, instead, a patient who has been seen since your conversion to OD, then I'm curious what kind of appointments he has had done. It would have been at that appointment that the Planned Appt would have been created. In this case, the planned appt might have been for an exam and prophy, for example.

I see you submitted a feature request for tracking ALL patients rather than depending on staff to add recalls in situations like this. I think that is a very valid and high priority request. Nobody has actually ever pointed that out before. I think your big red letters are justified.

[savvy]

CRAP!!
I posted a long detailed reply, but no go.

So here is a short version:

There was no way to not be on an INTELLIDENT Recall List. It was automatic. All names were automatically assigned a 6 month recall. One could change it to anything between 0 and 99 (INTELLIDENT used weeks) but you could never not have a recall interval. The moment a name was inputted it was on the 6month Recall Due list. If and when the patient completed a cleaning appointment then they would not reappear until after the 6 months unless the recall interval had been changed.
If one printed a Recall Listing that included all recall intervals between 0 and 99, a list of the entire practice would be generated. There was no crack slipping in INTELLIDENT.

I manually counted from my SELECT PATIENT section a total of 2484 names.
A RECALL LIST search between the dates of 01-01-1901 and 1-11-2009 listed 214 names, which I too had to manually count.
Debbie's Active Patient Query gave me the number 735, though there are no names associated with it.
Since most of the 214 Recall names are probably part of, but who knows, of the 735 active patient number, OD can not account for over 1700 names associated with my practice.

Reminds me of the $700 Billion Bailout.

Many of patients have been seen for just, exam, pallitve treatment, restorative treatment, etc and no cleaning. These patients are not listed in the Recall List.
In a nutshell, no patient that has not had a completed cleaning appointment since using OD is on a Recall Report.

[savvy]

To answer your questions:

If a patient has not been seen in the office for any procedure since the OD conversion, they are not on the Recall List.

If a patient has been seen in my office since implementing OD, in some cases many times, but have not had a completed cleaning ie:Prophy, they are not on the Recall List.

Just because a patient hasn't been seen for a cleaning shouldn't exclude them from being accounted for.

[jordansparks]

If you are interested in our progress and implementation, please see http://www.open-dent.com/manual/recallnew.html

[savvy]

Thank you.

and one more INTELLIDENT Recall feature: After one generates a Recall Due list, one can print postcards. One can then immediately generate another Recall list, but unless a new name appeared, INTELLIDENT would not generate another postcard, unless manually selected, until a period of time elapsed (similar to billing statemenets in OD).

Cheers

[jordansparks]

It looks like we will probably have a more involved filter mechanism, possibly as a screen that comes up before the recall list. But I'm not sure that secondary notices will be part of this phase. I think it's critical to get this change released, and I don't want to delay it by adding another table and another layer of complexity in order to handle secondary notices. I am keeping it in mind, however. And it may be that it makes sense to do it now. But much more critical is to get the recall tracking everyone.

[atd]

I don't know if the new recall changes will impact this or not, but I wanted to mention it since we're doing things a bit differently. We provide services in nursing homes with mobile equipment, so our scheduling process is different that a typical practice. When we get new patient paperwork in the mail we enter the patients in Open Dental and manually add a recall (either prophy or edentulous) since we don't immediately schedule the patient. For some of them I can enter a recall due date based on the info on their paperwork, but for some that don't have that info I leave the date blank and it comes up 01/01/0001. I added an unscheduled type for "NEW PT" so when I run the recall list I can easily differentiate between the new patients and the recall patients.

[Nate]

Jordan:

Are you suggesting we really make a planned appointment for every patient we see. I tend to do it for all the major tx, crowns, bridges, some major restorative plans, but never do it for recall prophys and some single fillings. The reason we dont do it is that its an extra step. Plus the treatment would have to be already entered to be added to the planned appointment. So the next recall prophy, exam, BW's may not even be entered until the patient checks out and the front desk ask if they want to set up for next recall or just wait until we send them the reminder card. It seems that utilizing the planned appointment better would help our office but it does seem to be more work.

Do you recommend using planned appointment for recall prophy, exam, BW's? Any other comments about the planned appointment would be appreciated as I know our office under uses it.

I also agree it would help to have improvements to the recall system. Our office has a folder with list of patients that are past due for recall. They are taken at about 6 month intervals and cards are sent. List are then manually x-checked against other previous list to determine if we are sending the 2nd or 3rd past due reminder at which point we actually send a card that lets them know we will be inactivating them at aprox 1 yr past recall (18 months since last time in the office).

Once you improve the recall system please make a link to a page that will explain what you suggest is the IDEAL way to utilize the system.

Thanks

[jordansparks]

I'm absolutely strict about every patient either being marked done or having a planned appointment entered. And that assumption underlies the business logic in OD. Obviously, everyone doesn't enforce it like I do. The intention is for users to only put a prophy on a planned appointment if they were overdue.

