Open Dental Forum

Do you have to chart a treatment option for every condition right away?

For example, our new patient exam typically involves me surveying the patient's mouth and calling out to my assistant "Caries on #4-MO, #9-DL, #30-MO". I like to perform this step first before going back and deciding how I will restore these teeth. Is it possible to simply chart caries, defective restorations, etc then go back at a later time and create the treatment plan? Working with the trail version makes me think that a condition has to be linked to a treatment option right then.

You can create conditions, and later change them to tx plans or leave them as conditions.
I use conditions to chart things I like to keep an eye on. For example, #30 has a old DO amalgam whose margins are beginning to open up or chip away. I'm not ready to replace it, but I want to keep an eye on it and remind the pt that it will need to be done in the near future.
When I'm ready to do it I change it from condition to tx plan.
I created dummy codes for 'mouth note', 'tooth note' and 'surface note' and use them with conditions to chart findings that don't necessarily need treating, e.g. a diastema, ankyloglossia, chipped or worn sufaces, etc.

Your charting of conditions will be replaced by diagnosis codes, your thinking is correct to chart your diagnostic findings first and then determine the treatment plan, most people treatment plan "backwards": this is what I will do and here is the reason why, big difference in contrast to medical treatment planning, our codes are purely procedure driven, but diagnostic codes are coming.... ADA form 2012 has the fields on them for diagnosis.