Open Dental Forum

Is there a way to defeat the child prophy special type age control?

Here's the situation. We have selected 12 as the age for the system to switch from child prophy to adult prophy.
There are a handful of 10 and 11 year olds, particularly with orthodontic appliances, who need more time than other kids when we clean their teeth. Right now, we have to remember who they are so that when we schedule recall we can add more time to their appointments.
We are starting to use WebScheduler. That allows parents to make appointments and we don't get a chance to override the time settings. Suddenly the kids who really need an hour are booked into a 30 minute slot based on their age.

Is there a way to personalize the recall system further and avoid this problem?

You could create a custom recall type that has the procedures of the child prophy type, the trigger procedures of the regular prophy type, and a time pattern of one hour. You would then need to assign this recall type to each of these child patients that need additional appointment time and disable the regular prophy recall type for each of them. Finally, on the Setup Recall window, you would add the new custom recall type to the list of "Types to show in recall list". One thing to keep in mind is that this custom recall type would not function like the Child Prophy special recall type, so you would have to manually remove this custom recall type and reactivate the regular prophy recall type for these patients when they turn 12 years old.

I should also mention that we have a feature request, #3775, that is currently being programmed. The feature request's details mention allowing users to set a preference to use one hour instead of the recall's default duration.