Discover how easy it is to manage
treatment options with Dentrix
Dental consultants stress the importance of offering patients
treatment alternatives as an integral part of the dental office’s
responsibility to gain informed consent. Plus, you may find it helpful
to give patients options when their preferences don’t align with your
preferred or recommended treatment. Dentrix makes it easy for you
to create and manage treatment alternatives in the Treatment
Planner by linking alternate treatment recommendations together or
creating alternate cases.
In order to create alternative treatment cases, you must first add both
sets of procedures to the patient’s treatment plan. For example, if you
are going to recommend an implant to a patient but also offer the
option of a bridge, you need to treatment plan all of the procedures
for the implant and all the procedures for the bridge. It may
seem like you have a lot of things treatment planned for
the patient, but once you organize the treatment into
cases in the Treatment Planner you will be able to
make sense of the options.
Linked Cases vs. Alternate Cases
Once you have added all alternatives
to the treatment plan you can create
treatment alternatives in one of two
ways: by linking cases or by creating
an alternate cases. By linking cases, you
connect two treatment cases together
in the Treatment Planner so that they
function as alternatives to each other.
When one linked case is accepted, the
other is rejected.
Alternate cases are also connected together
in the same way as linked cases, but there
is one distinct difference between the two.
When you create an alternate case, in
addition to the two treatment options
you can also include the treatment
that will be required in either case. For
example, if you are offering a patient
the option of a bridge or an implant,
but the patient needs to have several
fillings completed regardless of
which treatment option they choose,
you would create alternate cases
and copy the fillings into both
cases. That way each treatment
alternative would include the
restoration option plus the fillings.
ERIN BRISK
Contributing Editor
10 | www.Dentrix.com/Magazine