Questions & Feature Requests

Is there a tab within dentally where you can document the hygiene prescription from a dentist that enables you at a glance to see when the prescription expires? 

Hey Dentally Team,I have encountered a possible bug during my workflow. Patient has booked in online for a recall, paid a deposit. However, when I charged the patient for the account we were unable to do electronic HICAPS claim. I have checked the date of charge and it is correct. There is no bug for the deposit as it is unallocated and it did jump into the invoice.Or if I did something wrong please let me know. Joe

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 

Is there any way to add a digital signature to a letter composed for a patient?

Hi all,I wondered what everyone's process for recording Lab Work is and if anyone has a good way of using the new Lab Work Log. I don’t see it being very helpful with just the “Sent, Received, Overdue” feature as it doesn’t give any details.Ideally we would have things like which Lab was used, date due back and description of the lab work. We currently use a custom waiting list for this but want it all in one place.Any suggestions from users or updates from Dentally regarding improvements on this feature would be great.Thanks!

Good morning All 🌞I would like to know how practices keep track of referrals especially urgent referrals within Dentally. We currently use a custom Wait List but it is a workaround and not efficient.  We would also like to use automated SMS to contact patients 2 or 4 weeks after the referral to confirm that they have been contacted by the specialist. 

A feature to incorporate would be to be able to send a patient a link to fill out their personal details and information prior to the appt. At the moment they can only fill out medical history, but I think it would be very efficient for workflow if reception when booking an appointment gather the name and phone number to sms or email a link for patients to fill out the remainder of their information. Which can then be reviewed by staff and confirmed

Addition of other items for the root status should be added, such as Apical abscess/infection (PA lesion), and root fracture (VRF). Variations on location of cracks that are more distinct and unique, including options for location i.e. buccal crack lingual crack mesial or distal. Following that thought process having UI that indicates fractures of restorations or parts of teeth. A specific icon/UI change for unsatisfactory restorations or restorations with secondary caries. Even variations to RCT such as overfill or underfill or unsatisfactory. Preferably all three.  I believe these items will help ensure a comprehensive picture of a patients current dental status. 

Hi Dentally team and community,Following a recent support exchange, I’d like to propose a feature enhancement that could significantly improve data quality and audit processes for users integrating Dentally data into external systems like data warehouses.Context:Currently, TPIs (Treatment Plan Items) assigned via the “Base Chart” tab are not linked to a treatment plan and therefore have a NULL TP ID in both the API and exported data. While this is expected behaviour—as base charting is intended for documenting baseline dental status—it creates a challenge for downstream systems. Specifically, it becomes difficult to distinguish between:TPIs genuinely missing a TP ID due to ingestion or data quality issues, and TPIs that are correctly linked because they were assigned to a base chart.Feature Request:Could Dentally consider adding an explicit flag or indicator in the API response to identify TPIs that were created via the base chart? This would allow users to:Reliably filter and classify

Hi would anyone know how to help me with a query?So we had a patient who was treated and paid in full, assigned to correct practitioner and site, the payment is showing up in the takings report but not in the practitioner’s report. I have used all filters correctly to no avail. I would appreciate anyone’s help with this!

Hi is there a plan to have a consent tab at all? To make it easier for patients to sign 

I’m advised that Dentally does not currently support Chinese characters in Letters and Estimates.I can paste in my Chinese characters. I can hit save. But if I press Preview, it becomes a mess.Has anybody found a work-around for this? I’d love to have our Chinese templates loaded and able to be used :)  

I am exploring this as its much easier just to take the payment automatically than trying to do it manually or retrospectively. I know Stripe has this feature but keen to have a system that integrates with the appointment and makes sure there is a card added with details of cancellation policy when they confirm their appointments.Thanks

Hi Everyone, I’m looking for feedback from anyone using Chairsyde in their practice.specifically:Are your clinicians actively using it during appointments or when treatment planning, and if so how are they finding it? Do patients seem to engage with or benefit from it? Do you audit its usage to track how often it’s being used and its impact?I’d be grateful to hear about your experiences, both the positives and any challenges so I can assess its effectiveness and how best to make use of it in our practices or decide whether it is an unnecessary business expense in my practices!

