The crown was presented three weeks ago. The patient said “let me check with my spouse” and nobody has heard from them since. Open Dental has that crown recorded with a status of treatment planned, and it will sit there until somebody runs the right list.
Which Open Dental report shows unscheduled treatment?
There are two, and they answer different questions.
The Unscheduled List shows appointments that were made and then taken off the schedule. In Open Dental, when you break an appointment or drag it to the Unscheduled area of the Appointments module, it does not vanish. It becomes an unscheduled appointment, with its procedures still attached. The list shows those.
The Treatment Finder shows procedures that are treatment planned and have no appointment at all. This is the bigger pool. It covers the crown that was presented and never booked in the first place.
Both are opened from the Reports menu. If you only have time for one, run the Treatment Finder. The Unscheduled List tends to be shorter and is usually worked by the scheduler already.
How do I run the Treatment Finder?
- Open it from the Reports menu.
- Set the provider. Leave it on all providers for a whole-practice view, or pick one when you are preparing numbers for a specific doctor.
- Set the date range for the treatment plan. The default looks at everything. Narrowing it to the last twelve months removes stale plans from patients who have since moved.
- Set the minimum amount. $500 is a sensible floor for the first pass. It leaves out single fillings and brings up crowns, bridges, implants and perio treatment.
- Tick “exclude patients with a scheduled appointment” or the equivalent option, so the list shows only people with nothing on the calendar.
- Run the list and sort by Amount, highest first.
The report also has an insurance option that limits the list to patients with annual maximum remaining. Use it in October and November.
What is each row telling me?
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Patient | Name and age, with the guarantor shown if different |
| Last visit | The last completed procedure of any kind |
| Amount | Total fee of the treatment planned procedures, at the practice fee |
| Ins remaining | Annual maximum left on the primary plan, if a plan is attached |
| Next appt | Blank is what you are looking for |
The Amount column is the practice fee, not the expected collection. A $1,240 crown on a PPO patient will not bring in $1,240. Mentally apply your average write-off when you prioritise.
Open Dental stores these rows in procedurelog with ProcStatus set to TP (treatment planned). Every procedure that later gets scheduled keeps the same ProcNum, which is how it can later be matched to an appointment and then to a completed status and a payment.
A worked example
A two-doctor practice runs the Treatment Finder with a $500 minimum, a twelve-month window and patients with no appointment. It returns 61 patients. The Amount column totals $38,420.
Sorting by Amount puts a $4,800 implant and crown at the top, then three crowns around $1,240 each, then a run of perio treatment at $900 to $1,100. That order is the call list.
Now the honest part. $38,420 is found. It is what the practice has already diagnosed and the patient has already heard about. None of it is recovered until it is booked, completed and paid. If the treatment coordinator books eight patients from this list in the first month and five of them complete and pay, the recovered figure is the sum of those five, not $38,420.
What should the treatment coordinator do with the list?
Work the top of the list first. For each patient, open the Treatment Plan module and check the plan still makes sense, then look at the Account module for an outstanding balance that might be the real reason they went quiet.
Make a note in the Commlog after each contact. Nothing on the Treatment Finder shows you who has already been called twice this month, so your Commlog entries are the only thing stopping a patient getting the same call from two people.
What Calibic adds
Revenue Recovery is LIVE for Open Dental. Calibic reads procedurelog, appointment and patient read-only and builds the same list, ranked by amount and age of the plan, then keeps watching. When a procedure moves from TP to scheduled, then to complete, then a payment posts against the account, that patient moves from “found” to “recovered” on the Recovered card. If the patient never books, they stay on the list and the count on the Daily Huddle stays honest.
Calibic does not write to the Treatment Plan module or add Commlog entries. It cannot change a record.
Try the Treatment Finder this week, then compare it with the list on the Revenue Recovery product page. The sibling guide covers the Open Dental recall report, and the Open Dental integration page lists every table Calibic reads.