Ever gotten a warning, message, or popup in Open Dental and weren’t quite sure what it meant? Well, in our multi-part series “Understanding Open Dental“, we’re going to review some of those messages so you know what they mean and how to handle them in the future.

In the first part of the series, we reviewed Security Warnings. In this post, we’ll go over the various prompts and warnings you might see when scheduling or editing appointments.

Change Provider?

If the Operatory to which you are moving the appointment has a different provider than the appointment you’re moving, the prompt, clicking Yes will update the appointment to the Operatory’s scheduled provider. Clicking No will retain the original provider on the appointment.

When moving an appointment on the schedule, you may receive the Change Provider? prompt.

Change Length for New Provider?

When updating the provider on an appointment, you may also get the Change length for new provider? prompt.

You’ll only see this prompt if the appointment isn’t using the default time pattern (i.e., if it’s been made longer or shorter). Clicking Yes will update the appointment to use the default time pattern. Clicking No will retain the appointment’s current time pattern.

Frequency Limitation Warning

If your patient has insurance or a Discount Plan with Frequency Limitations, you may receive a warning when trying to schedule an appointment for certain procedures if the patient has already met their frequency limitation for the benefit year.

You can click Yes to proceed with scheduling the procedure (i.e., if a patient is going to pay for it out of pocket) or click No to go back to the Edit Appointment window and detach the procedure if you no longer wish to schedule the procedure.

Ask the Patient to Arrive Early

If you have a patient who’s got a tendency to run late, you can set an Ask to Arrive Early value in their patient information, so anytime you schedule (or reschedule) an appointment, you’ll get a reminder to ask the patient to arrive early for their appointment.

The Ask to Arrive Early value will automatically fill in the Time Ask to Arrive field in the appointment, which is what triggers the message. The field can also be filled in manually and will affect Automated Messaging users if your message templates use the  [ApptTimeAskedArrive] tag.

Appointment Scheduling Restricted

If a patient account has been marked Appointment scheduling is restricted, you’ll see this message when trying to create an appointment for the patient. The account is marked Edit Patient Information. This is commonly done for things like past due balances and can be done manually or through Automation.

If appointment scheduling should not be restricted for the patient, simply uncheck the box in Edit Patient Information. Once unchecked, you will be able to schedule appointments for the patient once more.

No Recall Due

When using the Make Recall button from the Appointments Module, if you get a message telling you your patient isn’t due for a “special type recall”. This normally means they’re not due for a Prophy or Perio recall. This is generally because the patient’s recall has been disabled. Recall can be disabled for any number of reasons: inactive patient, a past due balance, or it’s temporarily disabled until a specified date. In the Family Module Recall Grid, you can see if a patient’s recall has been disabled. From there, you can also re-enable the recall manually (in some circumstances, Recall is reenabled automatically.

Procedure Attached to Another Appointment

When you’re attaching procedures to an appointment, you may get a warning letting you know that one or more of the selected procedures are already attached to another appointment. This prevents the same procedures from being scheduled twice.

If you click OK, the procedure(s) will be detached from the appointment they were originally attached to and instead attached to the appointment you’re currently setting up. Do this if you’re rescheduling a procedure (e.g., if it didn’t get completed on today’s appointment).

If you selected a procedure by mistake, click Cancel to deselect the procedure(s) so they are not attached to the appointments you’re setting up.

Only Procedure Attached to an Appointment

If you are deleting procedures from the Chart Module, you may receive this warning. Appointments should normally always have at least one procedure, so if you click Yes, you may want to review your Patient’s Appointments and attach procedures as needed. You may also need to update the patient’s Treatment Plan. If the patient is no longer completing the treatment and the appointment has been canceled, make sure to delete the appointment along with the procedures, so it doesn’t stay on your schedule. If you click No, the selected procedures will not be deleted. You may still want to review the patient’s appointments and Treatment Plan to see if anything needs to be adjusted.

Now that you know a bit more about appointment prompts and warnings, you will be prepared in case one appears when using Open Dental.

Keep a look out for our next post in this series coming soon! As always if you ever have questions, reach out to our helpful Open Dental Support.