The Dentrix Blog

Helping You Do More with Your Dentrix System

Updated 6/25/2019

At times you may have a treatment case that you want to refer to another provider or specialist. You can easily refer patients to other providers in Dentrix.

To maintain a comprehensive record of your clinical interactions with patients, procedures that you intend to refer to another provider should be entered into that patient’s treatment plan. However, since the work won’t be completed in your office, and you don’t want those procedures to count against your production numbers, you must create a referral case which allows you to maintain an accurate case history, but not affect your production numbers.

To enter a treatment plan and create a referral:

  1. In the Treatment Planner, create a treatment case that includes all the procedures that you will refer to another provider.
  2. Select that case and click the Update Status button, and select Referred from the drop-down list of options.
  3. Make changes to the date or enter any comments as necessary and click the Referred search button.
  4. Select the provider to whom you are referring the case and click OK to return to the Update Current Case Status dialog box.
  5. Click OK to return to the Treatment Planner.

When the case is set to Referred, Dentrix makes automatic changes to the treatment plan. First, the procedures are edited and a Related Referral is added. Additionally, the fee amount is changed to $0, indicating that there is no projected production attached to this case. Finally, “R>” appears in the Progress Notes in the R column, indicating the procedures were referred out.

Bonus Tip

Procedures that have been referred do not show in the Treatment Plan View of the Ledger or in the Tx list for the Appointment Reasons when scheduling appointments.


For related information, read the Charting Referred Procedures article in Dentrix Magazine.