How should we improve OrthoTrac?

[FormerPLM]

[[NOTE: This discussion is being locked as of April 2018 as it is now two years old and the thread is now 10 pages in length.   Please be assured that none of your suggestions have been lost!  All of them have been read and received by Management.  A new thread has been created here for continuing discussion:

How should we improve OrthoTrac? -- Part 2 

Please feel free to add any future suggestions there!  You may also post a new topic of your own using the "Idea" feature.  The benefit of doing this is that all Ideas can be voted on by the community.  The more votes a suggestion gets, the higher visibility it is.

Thank you,

Phil Carter / OrthoTrac Escalations]]

ORIGINAL POST BELOW, created September 2016

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Good morning OrthoTrac Community,

Here's a loaded question...what should we do to improve OrthoTrac?  Bug fixes and minor enhancements aside, what big things should we do?  Would it be a lab case module?  Electronic forms?  Toothchart changes?  TX Card improvements? Reporting?

I'd love to hear your ideas!

Thanks in advance for your input!

Jeff

[drdougortho]

How about Imaging on the Cloud version....  The idea of a local version that you work on then uploading to the cloud, rather than working directly in the cloud... i was told is because a local version will respond faster to upload and adjust images before saving... but even the local version LAGS SO MUCH to adjust photos, etc... why is this????  Very frustrating... and it can't be my internet connection if its a local version... and i have 75-100mps ultra high speed connection anyway.

[matt_ackerman]

drdougortho‌, thanks for the feedback.  Changes are underway to improve the stability, reliability and availability (that's a lot of -ability) of our Cloud offering.  

Last year we spent the entire summer improving the infrastructure and some internal processes which allowed us to continue offering our existing services to a larger number of users.  This year we are focusing on the Cloud Imaging portion of the service, and certain portions of the process you mentioned will be reengineered.  

Ultimately, we want you to be view and edit your images in the cloud, and do that quickly, with ease.  

To answer your question, specifically -- If you have lag while performing image edits on your local machine (on images not in the cloud), any lag you feel could be caused by myriad local environment issues.  Things to consider would include available machine memory, the number of active processes and free processor resources, the type of graphics card you are running, the size of the image and where it is stored (and the network setup between those two places), and even whether there are other people connected to the same image server, doing the same thing you are.  

...Of course it would be easier for our techs to investigate that directly with you.  If you are still having this issue would you let us know?

[drpayne]

Doug,

We have been using the cloud version of Orthotrac now for about a year and we do have a local version that updates to the cloud.  The local version is a bit faster when loading imaging.  When we go to imaging a small window pops up and asks if we want to acquire images.  If we select no, the images are brought up from our local server, if we select yes, then the images are loaded from the cloud.  We did this not so much for speed, but because we have our digital models stored locally and we access them through orthotrac database through a plug-in.  I am very happy with the ability to work both locally and in the cloud.  It also gives us some redundancy for data storage as well.  We are relocating our satellite office and we are now totally chartless so we will be accessing these same patient charts from the cloud, however, we won't have the ability to have the local database in the satellite office, it will strictly be the cloud version.

Regards,

Brian

[drdougortho]

How about to allow you to CHANGE an appointment type or add/subtract units without having to DELETE then ADD a new appointment... this is quite annoying and every other system seems to allow you to something which is so simple.

[smileart]

This would be a VERY helpful feature! We have often talked about this as a team and it is quite irritating to have to move the appt or delete and R/S it to change appt type and/or units. 

[audreyf]

More options for payment types would also be a great thing.  more insurance companies are doing EFT's and credit cards for payments, so it would be great if those were options, in addition to what we have.  I know you can change payment types, but there do not seem to be enough for this kind of payment to be shown without manually re-doing it before it is posted.

[Anon]

Good day Audrey (audreyf‌),

Thanks for the suggestion!  We have had a lot of feedback from practices who want the number of payment types increased so this may be on track in a future update.

Regards,

Phil Carter / Orthotrac Escalation

[drdougortho]

Yes, one insurnace we see alot give us a CC# to run... so we have no way to post that correctly!  Definately needs to be updated!

[val6511]

this is our problem too. Very difficult to post an insurance payment made by credit card voucher.

[audreyf]

When placing messages on the schedule it would be great to be able to highlight it in a bright color or have it flashing, so it is more noticeable.  It is easy when you are busy to miss a message on a scheduled day.

[drdougortho]

the notes in the appointment/schedule should SHOW UP on the schedule... that would be great, otherwise its like it doesn't alert anyone to anything unless your actually looking for it

[Anon]

Good day Dr. Palaganas (drdougortho‌),

I believe Audrey (audreyf‌)  was referring to Schedule Messages, which do display on the schedule day itself as a bar spanning the width of the entire schedule at the time chosen.  Audrey, thanks for the suggestion; an option to have messages in something other than the standard gray color would be useful.

