Altering Your Normal Office Schedule in Dentrix – What You Need to Know

Tasks you should know how to do when you have to alter your practice schedule.

There may be times when you need to alter your normal office schedule on short notice or close your office altogether for an emergency. There are things you should know how to do in Dentrix to be prepared for this. Read through the list of tasks below to find out how they can help you, and click on the links to learn how to do it in Dentrix.

Rescheduling Multiple Appointments at Once

There are lots of reasons you may need to reschedule multiple appointments at once. Maybe a provider gets sick and all their appointments for the day need to be moved. Or you have an operatory chair that needs repair, and appointments scheduled in that op need to be moved. You can also move an entire family’s appointments or all appointments for an entire day.

Changing Your Default Practice Hours

There may be times when you need to alter the default hours for your whole practice, and it’s important to know how to do it correctly so that your practice hours match up with your individual provider’s hours, and so that production is calculated correctly on reports.

​​​​​​Closing the Practice in Dentrix

You can easily mark your practice as closed in the Dentrix calendar if you know you practice will be closed on a specific day. Or, after you have worked to clear appointments off a certain day, you can close the practice in Dentrix so that no future additional appointments can be scheduled on that day.

Closing Operatories in Dentrix

At times you may need to close an operatory. It could be for repairs, due to providers being out sick, or for other reasons. First, move or reschedule the appointments from the operatory you want to close (see section above) and then close the operatory.

Changing Provider Schedules

If you need to adjust the hours your individual providers are available to work, you can do so easily. Maybe you have a hygienist who only works half days, or a specialist provider who is only at your office on Thursday. Modify each provider’s schedule to help maximize your scheduling efforts.

Moving Patients to Wait/Will Call

When patients give you notice that they won’t be able to make their appointment, the easiest thing to do is to reschedule them right then. But sometimes they don’t know their availability. In cases where advance notice is given, you don’t want to simply break their appointment and have it count against them in the Family File. You can add their appointment to the Wait/Will call list, where you can track their appointment and work to reschedule them at a later time.

Creating Custom Patient Lists

You can use the Patient Report (by filters) within the Dentrix Office Manager to create custom lists of patients based on a number of different filters you can set. Need a list of patients with no recorded email address? Need a list of patients who haven’t been seen in the last year? You can find that data using custom reports.

Sending Mass Email Communications

There may be times when you need to close your practice or make changes to your schedule and need a way to let your patients know about those changes. Email is an efficient way to do that. There are a few different ways you can send an email with Dentrix, depending on which email service you use.