Updated 4/25/2019

The Office Journal allows you to keep a comprehensive record of contacts made between your office and your patients. When you want to review the interactions a patient has had with your office, the Office Journal should be your first stop.

While you can manually add entries to the Office Journal to document your communication with patients, the Office Journal also automatically records many types of patient contact when you perform normal operations in Dentrix. Automatic entries are created for the following operations.

Scheduling:

• Scheduled Appointment: When patient appointments are created, an Office Journal entry is recorded which includes the date, time, provider, and reason for the appointment.
• Broken Appointment: When an appointment is broken in Dentrix, an Office Journal entry is recorded which includes the date, time, provider, and reason for the original appointment.
• Purged Appointment: An Office Journal entry is recorded when appointments are purged, which includes the date, time, and provider for the original appointment.
• Archived Patient Appointment: When a patient with an appointment is archived, the Office Journal records the appointment date, time, reason, provider, and the date the patient was archived.

Financial Transactions:

• Billing Statements: Any time a billing statement is generated for an account, the Office Journal records the date of the bill, the account balance, and the please pay amount from the statement.
• Patient Payments: When a patient (or guarantor) makes a payment, a note is added that includes the payment date and amount.
• Insurance Payments: When an insurance payment is posted in the Ledger, a note is added that includes the payment date and amount.
• Payment Agreement Notes: If you’ve added a payment agreement note to a guarantor’s account, it is recorded in the Office Journal along with the date and provider.
• Financing Requests: If you click the Patient Financing button from the DXWeb Toolbar, a note is added to the Office Journal.

Correspondence:

• Letters: Letters generated for patients (using Quick Letters or checking the “Add to Journal” option when merging letters from the Office Manager) are noted in the Office Journal. The entry includes the date, provider, and name of the letter that was created.
• Messages: Whenever an email is sent to a patient by clicking the Send Message toolbar button, the Office Journal records the contact with the date and time.
• WebSync: The Office Journal records any DXWeb communications, uploads, referrals, and eligibility requests for the patient.

Misc:

• Referrals: The Office Journal records when a referral recap or referral slip is printed for the patient and when a gratuity is given.
• Privacy Requests: The Office Journal records when any privacy requests are made through the Family File.

For more information, read the Dentrix Magazine article titled, Say Goodbye to Sticky Notes.