However it's about to change.

[jordansparks]

I don't know if the new recall changes will impact this or not, but I wanted to mention it since we're doing things a bit differently. We provide services in nursing homes with mobile equipment, so our scheduling process is different that a typical practice. When we get new patient paperwork in the mail we enter the patients in Open Dental and manually add a recall (either prophy or edentulous) since we don't immediately schedule the patient. For some of them I can enter a recall due date based on the info on their paperwork, but for some that don't have that info I leave the date blank and it comes up 01/01/0001. I added an unscheduled type for "NEW PT" so when I run the recall list I can easily differentiate between the new patients and the recall patients.

If we change the automation, the recalls you entered manually should not be affected. Recalls don't get automatically deleted, and manually entered due dates don't get changed. But you would end up more patients being added to your recall list. Is that a good thing? Would it clutter your list?

[sparkly]

Jordan:

Are you suggesting we really make a planned appointment for every patient we see. I tend to do it for all the major tx, crowns, bridges, some major restorative plans, but never do it for recall prophys and some single fillings. The reason we dont do it is that its an extra step. Plus the treatment would have to be already entered to be added to the planned appointment. So the next recall prophy, exam, BW's may not even be entered until the patient checks out and the front desk ask if they want to set up for next recall or just wait until we send them the reminder card. It seems that utilizing the planned appointment better would help our office but it does seem to be more work.

Thanks

I agree with this. We use the Planned List to find treatment that we need to remind people about. To have planned hygiene appts here is impractical for our use. And even the Treatment Finder report is cluttered with prophies which makes it hard to find dentist chair treatment. To have that info separate and as a part of a better-functioning recall system would be a step in recall being less cumbersome to use in general.

[jordansparks]

Well, this is about to get interesting. I just ran my recall in 6.4, and it added 3000 patients to my recall list. They are all patients who have never had a cleaning or regular exam. So typically we saw them once for an emergency. I have never considered that a "recall" situation because they never had a comprehensive exam in the first place. But now that they will start showing up on the recall list, offices are going to have to decide what to do with the sudden onslaught of recall patients. They could, of course, simply enter a start date in their filter to never see them again. Or, they could send out stacks and stacks of recall cards.

[sparkly]

So if i have D0150 as a condition code of generating a recall, will this same behavior happen? (since the D0140's whould not have a D0150...)

[jordansparks]

If you have already had D0140 as one of your triggers, then you won't have as big of a jump in the number of recalls showing up. And if you did not do a conversion from another software, then you will also have a smaller jump. But everyone will notice a sudden increase. Even patients that you entered but never showed for their first appointment will now show in the recall system. Everyone shows if they are a "patient" rather than a non-patient, inactive, etc.

[Jorgebon]

This sounds like more of a problem than a solution. Maybe some filters should be made available so that when we get such a big list, we can filter out patients we normally would not send out a recall notice to. Or maybe the solution would be to define different types of recall so that you can send out specific recall messages to each type of patient.
Jorge Bonlla, DMD

[jordansparks]

You are right. I've decided to initially set it to behave nearly identically as now. The user would have to remove the start date by default to see the bigger list.

[asanders]

I too would be interested in a description of how to use the "planned appointment" feature. I know we underutilize it, but I'm not sure how to fully implement it.

I would be greatly interested in recall help as well. Personally, I would like a report that would give me a list of patients who have been in for either a Comprehensive Exam, Periodic Exam, prophy, SRP, perio maintenance etc. that have not had some sort of hygiene procedure for some variable number of months.

[mowgli]

It would be nice to catch the patients who had no recall entered (such as one child in a new family, where the front desk forgot to add their recall). But without also bringing up those whose recall is disabled.

[savvy]

I don't understand this at all.

Tonight I downloaded v6.4.3.
From the appointment screen, I clicked on the Appointment List icon.
I clicked Recall.
What was viewed was, I guess a default with a check mark in Group Families, a Date Range of 12-26-08 to 02-24-2009.
The patient count was 25.
I then left Start and End Dates blank and refreshed.
The list changed to a patient count of 557.
I changed the range date to 01-01-1901 to 02-24-2009.
The list now has a patient count of 58.
I changed the Start date to blank and the End date to 02-24-2009.
The patient count became 557.
I changed the Start Date back to 01-01-1901 and changed the End Date to 2020.
The patient count is now 114.
I removed the check mark from Group Families.
01-01-1901` to 02-24-2020 continued to give a patient count of 114.
01-01-2000 to 02-24-2020 gave a count of 114.
01-01-2005 to 02-24-2020 gave a count of 114.
01-01-2007 to 02-24-2020 gave a count of 114
01-01-2009 to 02-24-2020 gave a count of 78.
blank to 02-24-2020 gave a count of 613.

