As the end of the year approaches, that means the expiration of remaining benefits for many of your patients. We recently published a post about the process of end-of-year letters. In this post, we’ll be diving into more detail on the Treatment Finder Report itself and the filters available to narrow down the list to get your patients the care they need, while filling holes in your schedule.

Filtering the Report

The first way to utilize the report to your advantage is to understand all of the report filters in the View section.

If it’s close to the end of the year, you are going to want to reach out to patients whose benefits reset at the Calendar year, so make sure the Ins Month Start is set to Calendar year (this is the default). Filter for specific codes, providers, and more. Use these filters to see the list that works best for your patients and your practice:

• TP Date From/To: Enter dates to filter out patients who have not had procedures treatment planned within the set date range. For example, set the date range to the last year to only get results for patients who had the procedures treatment planned within the year and exclude any patients with treatment planned procedures that are older.
• Provider: Filter the list by patient’s primary provider if you are trying to fill gaps in only a certain provider’s schedule or if Use Treating Provider is checked filters by provider assigned to the treatment planned procedure.
• Code Range: Enter a procedure code range to only include patients with treatment planned procedures in this range of codes. This is helpful if you are trying to only schedule certain procedures like Ortho, Endo, etc.
• Include patients with upcoming appointments: Unchecked by default. Check this box to include patients with upcoming appointments in the list, otherwise, only patients with no upcoming scheduled appointments are shown.
• For information on the other filters, see our Manual.

Once you’ve set all your filters, click Refresh List to update the results in the Treatment Finder grid.

Using the Treatment Finder Grid

Once you’ve set all your filters, click Refresh List to update the results in the Treatment Finder grid. Any patients matching the set filters will be listed in the grid along with their contact and insurance information.

The listed contact information is based on a patient’s Prefer Recall Method set in Edit Patient Information. If no method is set, this will default to Home Phone, so it’s helpful to set each patient’s best contact method when they are in the office. If you want to print the list, the contact information is readily available. Just click Print List to print all the results in the grid.

Individual procedures are not listed in the grid, but users can select a patient and the chart will immediately open for the selected patient, so you can quickly see details of the patient’s treatment planned procedures. You can also right-click and select Go to Family (or click the button at the bottom of the screen) to see additional patient details and quickly get to the insurance plan. Click the Go to Account button (or right-click) to quickly open the selected patient’s account and view any financial information (e.g., past due balance, financial notes, etc.).

You can also easily create labels or letters to mail patients. Select the patient(s) you would like to mail (ctrl+click to select multiple) and, simply click Letters Preview to generate a letter to the patient(s). Next, select the Sheet you would like to use for the letter and click OK.

The letter(s) will be generated in a PDF which can be printed or saved from your PDF preview program. Once letters have been generated, you can also generate labels to easily mail them. If you have a dedicated single-label printer (e.g., thermal printer), select patients and click Single Label. Labels will immediately be sent to your selected Label Printed. If you’re using a standard printer with label paper, click Label Preview. Labels will be generated in a print preview. You can print the labels from this window. Details and options for end-of-year letters can be found in this post.

Regardless of how you contact patients, once their treatment is scheduled, they will automatically be removed from the Treatment Finder Report. This report is one of the best tools to reach out to patients and ensure they don’t lose any insurance benefits before the end of the year, so now is the time to start reaching out! And if you need any help with this or any other feature in Open Dental, we’re here for you.