August 7, 2003 to October 22, 2003
NOTE: This newsletter is being re-sent because we had technicial difficulties with our last batch. If you are receiving this for a SECOND time, we apoligize!

Hello!

The is the third of what will now be a bi-weekly newsletter intended to update you on all the cool things happening on Club Lighthouse! Since its been a while since our last newsletter, this one is a big one! We have refined our system for producing the newsletter so we are now able to bring you this summarized version of the Club on a regular basis.

To properly use this newsletter, you should first log into the Club web site directly from this newsletter. Once you are logged in, you can click on any of the links in this newsletter to jump directly to the article or download of interest. To start your web browser now and log into Club Lighthouse, click here! That will open up a browser window on your computer. You can then Alt-Tab back to this e-mail and select any link in this email. Clicking on the link in this email will cause that article or forum post to appear in the browser window (you will have to Alt-Tab BACK to that browser window to see it).

If you forgot your user name and/or password, send an email to joel@lighthouse-pmg.com



In This Issue
New Articles
New or updated downloads
Interesting posts
Seminar schedule


New Articles
Getting the most out of Club Lighthouse: A Road Map for new members
This article is a very important addition to Club Lighthouse. We found that now that the Club has a lot of content on it, it was becomming increasing difficult for new and old members alike to figure out where to start to find "the good stuff." The trick is to get you the right information quickly and hassle free, and the last thing we want to do is make your life even MORE complicated. This guide is intended to be your "road map" to the Club site, directing you to the most important content first. Following this road map is the best way to insure that you get the most out of your investment in both PracticeWorks and Club Lighthouse. Even if you are an old member, this guide may reveal a lot of information that you have been missing!

 

Going Chartless Part 5: Medical / Dental History
You have to know certain medical information about your patients before you treat them, obviously. A paper chart gives you a lot of ways to store, and alert you to, that information: the patient's original health history form, whatever paper form you use to periodically update that information, colored stickers on the outside of the chart for critical medical alerts, etc. In a world without charts, you still need the same information, but you're going to get it in different ways - ways that hopefully you'll find to be more consistent, more reliable and consequently, less prone to oversight. (How often do you really update your patient's medical history in your current system?)

This article describes a system that deals not only with medical information, but also the patient's dental history, and information that's more dental than medical, but that certainly needs to be reviewed and updated, just like purely medical information does. Along with the article, there is an Exchange Pack that you can install, make a few minor "manual" configurations to, and start using in very short order. The first part of the article describes the system and explains how to use it. At the end of the article are the instructions for installing and configuring it.

 

YE Insurance Benefits Remaining letter
For as long as anyone remembers, consultants have been telling dentists to do a year-end "chart audit" to find insured patients who have benefits remaining, and send them a letter encouraging them to schedule any needed treatment before the benefits expire at year-end. This article describes the Lighthouse Year-end Insurance Exchange Pack that makes sending these letters (and/or e-mails) easy.

 

How to Create and Use an "off the shelf" PracticeWorks server
In today's modern dental office, the high speed handpiece has been eclipsed in importance by the computer. While there are still offices that "survive" with little to no automation, they are becoming fewer and fewer. In order to "thrive", a practice NEEDS to embrace modern information technology. Embracing technology, however, does NOT need to mean breaking your bank account.  Though it is common practice for most hardware "experts" to recommend/quote a high end computer "server" for use in a dental office, the reality is that these high end machines are mostly overkill: you end up with unused capacity, even over a time frame of several years.  Though you never use the capacity, you DO pay the higher price for it.  The result: dollars that could be spent on other technologies for the practice end up being wasted on speed or storage technology you will never see the benfit of.

All is not lost! It turns out that "mass produced, off the shelf" computers (with their corresponding "mass market" prices) are more than adequate for the typical dental practice. With a little research, planning, and understanding, any office can acquire the BEST technology for the task, at the BEST price for an overall solution that is economically priced and will support the office for years to come. This article details how I recently upgraded the server in our office and proved that it is possible to comfortably and safely run a dental practice using a computer that cost under $500.

 

LH Supplemental Recall System
This Article describes the Lighthouse Supplemental Recall System, designed specifically to try to reactivate patients who are seriously past due for recall (more than 18 months past their due date). It was created at the request of an office whose recall system had been less than satisfactory for quite some time, and the doctor felt it was worth going back as far as three years to try to reactivate patients. If you're in a similar situation, you might want to try this system.

