Open Dental is a practice management software that’s packed full of features, and as a result, we have a team packed full of experts. Technicians come from backgrounds in dentistry, IT, customer service, and more. Some technicians know it all and do it all – others find their niche and specialize in a specific area. In this blog series, we’ll interview Open Dental Experts with various specialties.

This week, we are interviewing Mark, one of our Implementation Coordinators. Mark has deep expertise in the Clinics Feature, CEMT Tool, and Replication.

What is your role at Open Dental?

Hello, I am Mark and my main area of focus here at Open Dental is with the Implementations Department. We focus on providing support for customers that are Dental Service Organizations (DSO) or are part of a large company with multiple locations.  Most of us in Implementations also provide specialized support for HL7 and FHIR / API as well as specialization in Integrations.

What’s your favorite Open Dental feature?

Clinics. While the feature seems simple to just check a box and allow an option for multiple clinics, it opens up the flexibility for customers with any number of locations to use Open Dental with a single database. The ability to run reports for all or some clinics has been the most common and positive feedback I hear from customers with multiple locations.

The Clinics feature can feel daunting at first. Do you have any tips for Clinics Users?

When getting started with the Clinics feature, it’s all about the setup.  More specifically, when using Clinics, you have the ability to send e-claims in complex ways. We have several web manual pages dedicated to this, and what Clinic information is sent on claims.  Once you have the initial setup done, you will hardly realize the Clinics feature is enabled, especially for an office where all the employees, users, and providers are restricted to a specific Clinic. Furthermore, if you follow the suggested workflow and setup checklist that we provide, the Clinic will automatically be assigned to the necessary items (Operatories, Appointment, Procedures, Claims, etc).

What other tools are available for multi-location practices?

The Central Enterprise Management Tool, or CEMT

This is a super useful tool for multi-location practices that are using separate databases at each location and need a centrally located management tool to interact with all the databases. This tool can copy patient information from one database to another. You can also run the Production and Income report across all databases at once and see the breakdown per location. Lastly, you can use the tool to manage security groups and permissions to sync them to specific databases. This also includes syncing Global Lock Dates to various databases which can save time once a month has been closed out.
See more on our CEMT manual page.

Middle Tier and Replication

These are great options for multi-location practices that are great distances apart and rely on an internet connection.
If internet speeds between locations are less than stellar, these options allow for data to be efficiently and securely
sent back and forth allowing the user to see very little to no lag in the software. All the configuration is done on the back-end so the end-user won’t even realize these features are in use.
These options do tend to get more technical, but we are here to help. You can find more information in our manual on Middle Tier and Replication.

Anything else you’d like to share about Open Dental, whether it’s your time here as an employee or anything to share with offices?

Don’t hesitate to call Open Dental for support or online training.  We have a lot of pre-recorded webinars and we also provide training with Open Dental staff. I regularly do online training with large groups and the most beneficial part of this training is having time set aside for Q&A.