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PracticeWorks: Workflow of a Patient Visit
Posted by: Brian on Thursday, June 09, 2005 - 10:27 AM
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1328 Reads
When we designed PracticeWorks, we wanted to make the program
follow closely the natural flow of work in a dental office. We
spent a lot of time on the administrative part of it - the whole
flow of the patient relative to the front desk: check-in, go to
the operatory, come back from the operatory, enter charges and
payments, process insurance, make the next appointment, then do
the whole thing over again the next visit. I think we got that
part right, and the normal use of the program enables - even
enforces, to a certain degree - that natural flow. Almost all of
that was in version 1.0 of the program.
When Charting was added, in version 2.03, it was kind of a
rush job. (Ask Joel - he'll tell you it was the most stressful
couple of months of his professional life!) We didn't have the
time to spend on the design of Charting that we did with Office,
couldn't really study and understand how work flowed in the
operatory. Consequently, there isn't really a natural flow to
using Charting. Instead, there are a bunch of tools - the hard
tissue chart, the treatment plan, buttons, notes, etc. - and it's
really up to each user to figure out how to use them all
together. Coupled with the fact that PW, Inc. never developed a
training agenda for Charting that went beyond how to use each of
the tools, it's not surprising that so many people use Charting
in less than an ideal fashion, with no clear idea of how it
really should be used.
Out there in the real world, Allen and Bridgett (and a whole
bunch of other people) had no choice but to figure out a way to
use it that worked, that made sense, that could be easily taught
(and therefore performed consistently), and that didn't have too
many holes, too many opportunities for things to be overlooked or
messed up. The PW trainers also learned things from their working
with users - things that helped overcome some of the design
deficiencies and even a few bugs in the program. Over the past
few years, Lighthouse has taken everything that Allen and
Bridgett and the trainers and a whole bunch of other people have
learned, and assembled it into a set of instructions for using
Charting that works. This article details those instructions -
follow them, and you'll use Charting a whole lot better than
you're probably using it now, with far fewer
"speedbumps" in the flow of work through your office.
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