Paperless Technologies  

PT Dental is available at www.gopaperlessnow.com.  There is a functional 2-way bridge to handle Registration Forms. 

In the Program Links setup, enable both buttons.  By default, they will both show in the Family module.  The first will be called PT Dental.  The second will be called PT Update.

You will always create the patient first in Open Dental.  This patient will now have an automatically assigned PatNum.  Click the PT Dental button to send the patient data to PT Dental.  Now, both programs will have the same patient data.  You will also use the PT Dental button any time you wish to open the patient in PT Dental.  If the patient fills out a form in PT Dental, whether online or in the office, certain patient data may need to be updated.  This includes demographics, insurance, referral, and med alerts.  You can use the button in PT Dental to send this information to OD.  You will see a box come up in OD informing you that the transfer was succussful.  See the newly created Commlog entry for details that couldn't be automatically transferred, such as insurance and referral.  If you ever make changes in OD which you wish to send to PT Dental, use the PT Update button in the OD toolbar. 

Technical Details (for programmers or support staff)
The data transfer involves about 6 different files, all in C:\PT\USI.  This path is hard coded. Both PT Dental and OD know which filenames to use when passing data back and forth. They also know how to watch for new files so that there is no delay.  The files involved get deleted immediately after they are consumed.  The OD PatNum is used as the primary key in all data transfers.  So any field can be changed, including last name, first name, and birthdate without confusing the synchronization functionality. Patients may use PT Dental to fill out forms in the office or online.  When they do it online, PT Dental is responsible for synchronizing the data between its website and each locally installed PT Dental program.  From there, the data is transferred to OD. PT Dental will also provide a scripting program that simulates mouseclicks and keystrokes to interact with Open Dental.

The PT Dental script attempts to open the Open Dental Referrals window for the patient.  But there is no button in the user interface.  So Open Dental allows a key shortcut of Ctrl-Alt-R.  The script then uses this keystroke to open the Referrals window.  Unfortunately, the Ctrl-Alt-R combination doesn't work on some computers.  Nobody knows why.  So in version 6.4.21, we also added Ctrl-X as a keystroke that will open the Referrals window.  The PT Dental script should be using the newer keystroke.