 

PracticeWorks Customization - Why every Puppy needs to be Trained
PracticeWorks broke the mold when it was first introduced as an Appointment Book driven practice management package. This insight into the intuitiveness necessary for a successful relationship between human and computer created a whole new approach to running a dental practice. The next and even more significant milestone was the introduction of the user ability to custom automate the package to fit an individual's needs. This shifted things from being easy to use for the human to actual intelligence in the software for how your practice operates. While a dog may be man's best friend, PracticeWorks (the program) is an office's best friend, and like the loyal dog can and SHOULD be trained to help the office for years to come. This article will describe a situation that resulted in a training of our "puppy" and hopefully will give ideas about what can be done in your office.

 

LH Patient Turnover Analysis Expert
The Lighthouse Patient Turnover Analysis Expert (LH99 Patient Turnover- accessed from Experts _ Analysis Experts) was created to help you see how many of your "current" patients were new patients within the past few years. The primary reason for creating it was to help illustrate how quickly your patient base "turns over," so you can hopefully feel better about implementing a new policy, even a broad reaching one, or one that's a drastic change from the past (such as becoming a "cash only" practice). It will show you how many opportunities you get every quarter to present a "new" policy as your "normal" policy, so that, in a relatively short period of time, a significant percentage of your active patients will think of the policy as "the way you've always done it." It also illustrates how quickly any patients you might lose because of a new policy will be replaced with new patients.

 

Better integration between VixWin and PracticeWorks
by Tom "VixWinMeister" Murphy

So you've got your DenOptic scanner, your VixWin 2000 program, and of course Practice Works, but how do they all fit together? PracticeWorks relates to VixWin with a one way integration. This means that PracticeWorks launches VixWin and supplies the patient name and ID number, but the image storage and manipulation remain in VixWin. This is great because image storage, retrieval and manipulation are what VixWin does best. Unfortunately, you can only launch VixWin from within the patient chart, at the capture tab. This means that when you want to scan some x-rays for a patient in the chair, you will have to exit the chart in the operatory, open the chart at the scanning station, scan the x-rays, close the chart at the scanning station, and then reopen it in the operatory. A bottleneck to say the least. Well, with a little bit of help from Lighthouse Practice Management Group, you'll be able to open VixWin from several areas and eliminate this and other problems before they occur. Just follow the easy step-by-step instructions in this article and the relationship between PracticeWorks and VixWin will be all moonlight and roses!

 

LH Recall PowerCalls Add-on
The Lighthouse Simple Recall Reminder System allows you to easily, quickly and consistently send a series of reminders to patients who need to make their next recall appointment. This article describes an "add-on" to that system for offices who use the PowerCalls system for automated phone calling.

 

New or updated downloads
The following is a list of recent additions to the Club Lighthouse download area. It is important to remember that most downloads have a corresponding article or forum post associated with them. If they do, please read the article or post first before downloading the file. Also, for complete instructions on how download and install the files listed here, be sure to read the article on Installing from an Exchange Pack

Lighthouse Broken Appointment Management
Version: 2.0
A system for tracking the details of broken appointments (reschedules and/or cancels). This update now includes several "Failure to Keep Appointment" letters that automatically generate increasingly firm "you missed your appointment" notifications.

Completed treatment notes
Version: 7-22-2003
A set of notes to document completed treatment. Read the associated Article entitled "Going Chartless Part 4: Completed Treatment Note Templates" for details on installation and use.

Monthly Production by Producer
Version: 1.0
A version of the Monthly Production Summary Analysis Expert that displays the daily or Month to Date production figures for up to 5 producers in calendar format.

Unlike the Monthly Production Summary (which lists both daily and MTD numbers on each day summarized by Doctor and Hygiene), this version displays ONLY the daily OR the MTD numbers on each day, but shows individual producers. To switch between daily and MTD display, simply type "Daily" or "MTD" in the green box at the top of the spreadsheet.

This modification was done in response to a post from a Club member. Click here to see the post.

Active Patients by Age
Version: 1.0
An Analysis Expert that shows your active patient count, broken down by age.

For comparison's sake, the numbers reflect both an "Active" patient count based on the number of clipboards marked "active", as well as an "active" count based on the "last visit date" of the patient.

This download is in response to a member request in this post.

