Tracking Lab Cases: How to Divide Up the Tasks

Make sure everyone on the team is on the same page when using the Dentrix Lab Manager.

If you send a patient’s case to a lab, it’s very important to have a good tracking system for those cases. It’s important for your office to know which cases have been sent and are being fabricated at the lab, which cases have been received back in the office and are ready to deliver to the patient, and which cases have been completed.

I have found that being able to track the progress of a case is important because when properly tracked, your office can know to not schedule patients for their return appointment before their lab case is back in the office. Unfortunately, I’ve seen patients come in for their scheduled appointment and their lab case has not been returned from the lab. That’s an unpleasant situation for everyone!

Dentrix has a Lab Case Manager which is designed to do this tracking for you. When you create a lab case for a patient, that lab case can be attached to an appointment. While it’s important to track when your lab cases have been sent or received, it’s also very important to keep up with them after you have received them back in your office. Once a case has been completed (seated in the patient’s mouth), change the case status to “Finished.” This is important because the Lab Case Manager allows you to view cases by status: Sent, Received, Finished, or Archived.

Make sure that you have a plan for who in the office will change the status of a patient’s case to ensure accuracy in your tracking system. I like to use the “Received” status list view in the Lab Case Manager to find patients that we have a received lab case for, but who aren’t yet scheduled for an appointment. I can use this as a tool to call and get them scheduled.

Here’s an example of how I’ve seen the Lab Case Manager tasks divided well among the team:

  1. When a patient comes in for their initial appointment for a procedure requiring a lab case (such as a crown prep or impressions for a denture) the dental assistant creates the lab prescription using the Lab Case Manager and attaches it to the case. She prepares the case for the lab to pick up. At that point the lab case status is changed to “Sent”.
  2. Either the dental assistant, or the front desk schedules the patient’s next appointment and attaches the lab case to the next appointment in Dentrix. This signifies to everyone in the office there is an outstanding lab case associated with this future appointment.
  3. When the case is returned from the lab, the front desk changes the case status to “Received.” There is an option in this window to choose who the case was received by, I recommend using that option. That way if there’s a question, it’s easy to know which team member received the case.
  4. When the patient comes in for their delivery appointment, the dental assistant changes the case status to finished.

I’ve found when the team understands the process and their role in it, you can maintain a clean tracking system for your lab cases. Don’t ever hunt for a lab case again! You’ll know exactly where your cases are when using a tracking system like the Dentrix Lab Case Manager.


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By Charlotte Skaggs
Certified Dentrix Trainer and The Dentrix Office Manager columnist

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for over 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.