Dentrix Extracting Patient Database- 7.13 (1)

DENTRIX
HOW TO EXTRACT A PATIENT DATABASE FOR YOUR MAILER WITH VIVA CONCEPTS
WHAT YOU NEED BEFORE YOU START:
 A fast computer with the Dentrix program.
 Microsoft Excel on that same computer.
 The computer must be connected to the internet.
NOTE:
Once the list is received at Viva Concepts, every name and address will be gone through and “de- duplicated”. This means that if there are patients that have the same last name at the same address, only one mailer will be sent per household to eliminate multiple mailers going to the same address. If you would prefer to not have this done, please let your Viva representative know.
TO EXTRACT THE LIST:
0. Determine what kind of patient you would like to receive the mailer. This would mean determining if you would like to send the mailers to only active patients, or to both inactive and active patients, etc. Then determine what date range of the patient’s last visit you would like to target.
Note: Dates starting or ending that are nearer to the present are better parameters for the patient list you will make for the Viva mailer, for two reasons. 1) Their addresses will be more current and you will have a much higher percentage of good recipients for the mailer, and 2) More current patients are those that will give the best referrals of your office to their friends and family as they still recognize your practice, and you will have a higher response with the “new patients only” card that is inside the mailer.
Go over this with your Viva representative if you have any questions.
1. Open Dentrix.
2. Open Office Manager.
3. Open Letters.
4. Choose Misc.


5. Highlight Patient Report by Filters and then click Edit. A new box comes up, and this is where you will find the different options you can select to create your patient list. Here it is below:
6. Under Status, select what kind of patient status you would like to target, as per step 1 above.
7. Under Gender, ensure that Male and Female are selected.
8. Under Position, ensure Married, Single, and Other are selected. (Do not click Child, unless you have a pediatric practice or see a lot of pediatric patients.)
9. Balance aging doesn’t need anything selected unless you would prefer to.
10. With the option to Use Privacy Request for “No correspondence” to skip patients, click Applies for Patients and Guarantors so that those patients that do not want anything in the mail from your practice continue to do so.
11. The remainder of this box allows you to choose more specifically what patients to put on your list. The first thing to do is to make sure that EVERY field is EMPTY. Any data in these can severely restrict the number of patients that come on to the list.
12. In the second column of these options, second from the top, find Last Visit Date. Click on the double arrows >>. Now put whichever date range wanted from step 0 above in the From and To fields. Select “Ok” in this little box to save this.


13. Now go to the top left of the filter window, and you will find a Data Fields tab. Click on this, and you will find where you can select exactly what data goes on to the patient list created. Here it is below:
14. Ensure that the patient Last Name, First Name, Address, City, State and Zip code have a check mark next to each.
15. Delete all other check marks through the rest of the options. We do not need the patient’s phone number, their provider or anything like this. If you would like to specifically target or eliminate a patient that uses a type of insurance, put a check mark on the “Pr Ins Name” box and this will show up on the list.
16. Now click Ok at the bottom.
17. Click Create/Merge.
18. You will see four choices. Choose Create Data File ONLY and then Ok. This way you will not have the list get recorded in the journal or get put into a template (for recall cards, etc).
19. Dentrix will now begin querying the full patient database, looking to find every patient who qualifies for each of the filter criteria you put into steps 5-11 above. It may take some time for Dentrix to do this. When done, the counting screen will simply disappear.
20. Click the View List button.
21. You will now have a text document that looks like a lot of random information. Once this data is put into Microsoft Excel, it will be a useable list.


22. In the text document, select Edit, then Select All. Everything should now be highlighted.
23. Now go back to Edit, and select Copy.
24. Open Microsoft Excel on your computer.
25. Under Home, click Paste. (If you do not have a “Home” section, go next to Edit and then select Paste.)
26. The patient list should now be easily readable and neatly in columns. Save the list on to your Desktop and call it “YOUR PRACTICE NAME -- Viva List”.
27. Look over the list you now have and scroll to the bottom to see how many names and addresses you were able to get from your search. Look over the TROUBLESHOOTING area below to ensure that your list does not have any issues and if so follow the steps listed to address them.
28. If you have the required number of names and addresses on the list you created (more is always better than the exact number as the list will be gone through and de-duplicated as covered in the NOTE above), upload the list to your Viva dashboard. Ask your Representative if you need help with this.
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TROUBLESHOOTING:
1) TOO FEW NAMES AND ADDRESSES THAN THE AMOUNT NEEDED FOR YOUR MAILER:
 If there are less on the list than the amount you need for your mailer, go back to Step 1 and start again (making sure to keep the last search’s list open in Excel).
 Once you reach step 11 above, you need to change the Last Visit Date to one year prior. This means that the To field should be one day before what you listed as your from date in your previous search, and the From field should be one year before that.
For example: In your original list, in Last Visit Date, you put in the From field Jan 1, 2010 and the To date as two years later, or Jan 1, 2012. To do one year prior, you would now make the From field as Dec 31, 2008 and the To date as Dec 31, 2009, or one day before the previous search’s From date.
Or, if the original search was: From: 1/1/10 To: 1/1/12 Put these new dates in your new search: From: 12/31/08 To: 12/31/09 (If you have any question on this, call Nicole at Viva Concepts at 818-243-1363 ext. 248)
 Now go through the rest of the steps, to Step 19 and View List.
 Follow through Steps 20-22 to Copy this new list, but now Paste it in Excel on the bottom
of the list you previously created. Scroll down and look at how many you now have.
 Now click Save on that Excel file again, ensuring that it is saved to your Desktop as “YOUR
PRACTICE NAME -- Viva List” and then close Excel.
 Upload the list to your Viva Dashboard.
Do not repeat these steps as we do not want to go any further back than this time period.


2) FEW TO NO NAMES ON THE LIST: If you come up with an extremely small list in your original search, and your practice has been in operation for at least 2 years, go back to step 10 above and ensure that every field is actually empty. This may require that you click on EVERY double arrow and delete any check mark, any date marked, anything at all in any of these fields except for what is listed in step 11 with Last Visit Date.
3) THE DATA DOES NOT PASTE CORRECTLY INTO EXCEL: If when you paste the list from the Notepad/Text document into Excel, and it does not look like a very neat organized list or if you have any problem at all pasting the data into Excel, go back to the Notepad/Text document and save that as “YOUR PRACTICE NAME -- Viva List” on your desktop. Then upload the text file to your Viva Dashboard.
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