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There are many different places for notes in DentOffice. This page attempts to describe which notes should be used for which purposes and protocols your office should use in organizing your notes.
Procedure Notes
One of the first things an office going paperless wants to know is how to enter the daily treatment notes without getting overwhelmed. Computers actually make this job faster and more accurate than paper charts. For each
Procedure Code, you set up a default note. When marking that procedure complete, the note gets copied to the
Procedure. Only very minor changes usually need to be made. You can lock your note once entered for legal purposes.
Quick Paste Notes
Similar to procedure notes, this lets you keep pre-made templates so you're not repeatedly entering the same information. But this is extensive and covers many different kinds of notes, not just procedure notes. Also lets you insert dates. See
Quick Paste Notes.
Comm Log
The Communications Log is at the bottom of the Account module. This is where all non-clinical patient communications should be kept. This includes
E-mail, Letters, phone calls, insurance calls, etc. If a phone call is clinical, than for now it should be entered as some sort of procedure note. You can set up a procedure called clinical note or phone call and use that. The reason Comm Log notes should not be clinical is that you can not yet view them in the Chart module.
Medical/Service Notes
At the bottom of the Chart module are three note boxes: Med Urgent, Medical Summary, and Service Notes. The
Medical/Service Notes page describes their purpose in more detail. The Med Urgent Note can be set to show on
appointments using Views.
Family Financial Notes
There is a box for Urgent Financial Note at the top of the
Account module. It shows in red and is meant for very important financial notes. There is only one note for the entire family and any changes also apply to all family members. It also shows in red in a variety of other places throughout the program. If you have monitors that are visible to the patients and you don't want them to
accidentally see your note, type 'see below' on the first line. Then hit the enter key a few times before typing your note. This will force users to scroll down to see the note.
The Family Financial Notes, which shows lower down on the Account module, is an older version of the Comm Log and will be eliminated within a few versions. There are two reasons it has not been removed yet. First of all, the Comm Log only displays the first line of longer notes, and also, Comm Log entries can not be shared for the entire family. So, once the Comm Log can overcome those limitations, any of your Family Financial Notes will be moved over to the Comm Log.
Notes for a Specific Patient in the Appointments module
These are notes that are not part of an appointment or a procedure, but need
to be put in the Appointments module for some
reason. An example would be that you promise a certain patient to call them
at a specific time. The easiest way to track such a note is to set up an alternate
provider called Note or NOTE, and set the provider's
color to something that would make sense in your office, perhaps white. Then,
it is a simple matter to schedule an 'appointment'
for a patient, put a note in the appointment, and set the provider to Note.
This will show in the Appointments module, but it will be very clear that the
patient does not have an actual appointment. Once the note has been handled,
the appointment can be marked complete
or deleted. This procedure can be used for recurring credit card payments,
followup phone calls, and patients who request to be called if a patient cancels.
In the last case, you could attach a procedure to the note appointment, but
remember that a procedure can only be attached to one appointment at a time,
not including the Planned appointment.
General Notes in the Appointments module
General notes can be made the same way as described above, but using make-believe
patients. Remembering that the last name will come before the first name when
an appointment is displayed, you can set up patients such as 'Miscellaneous,
Notes' or any other creative name combination. Make an appointment for Mr. Miscellaneous
using the Note provider and making a note in the appointment. This can be used
to show changes in the office schedule, staff out, holidays, meetings, notes to staff, etc. It gives you a lot of flexibility on how you display the note on the schedule.