Ticket Type: Feature Request / Workflow Enhancement
Priority: Medium-High
Affects: Lab Communication, Case Management, Scheduling Workflow
Problem Statement
Dental practices with multiple office locations frequently reassign patient appointments across locations — sometimes after the appointment has already been confirmed and a lab case is already in progress. The laboratory fulfilling the case has no visibility into these location changes, creating downstream workflow disruptions including:
Lab cases delivered to the wrong office location
Incorrect ship-to addresses on in-progress or completed cases
Unnecessary delays in case delivery and patient treatment
Manual follow-up calls required between office staff and lab coordinators to reconcile location discrepancies
Current Behavior
When a patient's appointment location is changed within the practice management system (e.g., Dentrix), no notification is generated to the associated dental laboratory. The lab continues operating under the original location data attached to the case at time of submission.
Expected Behavior
When an appointment with an active, linked lab case is created at a new location, or rescheduled to a different office location, the system should:
Detect that the appointment's location differs from the location recorded on the associated lab case.
Trigger a notification to the linked dental laboratory containing:
Patient name (or case ID if PHI handling requires anonymization)
Original office location
New/updated office location
Updated appointment date and time
Case ID / Lab Rx number
Delivery address for the new location
Update the delivery address on the lab case record to reflect the new location automatically, or flag it for manual confirmation depending on implementation preference.
Log the change event in the case activity history with a timestamp, the old value, and the new value (for audit purposes).
This gap is currently being bridged entirely through manual communication (phone calls, emails) between front desk staff and lab coordinators — an unreliable and time-consuming process that introduces unnecessary risk of case delivery errors. This feature would meaningfully reduce lab remakes, delivery errors, and patient appointment disruptions.
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