We love sharing Open Dental use tips with you! In this Tips & Tricks post, we will be discussing these topics:

• Choosing the right insurance plan type
• See the number of subscribers (or patients) on an insurance plan
• Displaying a retained root on the graphical tooth chart
• Working in multiple windows simultaneously

Choosing the right insurance plan type

Open Dental is designed to assist in creating accurate estimates, regardless of the type of insurance plan your patient has. To do this, it is vital that the correct plan type is set up for the patient.

Use our Basic Insurance Plans – Decision Making Guide to help you determine whether you should be using PPO Percentage, PPO Fixed Benefit, or Category Percentage for your plans.

If the patient has a Capitation plan, use our Complex Insurance Plans – Decision Making Guide for guidance on setup.

See our Insurance Plan Types page for a detailed look at each plan type.

See the number of subscribers (or patients) on an insurance plan

If you want to see how many subscribers you have on a specific insurance plan or get a count of subscribers, there are two ways:

The first option is to view the Insurance Plan. Go to Lists > Insurance Plans, then double-click on the plan. The subscribers will list on the left.

The second option is to run the Insurance Plans Report.

TECH TIP: If you want a total patient count for an insurance plan (not just subscribers), use Query #122 from our Query Examples page. This query shows the count of active patients in each insurance plan.
See our QuickTip video: Find and Run a Query in Open Dental.

Displaying a retained root on the graphical tooth chart

If your patient has a retained root, you may want the graphical tooth chart to display that.

To show a retained root, first, create a custom Procedure Code with a Paint Type of RetainedRoot.

Chart this procedure for the patient. Change the procedure status to Condition so that it does not display on the treatment plan. This procedure will only exist to show the graphics.

If extracting the root, chart the extraction (e.g. D7250). When the extraction is completed, the graphic will update and the root will no longer display.

Working in multiple windows simultaneously

Whether you want to see one patient’s treatment plan while handling another patient’s scheduling or have chart notes open in one window while charting treatment in another, multi-tasking is no problem with Open Dental!

The answer is that you can have two (or many more) instances of Open Dental open at the same time! “Instances” is just a fancy way of saying “many copies” – so you open Open Dental once, then open it again, and again, and… you get the idea! Each instance can be looking at different areas of Open Dental. Plus you can re-size each window so you can have them all laid out on your monitor(s). Data synchs back to the server quickly so you’ll see changes in one window reflected in your other instance in darn near-real-time (in some cases, you may just need to click to refresh a Module or close/reopen a window).

Our support team is happy to help you maximize the tools in Open Dental to help you work smarter, not harder. If you have a quick question and don’t need us to connect, try online chat! For more in-depth help or to troubleshoot an issue, we’re just a phone call away.