Updated 7/18/2019

It’s important to keep your hygiene schedule full. Regular cleanings and oral cancer screenings promote a healthy mouth for your patients, and much of the doctor’s production is diagnosed during hygiene visits. Because of these, it is important to know which of your patients are due (or overdue) for their routine hygiene visits.

The Continuing Care module provides a way to monitor your patients’ due dates for individual recall reasons, such as when they are due for a prophy or bitewings. The Continuing Care module displays information you’ll need to contact your patients concerning their continuing care including due dates, whether they have an appointment scheduled, and the last time they were seen for their continuing care reasons.

To access the Continuing Care module, from the Appointment Book, click the Continuing Care button.

Dentrix loads the module based on the Continuing Care View (filter settings) used the last time the module was opened. Patient information that matches the filters is displayed in the module window:

1. The Due Date Span indicates the date range in the current view. (In the example above, the list is showing patients with continuing care due between April 10 and July 11.)
2. The View Name displays to remind you which set of pre-defined view filters you have selected.
3. The Date column indicates the patient’s continuing care due date.
4. The Type column indicates the continuing care type they are due for.
5. The Appt? column indicates the date (if any) of a scheduled appointment for the continuing care type. A plus “+” sign indicates that the patient has a scheduled appointment for something other than the indicated continuing care type.
6. The Status column indicates the last contact the office had with the patient.
7. The Prior Treat. column indicates the date the patient was last seen for the continuing care reason.
8. The Name column lists the patient’s name. An asterisk “*” next to a name indicates the head-of-household for a family.
9. The Age column indicates the patient’s age.
10. The Prov. column indicates the patient’s assigned continuing care provider.
11. The Phone column indicates the patient’s home phone number.

Once you understand how to interpret the information on this list, you can use it more effectively to contact patients and schedule them for overdue hygiene appointments.

For additional information, read the Don’t Let Patients Fall through Cracks in Your Hygiene Program article in Dentrix Magazine.