Practice Admin

Has Dentally got some issue now with tasks not updating? I can see the task on my patient if I click on them but cannot see them in the Task list on the left at all. 

On EXACT, if you blocked out a clinician (eg annual leave), any appointments in their diary automatically turned red. This would also happen if you accidently booked a patient in, in the wrong place (eg where there was a block in place for lunch / training etc). This was SO clear and easy to see - and you knew exactly who you needed to call to change / ammend / cancel appointments. We would then take them out the dairy once we were confident that they had been spoken to (not just emailed and hoped for the best). Now - when you add a block - appointments do NOT change colour, so this is really challenging to visually see who needs to be contacted - which patients need to be cancelled. A universal colour would be so helpful - appointments change to a certain colour if they are double booked with a block. 

Is there a way to search the next appointment for back-to-back appointments for dentist and hygienist. I have asked the support chat and it seems to say you have to look through the diary manually which I find shocking for a dental practice managment software- I can’t believe it is not able to search for back to back/joint appointments for a dentist and hygiensit. If this feature does not exist please develop it- it is a nightmare for our reception team and something they were able to do with iSmile

We have moved from exact to dentally and we are finding it quite clunky. I wondered if anyone had found an easier way to view the appointment book, In exact you could open it and see gaps no problem. In dentally we are having to scroll through the days or use the search which isn't exactly ideal and its just all quite a faff.  Or an easier way to process refunds - Having to release deposits and put it on as a negative payment or invoice. It just very long winded. Thanks

I am finding dentally to be very clunky and missing a lot of the handy admin tools from exact. Im wondering if anyone has an easier way of navigating the following.Moving patients from one clinician to another when one leaves. We are an FD practice so once a year we have to move all of the patients booked with one clincian to the new one. In exact, I would run a sweep and it would move them all over for me. In dentally we are having to do each patient individually which is just such a waste of time.  Following from that, in exact when you closed a dentists book. The appointments all turned red so it was clear who needed to be moved. In dentally they dont seem to do this.  Booking appointments in clunky and its impossible to look ahead in the book as effectivley as it was in exact with the horizontal multi day view. There is the search but this isnt always effective as sometimes we need to see gaps that arent quite big enough with a view to rejiggin things to make it work.  Group messag

We regularly have an issue with receptionists deleting appointments instead of cancelling them. When an appointment is deleted, we lose the record of why it was removed, whether it was cancelled by the patient or by the practice, and any associated notes.Would it be possible to add a permission setting that allows administrators to prevent users from deleting appointments, while still allowing them to cancel appointments? This would help maintain a clear audit trail and improve record keeping.

Hi, Two questions as not sure if I’m missing something,Is it possible to be able to export a patients appointment history?Also is it possible to export a patients clinical notes that includes the chart itself? Many Thanks

It would be much easier to be able to link appointments to waitlist via the wait list itself.  We can make an appointment in the diary as normal  then go to the waiting list and have some option to link it to the appointment that already exists, this would be a much easier work flow. 

Following todays system problems, although we print day lists ahead of the day, they do not indicate if a patient is fee per item or in our case on Denplan and we had no idea who was to pay today or who had treatment covered by their plan. Ca this be something we can select to print on the lists?

There needs to be a simpler and quicker way to create clinic zones adhoc and not to be recurring.  Such as to right click in the diary where you want and just create a clinic rather than going through settings and having to leave the calendar. It will allow for much easier diary planning and management. 

Before the recent update, nurses could easily expand the clinical notes section to full screen, making it much easier and quicker to document patient clinical notesUnfortunately, following the latest update, this option no longer appears to be available. The inability to expand the clinical notes section is slowing down both dentists and nurses, making clinical documentation more time-consuming and less efficient.Having the ability to expand clinical notes to full screen was a very useful feature, and we would appreciate it if this functionality could be reinstated if possible 

we really need a way of having a fixed note option in the patients correspondence that we can record interactions with the patients. at the moment we are having to record it under the logging a call, but its not always a call. on reception we dont want to have to write things in the clinical chart as its not easy to view at a glance.

we constantly have issues where the patient is signing and they accidently touch the green ‘Done’ bar with their hand or finger before they have finished signing. especially with our elderly patients as they sometimes have shaky hands. is there anyway that the ‘done’ bar can be moved to either above the box or to the side?

would be helpful if the time limit on this could be removedhaving to run and review in 3 mth incrementswould also be useful to see those patients where overall account balance is zero so that we would know it is just a positive and negative needing matched off.

