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 set a clinic for each operatory. When an appointment is scheduled in that operatory, the appointment then gets assigned to that clinic.  If the operatory has no clinic set, then the clinic for the appointment is based on the clinic of the patient.  The default place of service for the clinic also gets set for 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.  See the section below regarding default clinics.

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

Providers
If one provider is roaming between multiple clinics, it's best at this time to set up a separate provider for each clinic.  The reason is not so much for reporting as it is for E-claims. Starting with version 11.1, it is safe to let one provider roam between multiple clinics as long as the reporting consequences are considered as described below.  If setting up separate providers for each provider/clinic combination, use a naming convention when choosing the abbreviation for the provider that lets you easily see which clinic the provider belongs to. 

Reporting
Financial reports can be run by Provider or by Clinic, although some of the less-used reports do not have a clinic filter.  If you choose to run reports by provider, choose all providers for that clinic.  If, instead, you choose to run reports by clinic, only change the clinic selection, leaving the provider selection set to all.  If you choose to run all reports by clinic, custom reports will be easier to write because there will be no need to supply a list of providers.

E-Claims
Open Dental has good support for sending e-claims from multiple 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.

Default Clinics
Prior to Version 12.1, there was no way to set default clinics for new patients. Starting with Version 12.1, the administrator should go to the Security window, and ensure that each user has a default clinic set.  When a new patient is added, the clinic for the current user will be assigned to that patient by default, although it can easily be changed. When a patient is added to an existing family, the clinic of the family is assigned rather than the clinic of the current user.

Clinics for new patients will not be set during HL7 import from eCW.  Clinics may also not be set if Open Dental was used initially without the clinic feature turned on.  In this case, all patients from the first clinic will have a ClinicNum of zero, while all patients added recently will probably be assigned to one or more clinics.  Run the Database Maintenance tool to display any patients with no clinic assigned.

If you have the clinics feature turned on, then it's going to be very important that all patients have a clinic assigned.  You may need to have us provide a small Conversion service for you in order to assign patients, procedures, payments, etc. with ClinicNum of zero to the correct clinic.

If any patients do not have a clinic assigned, then Patient Payments and Adjustments will default to the wrong clinic. Most objects will be assigned based on the appointment/operatory as described further above.  But patient payments and adjustments will not.  It's easy to change them, but it's something to be aware of.