You’ve decided to use the Clinics feature in Open Dental – congratulations! (If you’re not sure if using Clinics is right for you, check out our post: Introduction to the Clinics Feature.) Once you complete the setup outlined in this post, you’ll be ready to take care of your patients no matter where they visit and measure both practice and organizational metrics to continue to grow your business.
Enabling and Creating Clinics
Before enabling Clinics, make sure this is the feature for you. Once Clinics are enabled, changes are made to your database that cannot be completely undone. If you’re unsure if using Clinics is right for you, check out our Clinics manual page and our post on Multi-Location Setup for other options. If you still have questions, contact us to talk with our support team.
If you’re ready to enable Clinics, go to Setup, Advanced Setup , Show Features. Then check Clinics (multiple office locations) and click Save.
You’ll be prompted to enter a password when enabling (or disabling) the Clinics feature. This is found on our website. Restart Open Dental to finish enabling Clinics.
Next, create your clinics.
Go to Lists, Clinics. Click Add. Create each Clinic and enter details.
Fill in each field. Many of these details will be used (instead of Practice Setup) when sending claims, billing patients, using eServices, and more. See the User Manual for a description of each field.
Now that you have added your Clinics, you will get a Clinics Dropdown menu at the top of Open Dental.
When moving between Clinics, use this dropdown to select the Clinic you want to work in. The first Clinic that shows on the list is Headquarters. By default, everything is assigned to “Unassigned” (or None), which is Headquarters.
Tech Tip: To determine which Clinic is automatically selected upon login, set Track Last Clinic By in Preferences.
Your options are:
- None: The user’s default clinic (set in Security) is selected.
- Workstation: Select the clinic last selected on the workstation, if the user has access to it. If not, select the user’s default clinic.
- User: Select the clinic that was active the last time the user logged off.
Restricting Users
You may want to restrict employees to their specific clinic, and you may want to allow certain employees to access all clinics. This can be set by user. Users can then only access the clinic(s) they are restricted to.
Go to Setup, Security, then double-click a user to open User Edit, and select the Clinics tab. Selek.ct a default Clinic for the user, then highlight the Clinics the user should have access to in the User Restricted Clinics area.
TECH TIP: If using Alerts, subscriptions can also be set for specific Clinics in the Alert Subs tab.
The Appointments Module
Each Clinic can have its own Operatory Setup, Schedules, and Appointment Views.
First, create Operatories for each Clinic.
Go to Setup, Appointments, Operatories, and click Add to create a new operatory.
Enter the operatory name, abbreviation, clinic, provider, and any other necessary info. Do this for each operatory.
TECH TIP: You may also want to assign any operatories you had prior to enabling Clinics to a specific Clinic. By default, these are unassigned.
Next, create your Schedules.
Go to Setup, Schedules. When creating a schedule for a day, make sure the applicable Clinic is selected.
The operatories available will be the operatories we assigned to the selected Clinic.
For more about creating schedules, see Schedule Setup in our manual.
Lastly, create your Appointment Views.
Go to Setup, Appointments, Appointment Views.
When creating a view, make sure the correct Clinic is selected. This will affect which operatories you can select from. By default, the Clinic selected in the Appointment Views window (before you clicked Add) is selected.
eServices
If using eServices, be sure to contact Open Dental Support. Our team will assist with setting up eServices to use the correct Clinic settings.
Some Other Notable Settings
Here are some other settings that help keep your clinics running smoothly.
- Fee Schedules: Overrides can be used to enter Clinic-Specific Fees. can have Clinic overrides.
- Provider Setup: Providers can be restricted to specific Clinics. If you have locations in multiple states,, be sure to set the Additional Provider Properties for DEA #, State License #, and more.
- Billing Options: If sending patient bills from Open Dental, each Clinic can have its own default settings.
- Clearinghouse Setup: If your other locations have their own account with the clearinghouse, be sure to set Clinic-specific settings.
Now that you’ve set up your system, you’re ready to use Clinics! If you run into any issues, just reach out – we’re here for you.
Information in this post reflects features available in Open Dental Version 24.1. For the most up-to-date information, please visit our manual.