Hi Dentally team/community,
I’d like to suggest a feature to link a treatment code to a default Appointment Reason.
Implementation
Ideally, each treatment code could have an optional Default Appointment Reason setting. When an appointment is created from that treatment, the reason would be pre-populated but could still be changed when appropriate.
For example
- Crown preparation → “Prosthodontics” appointment reason
- Extraction → “Surgical Treatment” appointment reason
- Root canal treatment → “Endodontics” appointment reason
- Scale and polish / periodontal treatment → “Hygiene” appointment reason
- Fixed appliance bonding → “Orthodontics” appointment reason
The idea would be that, when an appointment is created from a planned treatment, Dentally automatically selects or suggests the most appropriate Appointment Reason.
Handling appointments with multiple treatments
One consideration would be appointments containing several planned treatments. I think this could remain simple:
- If all treatments in the appointment are linked to the same default Appointment Reason, Dentally could apply that reason automatically.
- If the treatments are linked to different Appointment Reasons, Dentally could prompt the user to select which should be the primary reason for that appointment, with the relevant linked reasons presented as options.
- The selected reason should always remain manually editable.
- Alternatively if this is too challenging to implement with multiple appointment reasons Dentally could
- Default to taking the appointment reason of the first treatment in the appointment list of treatments
- Leave appointment reason unpopulated and require staff to manually input (as currently occurs).
Benefits of Implementation
This would be particularly useful for practices that use appointment-reason colours to organise the diary. The diary could then give reception and clinical staff an immediate visual indication of the type of procedure being carried out and, where relevant, the equipment, instruments, materials or room preparation required.
At present, the correct Appointment Reason needs to be selected separately, creating an additional step and the possibility of the treatment and appointment reason not matching.
This could help with more consistent booking, easier use of appointment zones, clearer diary organisation, preparation of the appropriate instruments/materials, and reducing the amount of interpretation required by reception staff.
Is there currently a way to achieve something similar in Dentally? If not, would linking treatment codes to default appointment reasons be something that could be considered as a future feature?