Clinics 

You must have the clinic feature unhidden from the Show Features setup in order to see clinics.

In the Main Menu, select Lists | Clinics:

Add a new clinic or double click on an existing one to edit:

There are many places in the program where you can attach a clinic, including Patient, Payment, Claim Payment, Deposit Slip, Procedure, Appointment, Operatory, and Claim.

If you don't have any clinics, then the address that gets put on all insurance Claims is the one from Practice setup. But if you are using the clinic feature, you can assign a clinic to each claim, and the address of the clinic is the one that goes on the claim.

You can assign each operatory to a clinic. When you make an appointment in that operatory, the clinic then gets assigned to that appointment. When you complete that appointment, the clinic gets assigned to each procedure on that appointment. The default place of service for the clinic also gets assigned to each procedure. That way, you can have accurate data for complex reports regarding the exact clinic and place of service where each procedure was performed. This is especially useful if your 'clinics' are mobile vans or nursing homes. If you are using mobile vans, then the clinic tracks which van the service was performed in, while the patient Site tracks the name of the school or community location.

The most important table associated with clinics is the patient table, because each payment and claim payment will default to the clinic assigned to the patient. At the end of the day, you will want to print a separate Deposit Slip for each clinic. At the top of the deposit slip window, you can select specific clinics.

If you have multiple physical clinics, see the section on Multiple Server support. Open Dental can handle this situation with ease.

Providers and Reporting
All financial reports are based on the Provider field.  So if one provider is roaming between multiple clinics, then you must set up a separate provider for each clinic.  Use a naming convention when choosing the abbreviation for the provider that lets you easily see which clinic the provider belongs to.  To run a financial report for one clinic, choose all providers for that clinic.

Alternatively, financial reports can be based on Clinic instead of Provider.  One advantage is that providers can do treatment at multiple clinics, but there are still some advantages to using separate providers, so do not make this change lightly. More importantly, custom reports are easier to write because there is no need to supply a list of providers.  There is a related Feature Request #1063 for a button in each report window that lets you automatically select all providers for a given clinic.

E-Claims
Open Dental has good support for sending e-claims from mulitple clinics on one database. First, turn on the Clinic feature, and make sure that each procedure is being assinged to the correct clinic as it is completed.  This is made easier by assigning clinics to operatories and placing appointments in those operatories.  When creating a Claim, the claim will also be assigned a clinic based on the attached procedures.  The only way to change the clinic for a claim is to delete the claim, change all the procedures, and recreate the claim.  Send all claims through the Send Claims window rather than from the bottom of the Edit Claim window.  In the Send Claims window, use the combo box at the top to only show one clinic.  Then use the dropdown list on the Send button to pick which clearinghouse to send to. Two different Clearinghouse entries will have been set up, one for each clinic.  Each clearinghouse entry will use a different clearinghouse account. It's also a good idea to explain to the clearinghouse that two different clinics with different addresses are being used.  This is known to work with ClaimConnect, but probably doesn't work with other clearinghouses because of how claims are uploaded.

Security
In the Security window, a user can be associated with a clinic. This causes only patients from that clinic to show in the Select Patient window, making it impossible to accidentally select a patient from the wrong clinic.  However, there are other ways to select a patient, so this cannot be considered completely secure.  The most obvious way to select a patient from a different clinic would be to click once on an appointment of theirs.  If Appointment Views are organized by clinic, then this won't happen accidentally.  But someone could do it intentionally.  It is also possible to pick a patient from a different clinic using some of the Appointment Lists.

Replication
When using the Clinics feature with Replication, each workstation is not aware of which clinic it belongs to.  This is fairly simple planned enhancement to the replication table, but it's not done yet.  What that means is that as each new patient is added, it's going to be very important to set their clinic from the Patient Edit window.  If this is not done, then Patient Payments and Adjustments will default to the wrong clinic. Most objects will be assigned based on the appointment/operatory.  But patient payments and adjustments will not.  It's easy to change them, but it's something to be aware of.