Regards,

Phil Carter / Orthotrac Escalation

[audreyf]

Yes Phil that is the message I was referring to.  Thanks for letting me know!

[drpayne]

We are just now converting to electronic charting and I realized that it would be really beneficial when scheduling the patient's next appointment In their chart to have the comment section have unlimited amount of text that would scroll if necessary to save space on the screen.  Right now it only allows for I think around 14 characters to be entered. I addition it would be helpful to not only indicate how many weeks for the next appointment but also the number of units. (I'm not sure why this area doesn't include units for procedure already).  Lastly, and most importantly, it would be great if once the information for the next appointment is posted in the chart that it also be inserted in the body of the text in the chart below the clinical notes entered for the day, maybe in a different color text. This would then make it easy to view the next time you see the patient and know what you were planning to do for that scheduled appointment. This would help avoid double entry, which is what we are doing now so we can see the information in the body of the chart notes as well as providing the information to the front desk for scheduling the next appointment.

Just my thoughts, 

Brian Payne DDS 

[drdougortho]

The units are implied if you setup your appointment types correctly... if you select a 600 adjustment for next visit, obviously you want the usual 15 min  (1 unit).  Not sure what you mean. 

However, i DO ABSOLUTELY agree we need more space for the next time comments!!!!

[drpayne]

Dear Doug,

Yes, you are right we have all procedures linked to units, so that is not the problem.  The problem is that we have quite a few different procedures and some are time dependent and linked to other procedures.  For instance, debond elastics are linked to a check bite a week later and a debond a week after that and then delivery of retainers.  It is not effective use of clinic time for assistants to assign procedure codes in that long drop down list, they just want to type the next procedure or procedures in the comment section and have the appointment desk set up appointments with the procedures.  The comment section is way too limited in character space to do this, so that is why I was suggesting having an comment area that is unlimited in space that scrolls to save screen space and shows up in the scheduling screen but does not get posted to the appointment section so you don't have to worry about number of characters.

[Anon]

Good day Dr. Payne (drpayne‌),

I need to point out that the Next Appointment information in Charting is intended to import directly from Charting into the patient's next scheduled appointment, and as such is subject to the same character limitations that the scheduled appointment itself is subject to.   This is why you cannot enter more than about twenty characters in the "Comment" field -- because the scheduled appointment itself has that same limitation. 

If you choose a specific appointment type in the Next Appointment section, the number of units required for that appointment will populate as well  (although there is insufficient space in Charting for us to display the # of units, they will be used when the appointment is actually scheduled);  and if you attach procedure codes to the appointment that section also will populate.  Then, when you go to schedule an appointment for the patient, the information will be pulled from the Next Appointment section of Charting and used to make that appointment.  Assuming that you schedule it as specified, the appointment type and procedures will be used for that appointment, and so when the patient is checked in that day, the appointment type and procedures will be automatically pulled from the scheduled appointment into Charting for that day.

For more information, please see the knowledge article  How to Use the Next Appointment Feature in Charting.

Regards,

Phil Carter / Orthotrac Escalation

[drpayne]

The problem with attaching procedure codes in the clinic is that we have so many and my clinical staff do not no the codes or procedures by memory, so it becomes very time consuming for us in the back to look it up.  It is far more efficient for us to write what we want for the next appt in the comments and then have the front desk people asign the procedure codes.  This is why we need a box or comment section that doesn't necessarily get included in the appointment but can be read by the appointment desk so they can assign procedure codes.  The key thing to remember the clinical staff are not the ones appointing the patients and they shouldn't have to assign procedure codes, it is too cumbersome.  I would also like to see the treatment card redesigned so that you can see the charting notes, the active archwire sizes and elastics all on a single page.  You shouldn't have to flip to different pages to see all the clinical information.  Again, this is all about efficiency at the chair.

Thanks,

Brian Payne DDS

[drdougortho]

So why can't we increase the characters allowed for BOTH those areas then?

[Anon]

Good day Dr. Palaganas (drdougortho‌),

I will let our PLM Jeffrey Urkevich (jeffrey.urkevich)  speak to that, but such a change would likely require reprogramming of the entire appointment scheduling process, as well as the control used to display the appointment details when the appointment is moused over on the schedule, and a redesign of the patient's Scheduled Appointments screen, which would need to have the size of the displayed field increased there as well.  Thank you for your suggestion nonetheless!

Regards,

Phil Carter / Orthotrac Escalation

[smileart]

I also agree that it would be good to have more space, at present we use a LOT of abbreviations to get around this. 

What I would love to see (if possible), is that when scheduling, if the front desk is in the patient's chart, then if there is a way to click on an icon??? that would pop up the chart notes from the Tx card at the last visit.