How to export your schedule from Open Dental

Before you start

You need a user login with permission to run reports. Open Dental lets administrators restrict report access by user group, so if a report is greyed out or missing, ask whoever manages your security settings.

Decide your date range first. For a first export, a sensible window is the past 90 days plus the next 30. After that, a daily export of the past week and the next few weeks keeps things current.

Step by step: the Appointments report

According to the Open Dental online manual, the Appointments report is found in Standard Reports, in the Lists section. The steps:

1. Open Standard Reports and, in the Lists section, click Appointments.
2. Under Providers, highlight the providers to include, or check All.
3. If you use clinics, highlight the clinics to include, or check the option to include all clinics.
4. Enter the start and end date. The window also has quick Today and Tomorrow buttons.
5. Choose whether the date range applies to the appointment date (what you usually want) or to the date the appointment was created.
6. Run the report. In the print preview toolbar, click Export and save the report as an XLS or text file.

What the Appointments report gives you

With the appointment date option selected, the manual lists these columns: Date, PatNum, Patient, Age, Time, Length, Description, Home Ph., Work Ph. and Cell Ph. When you filter on the date created instead, the report adds DateCreated and the appointment date.

That covers most of what revenue recovery needs. PatNum is Open Dental's internal patient number, a reliable way to match the same patient across exports. Length shows how much chair time a gap represents. Description shows the procedures on the appointment, which gives a sense of visit type and value. Having Cell Ph. as its own column is especially helpful, since that is the number that can receive a text.

Notice what the report does not show: a status column. To see broken appointments, you need the next report.

The Broken Appointments report

Also in Standard Reports > Lists, the Broken Appointments report can be run three ways, according to the manual:

• By procedures: patients with a completed D9986 (missed appointment) or D9987 (cancelled appointment) procedure. Columns: Date, Provider, Code, Patient, Fee.
• By adjustments: patients with a specific adjustment type, for offices that track broken appointments with an adjustment. Columns: Date, Provider, Patient, Amount, Note.
• By appointment status: patients with appointments whose status is Broken. Columns: AptDate, Patient, Doctor, Hygienist, IsHyg.

The lists where recoverable revenue hides

Open Dental's Appointment Lists collect the patients who most need a call. Per the manual, these include:

• Unscheduled List: appointments that need follow-up, such as no-shows and broken appointments, that were sent to the list or marked unscheduled.
• ASAP List: patients who want to come in sooner, the first people to offer an opening to.
• Recall List: patients due for recall who are not yet scheduled.
• Planned Appointment Tracker: planned treatment appointments that were never scheduled.

Checking the file before it goes anywhere

Open the exported file in a spreadsheet and give it a two-minute check. Make sure every row has a date and a time, not just the first row of each day. Confirm the providers you selected all appear. Look at the Cell Ph. column and see how many rows are blank; a high number usually means mobile numbers were saved in the home or work field, which is worth fixing in the patient records over time.

Then trim what the job does not need. The Age column, for instance, is rarely necessary for filling an open slot. Save the file, upload it through your vendor's secure method under a Business Associate Agreement, and delete the local copy from the export folder.

Putting it together: a dental example

Here is how these pieces combine, using illustrative numbers. A practice runs the Appointments report for the next two weeks and sees 14 open hours of hygiene time. The Broken Appointments report by status shows 9 broken hygiene appointments in the last month. The Recall List shows 210 patients past due.

Say a hygiene visit at this practice is worth $180. Refilling half the open hygiene time with one-hour visits is 7 visits, or about $1,260. Rebooking 6 of the 9 broken appointments is about $1,080. And each overdue recall patient who comes back is another $180, before any treatment found at the visit. Not one of those figures required anything beyond Open Dental's own reports.

One note on the lists: the manual documents a Print List option for the Unscheduled List; it does not describe a direct file export there. When you need these patients as data, the Broken Appointments report (which has the Export button) or a user query run by your administrator are the usual routes. Check the Open Dental manual for your version.