The new Health History module in Dentrix is a fantastic tool! It can store a lot of useful information about the medical conditions, allergies, and medications that your patients have informed you about. But without some organization, over time, your list may become unmanageable because of how those medications, conditions, and allergies are entered in Dentrix.

You may need to consolidate your health history items to make your lists manageable. Let’s talk about how you can consolidate an item, such as a patient-reported medication. Rather than listing every brand of medication in the Health History module (like Motrin, Advil, or Neoprofen), simply record a single medicinal grouping: Ibuprofen. Then, as you see patients, assign them the generic item — Ibuprofen — and include specifics, such as brand name and dosage, in Health History notes.

The same process can be used for medical conditions. Enter a single condition such as Heart Disease, and then on a patient-by-patient basis use Health History notes to add specific information such as heart murmurs, heart valve disease, etc. Doing this will take a little work, but it will result in less clutter within the module.

Consider these suggestions to consolidate your Health History items:

• Review the Health History categories — Medical Conditions, Allergies, and Medications — and decide which similar items can be grouped together.
• Assign the newly grouped together items to applicable patients, and add specific details in a Health History Note.
• Determine who on your team should manage Health History items. For instance, you may want one or two employees to manage it; or, you may want to train all of your employees with guidelines that you set.

For additional information about this topic, read You Asked for it! Patient Health History  in Dentrix Magazine, or read the various topics about setting up Health History items in the Health History Overview topic in Dentrix Help.