I’d be interested to know some examples of non-standard automations other practices have setup and the rule logic they applied in the settings to get it to work.An example of a few that I have setup include:Missed appointment warning - Automation set to send an email to a patient whose state is DID NOT ATTEND and email them 2 hours afer their missed appointment warning them that essentially 3 strikes and they are off our NHS list if they miss or late cancel (within 48-working hours) 1) their first appointment with us, 2) 2-3 appointments within the last 5 years or 3) a family appointment consisting of 3 or more family members (nearly 45 min of clinic time!)iMOS referral appointments - oral surgery referrals to us where we send them pre-operative instructions for the extractions.  We send this T- 48 hours and again T-12 hours as there are various things the patient needs to do e.g. not drink alcohol, eat several hours before, where to find us etcWould like to know more interesting autom

Hi. What are you using for dentist wages calculations? Is it the practitioner activity report or the payment allocations? We are struggling with errors on the allocation of some treatments and been using practitioner activity. is there a better way to do this?Thanks

With the launch of our new appointment search function, I’m keen to understand how sites are managing diary zones to make sure they're hitting financial goals while seeing patients promptly as well as keeping practitioners happy.I usually stand by the blend of the 3 P’s - Patient, Practitioner & Practice, by taking each into consideration you can achieve the perfect day across your practice.To break down the diary zones into its basic format I normally suggest starting with the below zone groups:- Emergency- Recalls- New Patient consultations- TreatmentI’m keen to understand what other sites are doing to Zone out the diary or what's stopping you from zoning yours out.@Lesley Morgan-Barlow & @Esther Egan I know you both have a great set-ups for making sure each day hits your targeted day rate to ensure success but what does everyone else look at when organising this space? 

HelloJust wondering if is there currently a way to view patient images (e.g. XRays on dentally) and type clinical notes at the same time in Dentally?At the moment, I find myself switching back and forth between the notes section and the image viewer on dentally to cross-reference findings and confirm what I’m writing. It is a bit cumbersome, especially during XRay/OPT interpretation or when reviewing multiple images.Would it be possible to introduce a floating or resizable image window that stays visible while typing notes? I think this would be a really helpful feature for many of us in practice. Keen to hear if others have found a workaround or if this is something already on the roadmap.Thanks.

We were hoping to be able to automate aftercare instructions, eventually for all treatment items, but initially to start with extractions. So when a patient has an extraction done, they would immediately have after care instructions emailed to them. We trialled this, however, it was only possible to send the automated email, to be initiated by the appointment reason. This caused several issues, such as patient booked in for urgent, who had an extraction, wouldnt get the aftercare instructions. Or, patient booked for extraction, but then changed their mind on the day, would then get aftercare instructions even though the treatment hasn’t gone ahead. I have been told that it is not possible to have automations run of the actual treatment item. Has anyone managed to automate aftercare instructions / information successfully? Or, has anyone used something like Zapier to automate emails from their own practice emails rather than relying on dentallys email system?

We use the log a call drop down in the correspondence tab for about half of phone conversations that we have with patients. For example if a patient is phoning up because they are in pain or have lost a filling we have a list of questions that we ask to be able to triage them. It would be really useful to be able to pull across a template for this type of conversation to save us typing it up every time.

Has anyone else had an issue with the Bot closing a conversation with one of the help desk team without the person actually answering the question or is it just me?

Hi team,I was really glad to see the Lab work icons introduced - it really helps our team track at a glance where our jobs are at, and be on the front foot to manage this in advance of clients coming in.However, we offer Invisalign and many patients have short 15minute appointments booked in to change over their aligners.The problem here is, Lab work icons only show on appointments say 30min long - the icon is showing underneath the pending/confirmed/seated/complete icon.So therefore, we cannot glance at our diary and check lab jobs ie Invisalign retainers for many of our patients with shorter appointments.Can we have a fix for this?

Hello all! We have changed our plate scanner / processor from Apixia to Durr Vista Scan Mini The processed images are now pixilated around dense areas i.e amalg fillings, we have been advised to increase dosage which has helped but not resolved.  It seems bonkers that we need to radiate patients more now we have upgraded the unit. Have any other practices had similar issues?Many thanksAnnabel 

We often have patients booking in for a series of appointments such a dentures which are 5-6 appointments in our diary and they ask for a list of appointments. We then have to type them all separately. A data tag for all future appointments would save so much time. 

A patients invoice is showing up on takings report but not under the individual practitioners report. Any ideas on how to rectify this?