HiAs I’m sure many practices do we have different clinicians working on different days. Is there a way of only displaying the diary/ies for whoever is working that day, rather than having all 4 displayed but only having 2 working? The columns get very narrow and hard to read with 4 books open at once, but it’s a faff viewing and hiding individual books all the time. Thanks

Hi,A request I would like to make,An easier way to change staff profile images, I am aware these are currently auto generated by dentally with a geometric pattern. However as you’ll see from the image attached I have 4 clinicians out of 5 with fairly similar colours. 2 almost identical.I know it seems like such a minor point, but I feel like this would be a simple fix?I am aware the team can change this via a gravatar log in, however this has failed to work for any of us.We are able to change this image for a patient within their record. could it be made that we can do the same for Dentally Users?

As above - want to force staff to record source of patient

I do not like the recent change to the chart/treatment planning page on dentally.Previously when linking appointments, it was fast and easy, done from a drop down menu. but now when linking it is slowed down by a pop up window. The window also blurs the background page and it is painful for my eyes.Also, when an appointment is linked, it displays the old chain link icon. But when an appointment is not linked, that icon is changed to a calendar. Having the icon change is very confusing… Particularly because the position of the icon also changes. I do not feel like this was a necessary change and implementing cosmetic changes like this negatively impacts useability.

We are wanting to add a QR code that links back to a feedback questionnaire to some of our letter templates but Dentally does not support this.  Dentally support has suggested adding the QR code to already created letters in Word but this is not really an effective solution for us.  Could this be added as a development feature please?

Feature Request for ability to delete multiple blocks/ breaks in the diary.We have moved to Dentally from Exact. Ideally, diaries should be set up directly within Dentally. However, our diary information was imported. We had many blocks/ breaks where clinicians were working and then changed their specific days, maternity/paternity leave etc.We have over 20 clinicians and manually managing and configuring entries is extremely time-consuming and impractical.Current restrictions (Level 4) on administrative permissions add further complexity. Introducing a bulk block management option would significantly improve efficiency, reduce administrative workload and make diary management more practical.

FDS referrals are deleted after the minium 11 years, but indefinite retention of records is desirable for patients with ongoing care ...it would be useful to automatically import them into Dentally as correspondence so we can control storage of our own records.

Some suggestions for better PR forms:Populate a list of family member’s names for the “If you are signing for the patient give details below: Name (in CAPITALS)” field using registered family members Have a better list of common relationships for the “Relationship to patient” field eg mother, father, step mother, grandma, Sister, foster carer, carer etc Allow patients to select their exemption themselves directly on the PR form Drop the first screen confirming patient details ...just make the PR form interactive Require baby due date for baby in last 12 months exemption Force selection of  under 18 years of age for children (and prevent selection of any other exemption all of which are invalid for children) Require HC3 “amount” for HC3 certificate exemptions Allow choosing the date of acceptance for backdating FR forms (to allow correcting exemptions in the past)

I’d really like Dentally to review the functionality of the Short Notice List, particularly for practices that use zoning within their diaries.We zone our books to protect capacity for different types of patients and treatments. For example, we may have a private zone reserved in the diary, but if that zone has not been filled five days in advance, we would normally open that time up so it can be filled from the Short Notice List.This worked extremely well for us when we used SOE/Exact.With Dentally, however, this does not appear to be possible. My understanding from the conversations we have had with various trainers and members of the Dentally team is that the zones effectively sit within the underlying diary set-up. Therefore, even if we remove or delete the zone from the visible diary, Dentally still recognises that time as having an active zone attached to it and the Short Notice List will not send patients into those appointments.For us, this is not a minor inconvenience. It dire

Hello, I have just been in a meeting regarding FTA Fees and deposits. We are in 2 minds what to do….Charge a deposit to pts who pay for treatment - the only downside to this, if the pt has an outstaanding amount from a previous course of treatment, Dentally automatically allocates the payment to that treatment, which will cause problems further down the line.  Start taking a charge for missed appointments through charitng a “Missed Appt Fee” which will show on pt notes. The only slight drawback to that is that if a pt doesnt ever come back we wont get the money. Is there a way to automatically take a payment through something like GoCardless. Obvisouly none of the above can be used on Denplan Care pts as they pay monthly but for Essentials pt and PFPI then it will work. I just wondered what other practices do to reduce FTA’s Tom 

It would be really helpful if Dentally could automatically exclude, or give us the option to exclude, treatment that has already been completed and charged/paid for when a treatment plan is amended.For example, a patient may accept a treatment plan and attend their first appointment, where some of the treatment is completed and paid for. At their second appointment, the clinician may need to change or add to the remaining treatment plan.When the updated plan is then presented to the patient, previously completed and paid-for treatment can still appear within the plan. This can be confusing for patients, as it may look as though they are being quoted or charged again for treatment they have already had and paid for.Ideally, when creating or presenting an updated treatment plan, Dentally could offer an option such as “Exclude completed/charged treatment”, so the patient-facing plan clearly shows only the treatment that is still outstanding or newly added.This would make revised treatment