August 28, 2019
Dentrix Ascend defines a “household” as a group of patients with the same primary contact person. You could create patients one at a time and edit their Related Patients page to make those associations, but because Dentrix Ascend is all about creating efficient workflows, when you add a new household there is window specifically designed to help you enter all the family members at once.
How to:
1. Search to make sure the patients are not already in the system. This is an important first step before adding new records because, once a patient record is created in Dentrix Ascend, it cannot be deleted; and duplicate records are never a good thing. What you’re looking for is a “No Patients Matching” message in the patient search bar. If you have one or more matches for a common name, you will have to ask the patient some questions (for example, their birthdate or phone number) to make sure.
2. Once you are satisfied that you are creating a new record, click Create New Household in the search results panel.
3. The search name is used to automatically populate the first person in the Create New Household window. Fill out the required fields (marked by a red asterisk) for this person, and then click Add Patient. (Do not click Save at this point.)
4. Fill in the name, gender, and birthday for the next member of the household, and keep clicking Add Patient until you have entered the entire household.
5. From among the patients age 18 and older, click the Phone icon to set the primary contact for the household, and click the Dollar icon to set the primary guarantor for the household. (Dentrix Ascend will not show the icons for patients under 18.) The primary contact and guarantor can be the same person or different members.
6. Fill out the Household Contact information in the lower half of the window, and click Save. A green flash message confirms that you have created a new household, and each of the members is now searchable. When you look at the information bar for any member of the household, you can click the Related Patients dropdown to see the others.
Additional Information
- You can change the primary contact or guarantor for a specific patient at a later time as needed.
- You can later add patient records, at one time, as members of a household by linking them to the same primary contact.
- When you add insurance information for the primary guarantor, there is an Add Dependents window, which is similar to the Create New Household window and helps you quickly add insurance to the entire household.
- For more information, see Adding new households or watch Adding a New Household.