Various Analysis Experts
Version: 9-4-2003
A collection of Analysis Experts for all kinds of things. Download the whole file and install just the ones you want. The current list is:

  • -Collections for a month, by day of month
  • -Production for a month, by day of month
  • -Appointment time analysis, for hygiene and doctor appointments
  • UPDATED on 6-17-2003: 12 Months Monitors
  • ADDED on 6-20-2003: Recall analysis
  • ADDED on 6-27-2003: Referral Report
  • ADDED on 8-8-2003: Insured Party count by Ins Co.
  • UPDATED on 8-18-2003: Split "Checks" column into "Ptn checks" and "Ins checks" on Deposits by Day of Month
  • ADDED on 9-4-2003: Patient Turnover Analysis

    Year End Insurance Benefits Remaining
    Version: 9-28-2003
    Two letters (adult and child) and e-mail versions of each of them, telling patients they have insurance benefits remaining that will be lost at the end of the year. Four AutoLinks on the system-defined Unscheduled Tx Plans Contact Expert. Each AutoLink generates one of the letters / e-mails. Use the "filtering" capability of the Contact Expert to limit who will get this letter. Then the AutoLinks have additional "filtering" capabilities: -Exclude patients with a doctor appointment on the schedule already (if you want to) -Exclude patients with a 60-day old balance (or older) in excess of $X (you specify what X is) -Exclude patients whose remaining insurance benefits aren't at least $Y (you specify what Y is)

    Miscellaneous Contact Experts
    Version: 8.22.2003
    A collection of various Contact Experts for a number of different things: **LH99 Person lookup by phone number (find anyone in PW if you know a home or work phone number) **LH99 Ptn/IP's w/ a selected InsCo (Find all patients who are also their own Insured Party, and who have an Insurance Company you select at runtime. Useful for doing a mailing to IP's w/ that Insurance Company.) **LH99 Birthdays for one week (All patients w/ a birthday in a one week period beginning two weeks from this Monday.) **LH99 RP's prod'n and coll'n (Total production and collection for each RP, for a user-prompted time period, and since the day you started using PW.)

    Insurance Claims Management
    Version: 1.1
    Outstanding insurance claim management contact expert that offers greater flexibility and better time management than the standard contact expert that comes with PracticeWorks. After running, click on the AGE column followed by your HOME key and your list will be sorted by the oldest claim outstanding. If this insurance company is going to be contacted, click on the Insurance Company column and now you can discuss this old claim as well as every other outstanding claim with that company. Document all contacts in the contacted area for appropriate follow-up

    Misc. Document Merge Variables
    Version: 10-13-2003
    UPDATED 10/13/03: Added "Patient age in whole years." FIXED 8/25/03 (The SSN's added on 6/6 were added so they were visible only if the document was "based on" appointment info. Now they're available from ANY "based on" type. Just re-install the entire package.) UPDATED 6/6/03 (Added SSN for every person type, and marital status for patient.) If you write many letters, you're gonna love this one! It's a collection of user-defined merge variables for the most common combinations of system-defined merge variables. Just one example: "Patient full name". This takes ALL of the following into account to build the appropriate full name for a patient (and there are versions for Responsible Party, Lives With, Referral Source, Primary and Secondary Insured Parties): Title, Legal name/First name, Middle initial, Last name, and Jr/Sr. So one merge variable will give you any of the following: Mr. Joseph A. Blow, Jr. Mr. Joe A. Blow, Jr. Mr. Joe Blow, Jr. Mr. Joe Blow Joe Blow and any other combination of these fields. Other examples include Address1+Address2, CityStateZIP, and Greeting. Also, there are a bunch of male/female pronoun combinations that let you use, for example, "he" or "she" in a document. And there are all the Primary and Secondary insurance merge variables you're likely to need, for the Insured Party, the Employer/Plan, and Insurance Company. Do a "custom" installation of the Exchange Pack, but just to see what all is in it. Once it comes up in the Expert Exchange window, drag and drop the entire "Misc merge variables" folder from the right side to the left side.

    Birthday Contact Experts and card
    Version: 06-18-2003
    Two Contact Experts for finding people with birthdays coming up, and a "generic" birthday postcard.

    LH99 Birthdays for one week (everyone with a birthday in the week that begins two weeks in the future) (This is the one we suggest you use - it's consistent with sending Recall and Appt Reminder postcards every week, and works the same way.)

    LH99 Birthdays for a date range (everyone with a birthday in a date range that you're prompted for each time you run it)

    This is the download that corresponds with the Lighthouse Article Sending birthday cards

    Lighthouse SMTP email proxy for PracticeWorks
    Version: 1.03
    A special program written by Lighthouse to compensate for the problems with the PracticeWorks email sending issues. Using this program, you should be able to finally get PracticeWorks to send emails. Details on the use of this Java program can be found in the article Sending emails with PracticeWorks.

    The Rx Farm
    Version: 8-26-2003
    A collection of Rx's that aren't in the PW Plus Pack. These are so similar to the ones in the Plus Pack that they simply add to your list of Rx's when you write a new one. See the article that describes how to install and use them.

