Open Dental Forum

Known Bug: "Primary provider for new patients not set (not yet verified)."

yes, this does this in our office too.

This ties in with a request I have had for a long time since it needs to be fixed. Can we make it set the primary provider to whoever is the the attached primary provider on the new patient appointment? That way it should always be accurate. I think it should do this dynamically, (i.e. when a NEW PT appt is scheduled & MOVED it should change the primary provider to match) Just like it changes the provider for the appt when you drag and drop on the schedule. That way when a new patient is transfered between doctors the day of the appt (like we do frequently) it changes to the correct primary provider to reflect that status even if different from when originally scheduled.

Thoughts?

I agree, that sounds like a great idea. With new patients and even recall patients we don't know who is going to do the exam. I think it would make sense to have the primary provider automatically updated to the DDS on the appointment where an exam code is set complete - or maybe prompt the user if they want it updated or not. I've tried to train staff to update that field each time an exam is done, but they often forget.
I'd like to take it one step further and have the fees based on the provider on the appointment, not the primary provider. With multiple clinics, if you don't set a primary provider it defaults to the practice provider, which may be the wrong fee schedule for that clinic. If you forget to change it before setting the appointment complete the fees are wrong - even if you've chosen the correct provider on the appointment. Having the fees come from the primary provider instead of the appointment also prevents us from having a lower student fee schedule when hygiene students see a patient.
These fields have caused more problems for us than anything else - I wish the primary and secondary provider in the patient record were more of an informational field for scheduling purposes rather than driving fees charged, accounts receivable, etc.

Jordan, does this make sense and what do you think?

Yes, these are two separate requests. Request #1147 is to use fees from provider on appt. It has no votes. Nobody has yet submitted a request to prompt to change primary provider when an exam code is set complete.

ok, yeah I can't see the request system, so I never know what is on there or not....can we get View Only mode? )) please....

That would be a request.

Just kidding.

ha....nice one...how did I know you might say something like that?

to make it easy for now w/ no programming...a screen shot of the top 50 or something once a month or something would be nice

Along the same lines, our practice consists of four partners, and every time we have a new patient call in, the patient is assigned to the practice's default provider. Is there any possible way for the program to request who will be patient's primary provider instead of simply assigning to the default provider? This has caused problems in the past for us, as the procedures would be assigned to the right doctor, but the payment would always go to the default provider. In our very busy practice, it is not so easy to spot these discrepancies when viewing the daily reports. I can guarantee you that we have assigned payment to the wrong doctor multiple times because of this default provision.

Thanks a mil