Managing Contacts in a Patient’s Health History

It is a good idea to know key information about your patients. For instance, whom should you contact in case of an emergency? Who is their primary physician? What pharmacy do they prefer to use? In Dentrix, you can add, edit, or remove emergency contacts, physicians, and preferred pharmacies (and their associated information) for any patient’s Health History. When you need it, their contact information is easy to find and ready for you to use.

Watch this video to learn how to manage contacts in a patient’s Health History. (Duration 1:52)

Additional Tips

• When adding or editing a contact’s information, you cannot complete the addition or edit without a name and a valid phone number. (Fax numbers and locations are optional.)
• Emergency contacts are family-specific, meaning that all emergency contacts that are created for one member of a family are also available as emergency contacts for each member of that same family. Also, the contact’s relationship to the patient can be unique for each family member. For example, John Smith can be designated as the father of Jacob Smith, and Jacob Smith can be designated as the son of John Smith.
• When searching for an existing physician or pharmacy, and if the lists are long, you can narrow the search by entering a name in the Search fields, and then you can select the physician or pharmacy that you require.
• A location can be entered for a preferred pharmacy, which can aid your practice in selecting the correct pharmacy from a list of many pharmacies with the same name. For instance, having Los Angeles as the location for every CVS pharmacy in Los Angeles would make it difficult to select the correct pharmacy; therefore, entering unique locations, like 123 Sunset Blvd and 5746 Rodeo Dr, makes it much easier to select the correct pharmacy. Consider discussing this with your team members to create a standardized format for entering pharmacy locations.
• The physicians and pharmacies are stored in the Dentrix database and are also searchable in eDex. However, you cannot assign them to a patient’s Health History from eDex.
• To have the physicians listed alphabetically by last name, enter the physician’s last name first, followed by a comma, and then the first name (e.g., Jones, John).
• Caution: Removing a contact from the Dentrix database also removes it from all patients that are currently assigned that contact.
• Clearing contacts from a patient’s Health History does not remove the contacts from the Dentrix database, as it simply removes them from that patient’s Health History.
• To learn more about managing contacts in a patient’s Health History, read the following topics in Dentrix Help:
  • Setting a Patient’s Emergency Contacts and Editing a Patient’s Emergency Contacts
  • Setting a Patient’s Physician Contacts and Editing a Patient’s Physician Contacts
  • Setting a Patient’s Preferred Pharmacy and Editing a Patient’s Preferred Pharmacy
  • Clearing Contacts Information

Check Your Knowledge

If you have access to Dentrix, check your knowledge with this exercise.

1. Switch to the Dentrix demo database.
   (Skip this step if you are using the Dentrix Learning Edition software.)
2. Perform the following tasks in any patient’s Health History (to do this, you must have Dentrix version G7.1 or higher):
• Add a new emergency contact
• Add a new physician and pharmacy
• Edit the physician’s phone number
• Delete the pharmacy
• Please let us know how we can improve this topic.
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