We are closing a single office location in Denticon but keeping the other locations. What do we need to do to prepare?

Introduction:
This guide is for Admin and Management users who need to close an existing office in Denticon. The guide will bring you and your team through the necessary steps to close your office location(s) while other locations remain active in Denticon. This guide will cover the general steps; however, other action items may arise for your team throughout the process depending on your office's setups and operations. Please note, we would like to kindly remind your team that this is a guide for closing a single office in Denticon, not your account as a whole. 

As an additional friendly reminder, we here at the Denticon Support team know that closing a location is a difficult time. If you need our help, our team will ensure that you receive the care you need to move forward in a stressful time. Please submit a support request for any needs that arise throughout the process so we can assist you: How can I reach Denticon's Customer Care Team for Support?

Process description:

1. Confirm Business & Billing Requirements
2. Reassign Users & Providers
3. Move/Inactivate Patient Accounts
4. Update Scheduler Appointments
5. Communicate Finalized Closure

Prerequisites:
We recommend that this process be completed by users in the "Administrators (100)" User Group as there are many steps involved where permissions are generally restricted. Some of the required permissions for various steps include, but are not limited to, the following as listed by their permission groups:

• Appointments
  • Appointments - Add Appointment In Other Office
  • Appointments - Move Existing Appointment
  • Appointments - Edit Existing Appointment
• Patient
  • Patient - Change Patient Home Office Full Control
  • Patient - Move Patient
  • Patient - Patient Information Screen Full Control
• Reports - Lists - Security List Rpts Screen Full C
• Setup
  • Setup - Account Screen Full Control
  • Setup - External API Settings Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Fee Schedule Assignments (Bulk) Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Fee Schedules Assignments - (New) Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Misc. Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Notes Macros Full Control
  • Setup - Office Groups Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Office Groups Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Notes Macros Full Control
  • Setup - Provider Per Office Screen Full Control
  • Setup - Provider Screen Edit Provider
  • Setup - Provider Screen Full Control
• Utilities
  • Utilities - Automated Campaigns Dashboard Full Control
  • Utilities - Automated Campaigns Template Management
  • Utilities - Change Future Appointments, Patients, Tx by Provider - Full Control
  • Utilities - Change Patient Fee Schedule Full Control
  • Utilities - Change Patient Home Office Full Control
  • Utilities - Change Patients Provider
• and others as appropriate...

Other permissions may also be required based on the actions for the specific patients, providers, and users associated with your office(s). Please review any permissions concerns with an Administrator (100) User Group member if you are a user outside that Group Membership assignment who is assisting with the office closure.

Gathering materials/resources:
Be sure to discuss when and how each step below will take place to ensure that patient care is handled and communicated until the final day of operations for the office. We recommend that you discuss the plan for deactivating with your team to check in with key stakeholders and leave ample time for planning and coordination. For best results, we recommend planning out the process a minimum of 60 days in advance.

This will allow your team the necessary space and time to make your own checklist of key tasks are performed both inside and outside of Denticon. We understand that closing a location can often be stressful, so please remember to leave space for taking breaks and addressing current care of patients in addition to the action items below. What follows is a guideline of our recommendations for your team's checklist; however, be sure that you make your own list of actions and assign them to the right team members in addition to the steps below. 

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Confirm Business & Billing Requirements

• Make sure all insurance claims, billing, and payments for that office are finalized.
  • Check the following articles for more details about outstanding balances:
    • How can I generate a list of all insurance claims not paid?
    • We have accounts which have credit balances. How can we understand which accounts those are?
    • How can I generate a list of all Responsible Parties who owe money to the practice?
    • We are a multi-location operation, and are unsure of the correct Aging report to generate. Which reports are recommended?
• Post and reconcile any outstanding payments.
  • How do I post a batch insurance payment for several patient claims?
• Run and save necessary reports for recordkeeping (production, A/R, patient lists, etc.).
  • The following articles review reports we recommend running and how to perform a download of Denticon patient data for the office:
    • Is there a report which will help our office know the number of patient records?
    • How do we understand the Production Analysis report?
    • How can we obtain a data download?
      • Note: X-rays and saved documents/images on file are not included in a download. Please submit a support ticket for assistance in requesting a download of images.

