Open Dental Forum

I submitted a feature request for having "Waits" showing up in the Graphical Tooth Chart as a different color other than the treatment planned color. Thank you Open Dental for having feature requests!!

How long is does it take to get an approval or a denial?

dscohio14 wrote:How long is does it take to get an approval or a denial?

Per http://opendental.com/manual/featurerequests.html:
10/29/2013 - Feature Request Status
We encourage our customers to continue to submit feature requests, and we look forward to continuing to integrate many of the great suggestions into Open Dental. However, due to the Affordable Care Act and its impact on our customers, our #1 priority at the moment is programming our software to comply with federal regulations and standards. We have a deadline for this, and with the exception of critical bugs, our engineers will focus solely on this project until it is done. The only feature requests we will work on for the rest of 2013 are those related to EHR. Many of these features will also be useful to non-EHR customers, so new features will be added. High priority, new, non-EHR features may also be added, such as program links. Once EHR programming is complete, we will focus again on open feature requests, and this will most likely begin in 2014. We have hired additional engineers so we can complete requests faster than in the past.

Depending on the complexity it could take several days for feature requests to get approved. 90% of the time a feature request is approved within a day. A lot of feature requests that come in are already features within the software and we just have to send it back letting them know where it is in the program or that what they want is already a feature request and to vote on it instead of creating a duplicate.

When you say "Waits", is this the same as a "Watch", such as a deep pit or staining? If it is the same, I defined Conditions to be Orange (TP is red, completed Blue, Other Provider black). I set up a Proc Button Category for "Observe/Conditions" in the Definitions. I set up all the reasons we are watching (Abfraction, Stain, Mobility Class 1, Mobility Class 2, etc....) as Procudere Codes with the numbering C0001, C0002, C0003, etc...

When doing graphical charting, we select Condition for Entry Status, the surfaces (if applicable), Observe/Conditions for Procedure Button Category, and then the reason we are watching. This puts an orange W above/below the tooth and a line in the charting in orange that says what we are watching. For example it will show Tooth 7, Facial surface, Craze Line (this description in the place of where you would see ADA description like "Amalgam-2 surface, primary or permenant".

If you want to watch/wait on a specific procedure like D2751 PFM Crown (maybe you suspect cracked tooth syndrome but want to give it another month to be sure it is not sinus related), then you could just select Condition in Entry Status, put your preferred Diagnosis code, and then select PFM Crown from your procedure buttons. It will show that procedure but the line will be orange instead of red (or whatever color you use for TP on the tooth chart).

If you mean something different than Watch, sorry I misunderstood!

Katherine