Dental Clinic Case Study

A clinic with three dentists and several dental hygienists needed a system to help administer patient records. This system keeps patient details and medical records and also processes patient administration.

Each patient has a record with his/her name, date of birth, gender, date of first visit, and date of last visit. Each patient is also associated with an insurance carrier record. The insurance carrier record contains name of insurance company, address, billing contact person, and telephone number.

In the clinic, each dental staff person also has a record that tracks who works with a patient (dentist, dental hygienist, x-ray technician). Because the system focuses on patient administration records, only minimal information is kept about each dental staff person, such as name, address, and telephone number. Information is maintained about each office visit, such as date, insurance copay amount (amount paid by the patient), payment code, and amount actually paid. Each visit is for a single patient, but, of course, a patient will have many office visits in the system.

During each visit, more than one dental staff person may be involved in the visit by doing a procedure. For example, the x-ray technician, dentist, and dental hygienist may all be involved in a single visit. In fact, some dentists are specialists in such things as crown work, and even multiple dentists may be involved with a patient.

For each staff person does procedure in a visit combination, detailed information is kept about the procedure. This information includes type of procedure, description, tooth involved, the copay amount, the total charge, the amount paid, and the amount insurance may pay.

Finally, the system also keeps track of patient invoices. The invoices list each visit, the billing date, total amount, amount already paid, procedures involved, the patient copay amount, and the total due. Obviously, the totals for the insurance company are different from the patient amounts owed. This has to be calculated.

The receptionist keeps track of patient information. She will enter information about the patients. She will also keep track of office visits by the patients. Patient information is also entered and maintained by the office business manager. In addition, the business manager maintains the information about the dental staff.

The business manager also prints the invoices. Patient invoices are printed monthly and sent to the patient. Each dental staff person is responsible for entering information about the dental procedures that he/she performs.

The present system must be automated for the manager who plans on implementing it for daily use.