Ask the Dentrix Expert: Should appointments be left on the book during closure?

Editor's note: This is another installment in a yearlong series that is designed to help dentists and team members understand their practice management software better.

Today, we are providing you with another tip from Dayna Johnson, a certified Dentrix trainer and founder of Novonee.com. If you have a Dentrix question you would like Dayna to answer for an upcoming column, you can email her at [email protected].

Q: Since our office has been closed due to the COVID-19 stay-at-home order, we have just left our schedule as it was. We are leaving the appointments on the appointment book until we reschedule them. Is this a good idea?

Dayna Johnson.

A: No, I would not recommend leaving appointments on the appointment book. If you do this, Dentrix still thinks the patient is scheduled, and it will affect your lists and reports.

Also, if you are pulling Dentrix data to an analytics dashboard, the numbers are not going to be accurate, and they could show you an inaccurate representation of who is not scheduled. If you are using an automated system for appointment reminders, leaving the appointments on the appointment book could affect this system as well.

My recommendation would be to move the appointments to the Unscheduled List so you can manage them from a central location. I would Wait/Will Call these appointments to the Unscheduled List so it does not mark them with a broken appointment.

You could even go one step further and create a new appointment status for COVID-19 so you can sort these patients on the Unscheduled List. This will also let your third-party systems know that these patients are not scheduled. This way, when you do turn back on your automated emails and text messages, this correspondence will be more accurate.

Dayna Johnson is the founder of Novonee, a Dentrix online community. She can be reached via email at [email protected].

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.