Over time, do your patient’s Health History items change? For example, the pregnancy condition is time-sensitive and won’t always apply to a patient. Or, a patient may no longer be taking a specific medication. You wouldn’t want Dentrix to display pop-up alerts for items that are no longer relevant. Fortunately, you can update your patients’ Health History items and still keep accurate records of your patients’ health.
Watch this video to learn how to update a patient’s Health History items. (Duration 1:23)
Additional Tips
- To edit an item, select it and click the View/Edit button. In the Edit… window, you can edit any item except the Reported Date and the item itself. Also, it’s good practice to add an Inactivated Date and/or a note. For example, you may want to state when and why the item was inactivated.
- It’s also good practice to inactivate an item, rather than delete it, to maintain accurate patient records. Note that inactivation of Health History items cannot be undone.
- When viewing a patient’s Health History, you can hide or display inactivated items by toggling the Hide Inactive and Show Inactive buttons.
- You can delete an active or inactive item; however, deleting an item permanently removes it from the patient’s Health History and cannot be undone. To maintain accurate records, you should only delete an item if it was assigned by mistake.
- To copy a patient’s updated Health History to their clinical notes, click the Copy To Clinical Note button. A new clinical note will be created, and a copied Health History does not replace previously copied histories in the clinical notes.
- You can update a patient’s Health History Note at any time. To do so, refer to Creating Health History Notes in Dentrix Help. This note is intended to describe the patient’s general health and can be viewed in other areas of Dentrix, such as Appointment Book notes and the Patient Notes Report.
- The “Patient Profile” box helps to ensure that you are updating a Health History for the correct patient. You can also click the Family File icon (within this box) to open the patient’s Family File.
- The Health History window can be accessed from any Dentrix module except the Office Journal and eDex.
- To learn more about updating a patient’s Health History items, open Health History Overview in Dentrix Help and read the topics on editing, inactivating, and deleting them.
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.) - Assume the current date is September 26, 2018. Alice Gleason had her baby two months ago. Set her pregnancy medical condition’s Inactivated Date to 07/26/2018. Include a note, which states that she is no longer pregnant. (If she doesn’t have a pregnancy medical condition, assign one with a Reported Date of April 12, 2018.)