2. Reassign Users & Providers

• Update provider schedules so they no longer default to the closing office.
  • Our organization opened a new office location. How can we quickly assign a ‘User’ or ‘Provider’ to the new office?
• Reassign staff and providers to another active office if needed.
  • I work in multiple offices. How can I change what the default office is when I log into Denticon?
• Inactivate users and providers tied only to that office (if they won’t be moved).
  • A provider will no longer attend to our office. We’ve indicated the provider as “inactive” in our database, however we can’t remove one of the office locations from the provider’s entry. How do we remove the office attachment?
  • A staff member has left our office. How do I ensure the staff member cannot login to our office?
  • How are we able to inactivate a provider?
    • In case of error messages, please see the following:
      • We're attempting to make changes in the Provider Setup screen but receiving the following error message, 'Provider has no effective schedule'. Why is this happening?
      • My provider has duplicate effective dates on their schedule and now I cannot update their profile. How do I fix this?

3. Move/Inactivate Patient Accounts

• If patients will be moved to another office in Denticon, update their default office location in their patient profiles.
  • One of our office locations will be closing permanently. How can we change the 'Home Office' for ALL patients without having to update them individually?
• If patients will no longer be seen, mark them inactive but do not delete them as Denticon is designed to retain permanent records.
  • Note: Denticon keeps historical data, so you should simply inactivate any patients so they are no longer active in workflows. This means that reports will also remain accurate for historical data. We do not advise users to delete patient records for patients you will no longer see in the future.
    • How do I make a patient inactive?
• Archive all physical records, if applicable. We recommend scanning physical records into Denticon attached to a Patient Note to ensure that they can be accessed by other offices in the future.
  • How can I quickly scan documents into a patient record?

4. Update Scheduler Appointments

• Cancel or reschedule any future appointments at that office.
  • How do we view appointments from another location and for a provider not working in the current location?
• Close the appointment book for that location.
  • This is usually best done via Setup > Providers > Provider Setup. Repeat the following steps with each provider in the office:
    1. Select the provider you wish to edit from the left side of the screen, then select the Schedules tab and press Edit Provider.
    2. You will need to press Add New Schedule for the provider.
    3. Select an Effective From date for the first date the office will no longer take patients and then press Add without making other changes. The Schedule should be blank.
    4. This will prevent these days from listing the provider's Watermarks as available in AppointNow or on the Scheduler. For safety, please be sure to check the Watermarks tab of the Provider Setup page for the new Effective Date to ensure no Watermarks appear.
    5. If desired, you can also place Block appointments on the Scheduler to help communicate the closure internally. These should be placed in advance of the closure.
       • We want to indicate events and notes on the scheduler. How are we able to do so?

5. Communicate Finalized Closure

• Notify your Planet DDS/Denticon account representative so billing and licensing reflect one less office. If you need assistance, contact Denticon Support. Please keep the following in mind:
  • We ask that you please provide us a minimum notice of 30 days before the closure date of your office to ensure that your account is prepared for the change.
  • Please note that some processing times may vary depending on the request. The sooner your can provide us with an update that an office is closing, the better. This lead time allows our team to ensure that everyone is up-to-date on the closure of a location.
  • You will need to speak with an Account Manager and complete a DocuSign form before the billing changes will be reflected on your account's monthly bill. The change will take effect 30 days following a signed and completed form.
  • If you do not have a direct Account Management team member to speak with to assist you, please submit a support ticket.
    • How can I communicate with members of the Denticon support team?
• Confirm the office no longer appears in reports unless historical data is pulled.
  • This can be done by running a report for a date after the office will be closed.
    • Example: The office will be closed on December 1st of this year. Run a report for December 2nd through a year in the future for a report like Reports > Appointment Reports > Appointment Detail Report to check that no appointments are populating.
• In most cases, you will not be able to delete the office in Denticon due to data security processes in the program itself. Be sure to take the necessary steps to shutdown the office in Denticon.
  • How to Inactivate an Office in Denticon When "Delete Office" Is Not Available

Tips and best practices:
Discuss the closure steps above with your team. Are there any concerns you have about the functionality of specific areas not listed? Submit a support ticket with the steps from the link below to ask about what impacts this closure will have:

• How can I communicate with members of the Denticon support team?

Note: Remember our Denticon Support team will be happy to help you along the journey as questions arise! Also, please remember that our team is best able to serve you when each question is submitted on a separate ticket! Good luck and our best wishes to your and your planning team!

Next steps:
Be sure to communicate to your patients that your office will be closing ahead of time to give them the best chance to stay with your other locations. We recommend using Denticon Patient Communication to send out a mass message before the date of the closure so there are no questions after you close your doors.

• Can we upload a patient list to use with our Automated Campaigns?

Additional information:

• One of our office locations will be closing permanently. How can we change the 'Home Office' for ALL patients without having to update them individually?
• We have multiple locations in our dental practice. We’ve made several changes to letters in one location. Is there a way to copy the letters from one location to another?