Open Dental has many tools your practice can use to make sure hygiene appointments go off without a hitch. Read on to learn more!

Set up Providers

The very first step to make sure things go smoothly when scheduling appointments is to set up providers – and ensure they’re set up correctly. For hygiene specifically, make sure your hygienists are marked as a “Secondary Provider”. This helps prevent the hygienist from being assigned as the provider on procedures they shouldn’t be, like exams.

Set up Hygiene Operatories

Next up, make sure your hygiene operatories are set up correctly. A dentist should be assigned as Provider while the hygienist is assigned as the Hygienist – even in a Hygiene Only operatory. Mark the operatory as “Is Hygiene” to have the hygienist considered as the main provider for any appointments.

Mark Procedures as Hygiene Only

If you want production to go to the hygienist for certain procedures, mark the procedure as “Is Hygiene procedure”. When you’re scheduling a hygiene appointment, this ensures only these procedures are assigned to the hygienist.

Set up Recall Types

If you want to make sure the correct procedures are being scheduled for your recall appointments, make sure to set up your Recall Types. Trigger procedures make sure that patients are assigned a recall type and “Procedure on Appointment” make sure that the correct procedures are attached to recall appointments.

Use Make Recall Button

When scheduling recall appointments, use the Make Recall button. This features automates the process of creating the appointment by adding procedures to the appointment and moving the schedule past the patient’s recall date. Procedures are added based on the recall types a patient is due for and the procedures connected to those recall types.

Now that you have recalls set up, you are ready to tackle the Recall List and get those patients scheduled for their next hygiene appointment with ease!

Information in this post reflects features available in Open Dental Version 24.4. For the most up-to-date information, please visit our manual.