If a patient needs to cancel his or her appointment, you can move the appointment to the Unscheduled List or delete the appointment to remove it from the Appointment Book.
Watch this video to learn how to break, cancel, and delete Appointments. (Duration 0:37)
Additional Tips
- When you break an appointment, Dentrix moves the appointment to the Unscheduled List (allowing you to reschedule the appointment at a later time), updates the Missed Appt field in the Family File (recording the date of the cancellation and the number of times the patient has missed an appointment), and records the broken appointment in the Office Journal. This allows you to track patients who frequently break appointments.
- When you cancel an appointment by changing it to Wait/Will Call, Dentrix adds the appointment to the Unscheduled List as a Wait/Will Call appointment. Dentrix does not update the number of broken appointments in the Family File or Office Journal when you change the appointment to a Wait/Will Call appointment.
- If you delete an appointment, it is as if the appointment never existed. Dentrix does not maintain any record of the appointment.
- The only time you should delete an appointment for an existing patient is if you scheduled the appointment for the wrong patient or the appointment should not have been scheduled in the first place. The only time you should delete an appointment for a new patient is when that patient doesn’t fulfill the appointment.
- Once you delete an appointment, Dentrix makes an entry to the Dentrix Audit Trail, indicating the date and time you deleted the appointment.
- To learn more about breaking, canceling, and deleting appointments, read Breaking Appointments, Managing Wait or Will Call Appointments, Deleting Appointments, and Opening the Unscheduled List in Dentrix Help.
Check Your Knowledge
If you have access to Dentrix, check your knowledge with this exercise.
- Switch to the Dentrix demo database.
(Skip this step if you are using the Dentrix Learning Edition software.) - Locate Matthew Little’s appointment.
- Move Matthew Little’s appointment to the Unscheduled List.