Getting Patients Back on Schedule with Continuing Care

As a new school year begins, families get back on their normal, structured schedules. That means it’s time for you to get them back on their continuing care schedules as well.

By looking at the Continuing Care block in the Dentrix Family File, you can tell where patients stand with their continuing care. If the block is empty, the patient is not set up on continuing care. If the date in the block is red, the patient is overdue for their continuing care.

If patients aren’t set up on a continuing care schedule, you can contact them and set them up on the correct schedule. If patients are simply overdue for their appointments, you can contact them and encourage them to get back on schedule.

When patients call or come in to your office, check the Family File to see where they stand and encourage them to get back on schedule. When your office is slow or if you need to fill holes in your schedule, use the Continuing Care module to find and contact the patients who are overdue for continuing care.

Setting patients up on continuing care:

1. In the Family File, select a patient.
2. Double-click the Continuing Care block.
3. In the Patient Continuing Care dialog, select the desired continuing care type and click Set.

4. Edit the due date, interval and provider, if necessary.
5. Click OK.

Generating continuing care lists from the Continuing Care module:

1. In the Appointment Book, open the File menu.
2. Select Continuing Care. The Continuing Care module opens and shows patients who are outstanding for continuing care.

See the previous newsletter article called Finding Patients Overdue for Continuing Care to learn more about setting up and using the Continuing Care module.

For more information about setting up continuing care in Dentrix and setting up views in the Continuing Care module, view the Continuing Care tutorial and Continuing Care Management webinar in the Dentrix Resource Center.

Author: Erin Brisk
Published: 08/17/2010