Dentrix Ideas

This would be very helpful! I have a patient that I accidentally entered the wrong tooth number for a crown and now I cannot edit or delete the procedure from the ledger.

I would like it if, we were able to change the provider in a closed-out month. Also, would like to be able to edit providers after insurance has been electronically sent without having to correct out the entire claim just to change the provider who did the service.

Dentistry and all its trappings used to be so simple. You did a filling. You got paid (a full, reasonable fee - one which you honestly felt reflected your education and professionalism). Then you gave the patient their receipt to send to their own damn insurance. Why have we dipped our toes in so deep? Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

Anyway, we're human and need to correct things at times and shouldn't have to climb Mount Everest to do it. Kapish?

Just changing a tooth number without changing anything else should be easy.

WHEN CAN WE EXPECT THIS TO BE IMPLEMENTED? THIS WOULD BE EXTREMELY HELPFUL!!!!

This would be so much better than validate/invalidate as well as changes with claims.

This would really be helpful to be able to edit procedures in history. Just make it so it needs a high security password. The change would show in the audit report. To difficult to make corrections to insurance in past history.

Yes... Invalidating the procedure sometimes doesn't do the trick. To be able to change those being the administrator, would be great!

Great idea Melissa!

This would be huge. We have 2 dr's in the practice that are paid as a % of collections but the front office staff really struggles to enter the payments correctly each time.

This would help us tremendously with all the new insurance requirements to change any billing errors. Tooth number or procedure codes. Unfortunetely we are all human and the insurance companies are now asking for printed proof not just a letter to change a patients history. For those of us using Dentrix we cannot produce that for the insurance companies, why not??HELP

I'd like to add a comment regarding this issue as it relates to charting. I see no reason why surface drawings are locked to the transaction history. The chart is something that we view to help us see visually what is going on in a patient's mouth. I inherited Dentrix when I purchased a practice. The former dentist entered 1 surface resins that were Class V's as Facial Resins without the Class V designation. Now, all of those procedures (which are in history) show up incorrectly on the chart. They show in the middle of the tooth, rather than at the gum line. We should be able to edit the surface drawings to accurately reflect what is in a patient's mouth, so long as we are not changing codes, fees, etc... The surface drawings should not be locked to the transaction history, but open and free to edit at any time without affecting the transaction history, insurance codes/claims, finances, etc... I'm trying to go paperless in an attempt to be more orderly. This is nearly impossible when corrections cannot be made.

Michael, there is a feature called "Annotations", that allows you to draw on the chart yourself, so you can edit the surface drawings that appear in the chart, or make marks on the teeth that we do not currently have surface paints for. However, I do agree that there should be a more user friendly way to do this.

Even being able to add a note to a procedure (just to note why I'm invalidating it for example) would be helpful but not be being able to edit in history has been a problem in our office. I agree with the need for high security password and the changes be noticeably flagged.

This would be a great thing! And yes, I think it would be a good idea to require a password so that only a specified user could makes these changes.

Trevor, annotations don't allow you to erase former surface drawing mistakes though. They do allow you to draw on the teeth, etc, but as you know, this is very difficult. Unless you are a world class digital artist, it is nearly impossible to draw straight line or stay within the outlines of a tooth. These "drawings" also don't resize proportionately compared to the teeth that they are drawn on when changing the size of the tooth chart. IMHO, this drawing method is a complete waste and should either be eliminated or rewritten.

It is a HUGE pain that once we close the month we can not easily correct mistakes! If we invalidate a procedure, it updates the tooth chart and clinical notes, but not the ledger. You still see the item listed in the ledger. Then when you "back date" to post the correct procedure, it does not place it in chronological order, instead it shows up at the bottom of the ledger. And, you have to remember to manually adjust the fee's if you invalidate something. Being able to delete a mistake in history and correct it would be very helpful.

One of the main reasons I would like to see something like this in a very near future update is that I have been stuck with a database that is riddled with problems because of the way my predecessor posted procedures and payments. Many things that were posted before I purchased this practice were done with a lack of knowledge of the software, accounting principles and common sense. Now I'm stuck with a database that is full of problems that take away from my ability to manage my practice effectively and efficiently. Well designed software should not let unsuspecting users walk into trouble. My predecessor and staff didn't understand the concept of payment allocation and simply always posted check and credit card payments to the head of household (guarantor) in the family. As you can imagine, this left the ledgers that I inherited with grossly inaccurate data (even if the family balance was and is accurate). I don't want to look at a ledger that shows the patient owes $1000 when the family balance is $0. Likewise, I don't want to look at the other member of that family and see that I owe them $1000 because payments were misallocated. If the software isn't capable of alerting untrained users with prompts such as, "That patient doesn't have a balance. Are you sure you want to post a payment to their ledger...", then the least it could do is allow you to alter payment allocations that are in history. I simply want to clean up past mistakes that are of no doing of mine, but I have been denied this objective. I have been through all of the workarounds, and they only create other problems. I also don't want to start littering the ledgers with a plethora of adjustments just to get things to where they should be. This creates new problems and makes an already bad situation worse. Worse yet, is the dreaded "Special Adjustment" that gets posted when you take a family member out of a family. This "Special Adjustment" is created based on what the ledgers say is owed on each individual family member. Whenever I am forced to go through this process, a series of adjustments show up that have no meaning because they are calculated on meaningless balance numbers in the ledger. So, now I have even more junk in a ledger that becomes increasingly worse over time. Giving us the ability to edit transactions in history would greatly enhance our ability to practice more efficiently, without needing to worry and spend time trying to figure out workarounds. Even the time I am taking to write this post is time I could be spending on patient care, marketing or something more beneficial to the management of my practice. I think it really comes down to figuring out a way to allow us access to the areas that would make a difference while still maintaining the integrity of the database. Things like payment allocations and paint type alterations shouldn't have to impact the database, so long as we aren't changing the amounts charged, nor the procedure codes posted. It really comes down to allowing the user access to the things that make a difference visually to the practitioner and staff. These are things such as paint types and correct ledger balances. These are things that go directly to how we interact with our management software. If we can't interact with it accurately, it loses its value. The value of mine has been (and continues to be) extremely devalued, so I ask you to please take this into consideration. Please work on a solution that delivers the value back to this product.

this is the most frustrating thing that I'm having to deal with!

go back to being able to archive patients when FAMILY balance was zero! some of our accounts are really old, like from the day when dentrix only allowed adjustments to be put on the head of household. having to adjust credits and balances on the individual family members when the family account is already zero is a pain in the ass.