    LH Sealant Warning
    Version: 1.0
    Autolink and Message attached to sytem defined SEALANT button that will remind clinical staff about "standard" insurance limitations on sealant coverage prior to scheduling. Many plans will not cover sealants on patients prior to their 6th birthday or after the age of 12 (14?) (16?). See Article on How to customize PracticeWorks.

    Incomplete Clipboard notifications
    A notification message that the clipboard is incomplete. Appears when seating the patient. See the forum post for details.

    LH Patient portrait capture
    Version: 1.0
    A set of AutoLinks to capture the patient's portrait. As a supplement (or instead of) a message that appears, this AutoLink actually executes the "capture a patient's portrait" response to quickly take a snapshot.

    There are two AutoLinks in this pack. One to capture the portrait at check-in, and one to capture the portrait at seat time. You can install one or both by doing a "custom" install.

    In either case, the "capture the portrait" will only occur if the patient does not have a picture on file, or if it has been longer than 2 years since the last time we took the picture.

    Lighthouse VixWin Proxy
    A small program to do the Base 36 conversion necessary to launch VixWin using the VixWin QuickLink interface. Use of the Lighthouse VixWin proxy (LHVixWin.exe) allows for VixWin to be launched using the Automation Expert's "Run a program" response. See the related post in the forum for more information.

    LH Supplemental Recall System
    Version: 8-28-2003
    A Contact Expert that finds patients 18 months, 24 months, 30 months and 36 months past due for recall. Works just like the "LH Simple Recall Reminder System" (run it every Monday, etc.) See the accompanying article for details.

    LH Recall PowerCalls Add-on
    Version: 9-5-2003
    An "add-on" the LH Simple Recall Reminder System for offices who use the PowerCalls system to make automated phone calls to patients. See the associated Article to get the system installed and configured, and to use it.

    Recall Cleanup
    Version: 1.0
    This contact expert will build an on-screen list of all patients that are marked as being on-recall, yet has never had a recall visit in the last 180 days. Staff can use this to clean-up clipboards easily by simply clearing the "on recall" check box on the contact expert.

    LH Inactivation Tracking
    Version: 1.0
    There are many reasons that a clipboard may be inactivated as well as many reasons for wanting to know "WHY" it was inactivated. By installing this system, you will be prompted to complete a form detailing the reason whenever you mark a clipboard as inactive. The associated contact expert will allow you to retrieve and sort this information to better monitor your practice.

    Medical / dental history
    Version: 9-22-2003
    All the components needed to gather, store, update and review patients' medical and dental history. This is the download companion to the Going Chartless article on collecting Medical/Dental History.

    Insurance submission report
    Contact Expert that promts for a date range of claims, and an ADA code, and an insurance company, to find all claims in that range submitted to that insurance company, that had that ADA code on the claim. If you leave the ADA code field blank, it will find all claims for that carrier in that time period.

    Tx Plan Clean up
    Version: 1.0
    A Contact Expert to list tx plans that have not been accepted. Can be used as a starting point for cleaning-up old tx plans. This is for a member request. See this post for details.



    • Interesting posts

    The following list represents topics on the Club site that either have had a lot of posts made, or have been read by a large number of Club members.

    PracticeWorks

    General discussion (PracticeWorks)

    Expert Creation Requests

    Automation and PracticeScript

    The Business side of things (not PracticeWorks related)

    General discussion (Office Admin)

    Hot Deals!

    Computers and Technology

    The Clinical side of things (not PracticeWorks related)

    Clinical technologies

    Going chartless

    Club Lighthouse

    General discussion (Lighthouse)



    Seminar schedule

    We are pleased to announce the next three dates in the Lighthouse "Illumination Seminar Series." This very popular two day seminar is sure to improve your understanding of PracticeWorks, as well as give you a better understanding of what we are trying to accomplish here on Club Lighthouse. Don't forget: Club members get a 10% discount off of the registration fee!

    For more information, download the seminar brochure in PDF format by clicking here.


    We hope you found this newsletter informative and helpful. Remember, its our job to make your job easier! If you have ANY question, be sure to either post a question on the Club, or if you are uncomfortable posting your question in public, please feel free to contact one of us directly using email.

    Thanks again, and see you on the Club!

    Allen Jorgensen: allen@lighthouse-pmg.com
    Brian Smith: brian@lighthouse-pmg.com
    Joel Kozikowski: joel@lighthouse-pmg.com

    © 2003 Lighthouse Practice Management Group
    "PracticeWorks" is a registered trademark of PracticeWorks, Inc.
    Lighthouse Practice Management Group and its principals are not affiliated with PracticeWorks, Inc. in any way