Recall list for period in the past missing people (v6.7.36)

[richardwaite]

Hi, I've been working with this and it definitely seems like a bug. When running the recall list for a period in the past (like 10/01/2009 to 10/31/2009) it only brings a few people up. But there are several people that if I go to their Family module they are shown as being due within that period and overdue (not scheduled). We have a custom query here to look for recalls in a period and it seems to catch everyone fine. Was there a change in how the recall list is generated that could be causing this?

[rhaber123]

Can your post the query that you are using here.

[drtech]

I was having a similar issue to this a while back. I think Jordan tried to fix it, by adjusting the program's query to use the back or forward date instead of today's date(as it was doing hidden to the user), but I think there are still some issues with it....

[richardwaite]

Hmm. I do remember something like that, I think. This is kind of a big deal because many offices use this to catch "left-behinds" so they can send them multiple postcards.

[jordansparks]

And you've checked all the reasons listed here?:
http://www.opendental.com/manual/recalllist.html

The bug that David's talking about would not have affected any dental offices. It would only have been noticeable when working with hypothetical data. I didn't really consider it a true bug. I'm quite confident that the list would not be missing anyone once you check the list of reasons on the link above. As always, I could be wrong.

[V Suite]

8. (rare issue) If you have a previous appointment that was never marked complete. Look in the patient's appointment list. Or, this query will locate such appointments for all patients:

Does this include appointments that were broken but not deleted/sent to unschedule?

[jordansparks]

No. The appointment would have to be either Scheduled or ASAP. Broken appointments would not cause an exclusion.

[richardwaite]

Ok, I did go through that list, and for some people at least (those that I've checked so far) there is a commlog entry for recall and they reappear in the recall list when I delete it. My main question is - why would this cause them to be removed if the recall system supports multiple recalls? We have both of the "# of days" values set to 0 so it should show them anyway. Was the commlog entry a method used in previous versions?

[jordansparks]

Our recall list works best when the date range extends way back into the past, preferrably without any starting date at all. So I think your date range might have been too restrictive. That is listed as #4 in the list.

In other words, I think the date of that commlog entry that you deleted fell outside the range of the dates of the recall list that you were viewing. And since the subsequent trigger will be that date plus zero days, the date range must go back further.

But keep in mind that if you use zero, and if you follow my advice to extend your date range, you will never get people to drop off the recall list. And that's not how we designed it to work. You want them to go away, and then pop back onto the list after 30 or 60 days. Using zero will never allow that to happen.

[richardwaite]

That makes sense, I suppose. It sounds like this office is manually doing what the system will do for them (with the # of days values). Up until now they've been manually going in and running it for some past range, whereas if they set those values it will happen automatically.

[mowgli]

It looks to me like as of version 6.7.34, an additional parameter for excluding patients from recall based on their reminder date was created. This was added in Recalls.cs with a boolean OR (||). Prior to this, they were excluded only if their "next reminder due date" (based on the number of days in Recall setup) was greater than today's date. After this change, they are also excluded if the "next reminder due date" falls prior to the "from" date, even though their recall due date may be within the range specified.

[jordansparks]

I don't see how the recall date could possibly be within a set date range and the next reminder due date could be earlier than that. Reminders always come after recalls.

[mowgli]

There was a reason this seemingly minor change caused significant problems with recall. When Open Dental first started filtering out patients based on their first or second reminder, some offices set the "days since" value to zero or a small amount so they could still see overdue patients on the recall list regardless of recall status. When the next change was made, those people who got their initial reminder a few weeks before they were actually due, all dropped off the list for no apparent reason because the parameter had changed from only "today's date" to the "from date" of the "date due" range. For example, running recall for October of 2009 would leave out people who got their initial notice in September. Since the "from date" never changes (unlike "today's date"), those patients would never again appear on the list, unless the range was expanded farther into the past. But how would they know to do this?

[jordansparks]

Thank you for taking the time to explain this. The change has been made.