Hello world! I saw a short-lived thread regarding use of OpenEMR in a dental setting, and I would like to bring this issue back to life. It appears to me the big players in dental management software aren’t interested (for many reasons) in treating dentistry as a subspecialty of medicine. I personally am trying to advocate for this integration, but as of yet there is no platform to make this easy.
I am examining the feasibility of using OpenEMR in a dental setting.
There are dental codes available. The ADA offers CDT codes as an alternative to CPTs. (I believe you need a license.) Also, for diagnoses, SNODENT is available to correspond to SNOMED.
How customizable are the forms in OpenEMR. I guess the challenge would be to figure out all the charting needs of a dentist and create template forms for items such as periodontal charting, DMFS/T, etc… Then logic should be able to be performed on data from these forms. For example, the change in probing depth from two periodontal charts performed before and after cleanings should be calculated and displayed.
Is anyone interested in a project of analyzing what dentists will need in terms of forms/chart notes and how to organize those chart notes and their contained data elements?
Please feel free to use this thread to bring up and concerns or ideas…
I am happy that you brought up this issue and i think issues like this need to be very actively addressed. I have similar concerns that if OpenEMR can be used for Eye Hospital, and if modification be required, what programming skills are required and what level.
OpenEMR is fully customizable, a benefit to having open source. The first thing to do is figure out specifically what your trying to do (forms, functionality, etc.) and then can figure out how much work it will take.
-brady
I’m not experienced with business operations, so I’m not quite sure of the similarities/differences between insurance claims/clearinghouses. With regards to coding, the ADA has CDT codes corresponding to dental procedures. Diagnosis coding is less well developed.
I would imagine its pretty fundamental for forms to be able to have their own custom tables in the db, but is there a way to perform logic on data within and between forms? For example, a form has periodontal charting and you would like to measure progress by subtracting the values charted at two different points in time and then display the results somewhere. (As a report or SQL result?)
I believe most of the data needs in dentistry can be handled via forms and simple manipulation of data from these forms. Billing might be a different beast, but I’m not very familiar with private practice billing.