There are many different places for notes in Pract-Eze Dental. 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 premade 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 appointements 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 accidently
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. The only reason it has not been removed yet is that Comm Log entries cannot be shared for the entire family. This limitation will soon be removed.
Notes for a Specific Patient in the Appoinments
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. Blockouts and provider
Schedules can
also be used sometimes instead of notes.