Does your Dentrix database have the same medication entered as its brand name, generic name, and “scientific name?” Or does it list several different types of food and animal allergies? In Health History Setup you can manage these issues by adding, editing, inactivating, deleting, and/or moving the items to better suit the needs of your practice.
Watch this video to learn how to manage Health History items. (Duration 2:09)
Additional Tips
- To help with consistency, your office may want to determine who adds Health History items and in which format. For example, should you enter medications by their brand names, generic names, or scientific names? Or, should you enter every reported disease and allergy or have generic conditions and allergies, like “Heart Disease” and “Food Allergies,” and note the specifics in the patients’ notes?
- When you edit an item by changing its “Show as Critical” setting, you’ll receive a message asking to apply the change to all existing patients or to only new patients who will be assigned the item.
- When adding or editing a medication, you do not have the option to have the medication appear on the Patient Questionnaire, as only medical conditions and allergies are included in the questionnaire.
- When you edit an item’s Description, the change is applied to everyone to whom the item has been assigned. For example, changing Tylenol to Acetaminophen will update the item’s Description from Tylenol to Acetaminophen for all patients who have Tylenol in their Health History.
- Changes to an item’s description (in Setup) may result in an updated version of all questionnaire forms that include Health History.
- When you inactivate an item in Health History Setup, it remains assigned to patients to whom it was previously assigned; however, it will no longer be an option to select for other patients.
- Once an item has been inactivated, you cannot edit, reactivate, delete, or move it; however, you can add the item again by using the Add function in Health History Setup.
- To view inactive items in Health History Setup, select the Show Inactive checkbox.
- If an item is currently assigned to any patient’s Health History, you cannot delete the item in Health History Setup.
- Items are listed alphabetically in their respective categories. If you want an item at the top of its list, add an asterisk to the beginning of the item’s Description (e.g., *Diabetes) in Health History Setup.
- There are no restrictions on the number of items you can have in Health History Setup.
- To learn more about managing Health History items, read Setting Up Health History 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 - Perform the following tasks in Health History Setup:
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- Choose only those Health History Alert and/or Questionnaire options that you might use in your office.
- Add three common medical conditions, allergies, and medications.
- Edit, inactivate, and delete at least one item in each category.
- Move at least three items from one category to the other two categories.