So this report says I have 557 patients that are due for recall........maybe, let's see.

Next I chose Planned Tracker
A list of 19 patients appear. The date range of these patients 02-11-2005 and 03-14-2006.


Next I selected Unscheduled and the manual count was 176...some patients appeared multiple times.

The ASAP list had no patients.
The Confirmation list contained 9 names...all scheduled for next week.

What makes even less sense is...
My account.....ME!!!
I last had a D1110 completed on 10-31-08.
I am listed as a 3 month recall.
Under the Family Members heading is states RECALL DUE blank.
Under RECALL, Previous Date 10/31/2008, Due Date 01-31-2009.
When I run a RECALL for any combination of dates, I am not listed.

I changed my due date to 01-10-2009.
Now my Due Date is listed in Red 01-10-2009.
I ran a RECALL list using different combination of dates AND I AM NOT ON THE LIST!!!!!!
I AM NOT ON ANY LIST THAT CAN BE GENERATED FROM THE APPOINTMENT LIST icon.

Am I missing something here?

[jordansparks]

I forgot to tell users to Synch recall after updating to 6.4. Go to recall types and synch. In the recall list, if you leave the start date blank, and the end date today, you should end up with probably thousands on the list.

[savvy]

I forgot to tell you I did that.......no difference.

[jordansparks]

And your status is "patient"? And you do not have a disabled recall? Go into your own "recalls for patient". Is it showing a prophy or perio? Every single patient should have one.

One last thought. It would exclude you from the list if you have a future recall scheduled. But start by looking in your "recalls for patient".

[savvy]

According to your tech, Rochelle, everything is set up properly.
I am set up as "Prophy".
When I go to "Make/Find Appointment", select "Schedule Recall', a note pops up stating "No Recall is Due".

[jordansparks]

That's a totally separate issue and is already listed as a bug. I'm only interested in what is showing at the top of your family module. If you have a valid recall there, but you do not show on the list of recalls, then I am very interested to know why. You don't have any recall appointment for today, do you? That would currently exclude you from the list. That's the known bug that's already listed.

If you still can't get it, I will talk to you when you call to prevent going back and forth on the forum.

[sparkly]

on a side note for somewhat similar behavior for people who are playing with this:
i was playing with the recall also and finally found info in the Manual that once a reminder is sent/emailed to the patient, he will DISAPPEAR from the list until x amount of time (you set this up in recall setup). Then he'll reappear on the list, ready to be sent a 2nd/3rd/4th reminder.

In the manual, it notes that a commlog entry will be recorded when a reminder is sent and each commlog entry will DIFFERENTIATE whether a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th reminder were generated. When I tested this by sending a 1st reminder and then a 2nd, I got the same commlog entry for both: "Sent recall notice: 4". Does the 4 refer to something else or is that supposed to be the reminder #? Did I misunderstand?
The multiple messages for reminders is a good new feature that saves a few steps.

[cneelley]

With all of this work and discussion going on in recall, what am I seeing in version 6.4.4 when I pullup a recall list? What do we have to do in order to be sure that a patient gets on the list? Are all patients that we have seen for no matter what showing up on the list? Etc??

Dr. Neelley

[jordansparks]

I have added a section to this page
http://www.open-dent.com/manual/recalllist.html
that will hopefully clarify this question.

[cneelley]

Just to be sure that I understand, if we put a start date and an end date, then all patients listed have had previous appointments for recall procedures? If, however, there is no start date, then all patients seen for whatever, even those without recall procedures are listed? Is that correct?

What if they were scheduled for a prophy, but broke or no showed that appointment, therefore, not marked complete, would they show on the list?

Dr. Neelley

[jordansparks]

Think of it like this. Patients who have not had a previous recall do not have a due date. So if you leave the start date blank, you will see those patients show up on your list, but their due date will be blank. It's obvious to see which ones they are. They will be at the very top of the list because the list is ordered by due date.

There should be NO incomplete appointments cluttering any previous dates in the Appointment module. That is one of the assumptions that we currently make. I don't thing a "broken" appointment would cause a problem. But it's best to delete it altogether or to move it to the unsched list. It might actually be able to gracefully handle an incomplete old appointment, but I would have to test it.

[savvy]

Prior to the recent Recall rework, we printed confirmation cards that listed the date and time of the appointment. The date code was [(date) and the time code was (time).
Now when we print the cards the date and time of the appointment is not being printed.....only " (date) " and ' (time) ".

Can someone tell me how I can get the actual date and time of the appointment to appear on the recall card?

Thank you.

[jordansparks]

Fixed. This topic is outdated, and the last bunch of posts have been off topic. So I'm locking this topic.