Altering Your Normal Office Schedule in Dentrix Enterprise – What You Need to Know

by | Apr 2, 2020 | Schedule Optimization

Tasks you should know how to do when you have to alter your practice schedule. 

There may be times when you need to alter your normal office schedule on short notice or close your office altogether for an emergency. There are things you should know how to do in Dentrix Enterprise to be prepared for this. Read through the list of tasks below to find out how they can help you, and click on the links to learn how to do it in Dentrix Enterprise. 

*This article will be updated regularly, so check back often for new ideas.* 

Moving Appointments Easily With the Pinboard

There are lots of reasons you may need to reschedule multiple appointments at once. Maybe a provider gets sick, and all their appointments for the day need to be moved. Or, you have an operatory chair that needs to be repaired, and appointments scheduled in that op need to be moved. You can also move an entire family’s appointments or all appointments for an entire day. For more information, click here.

​​​​​​Updating Clinic Hours

You can easily mark your practice as closed in the Appointment Book if you know your practice will be closed on a specific day. Or, after you have worked to clear appointments off a certain day, you can close the practice in Dentrix Enterprise so that no future additional appointments can be scheduled on that day.  For more information, click here.

Shutting Down an Operatory

At times you may need to close an operatory. It could be for repairs or for other reasons. First, move or reschedule the appointments from the operatory you want to close (see the section above on moving appointments using the Pinboard), and then close the operatory. For more information, click here.

Changing Provider Schedules

If you need to adjust the hours your individual providers are available to work, you can do so easily. Maybe you have a hygienist who only works half days or a specialist provider who is only at your office on Thursday. Modify each provider’s schedule to help maximize your scheduling efforts. For more information, click here.

Moving Appointments to Wait/Will Call

When patients give you notice that they won’t be able to make their appointment, the easiest thing to do is to reschedule them right then. But, sometimes they don’t know their availability. In cases where advance notice is given, you don’t want to simply break their appointment and have it count against them in the Family File. You can flag the appointment as Wait/Will call to move it to the Unscheduled List, where you can work to reschedule them for another time. For more information, click here.

Contacting Patients on the Appointment List

If you need to cancel the day’s appointments due to an illness or injury, you can use the Appointment List. The Appointment List is a useful tool that can help you contact all the patients scheduled to be seen by a particular provider. You can then record the patient contact in the Office Journal for future reference. For more information, click here.

Generating a List of Active Patients

There may be times when you need to close your practice or make changes to your schedule and need a way to let your patients know about those changes. For more information, click here.

Breaking an Appointment with a Reason

There will be times when you need to break an appointment. It’s important that you keep a record of when this happens and the reason why. For more information, click here.

Tags: