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In our dental department, we use the Centricity tool for practice management (patient demographics, scheduling, and billing) and have an HL7 interface with Dentrix Enterprise. The patients registered and appointments scheduled are replicated in Dentrix via HL7 messages so that patient dental charts can be opened and maintained from the Dentrix appointment book. We have a dental provider who is occasionally working with 3 dental assistants, rather than 2, and seeing a large volume of patients in a day. On days like these, the clinical staff is unable to see all of the patient appointments in Dentrix - they overlay each other. We've been told that the HL7 interface tool can't accommodate mapping Centricity appointment data to more than 3 operatory columns on the Dentrix appointment book. Does anyone have any experience with this? Have you found a different way to interface Centricity with another EHR application? Or, do you have a good workaround? Thanks for any experience and insight.
Posted : May 2, 2018 3:51 am
I don't have any direct experience with your specific situation, but I have quite a bit of HL7 experience.
It doesn't sound right to me that there is an issue with the "3 operatory columns" in CPS.
The demographic and billing interfaces are most likely not related. What you describe may be a scheduling interface issue, but I'm curious about "the clinical staff is unable to see all of the patient appointments in Dentrix – they overlay each other." That seems to indicate all appointments are in Dentrix, but they are not displaying as you would expect.
Is that correct?
-dp
Posted : May 2, 2018 4:06 am
Topic starter
DP-
Thanks for your response. Yes, the appointments are all in Dentrix, but they are not all viewable on the Dentrix Appointment Book. Our workflow is to open the patient chart from the appointment book to take out the possibility of opening the incorrect patient chart, but some appointments are hidden behind others. Our reception team has been playing a fun game of Tetris to help the clinical staff stick to prescribed workflow. I can create multiple schedule columns in Centricity and the same number of "operatories" on Dentrix Appointment Book, but am told we can only map the Centricity appointment messages to three operatories in Dentrix. The HL7 mapping seems to be the constraint. We are wishing for a fix. Any ideas? Does your experience with HL7 verify the information I've been given about what is possible with the HL7? Thanks. JP
Posted : May 2, 2018 6:01 am
