This article will explain the steps required to set up Restorative Charting. Your office will only need to do this when beginning to use MacPractice for the first time. We highly recommend that if you run into any trouble, don't hesitate to contact MacPractice Support. 

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The Charting Set Up Guide contains these sections.

Initial Setup

This section will cover different options that will assist you with customizing Preferences and References to meet the needs of your practice.

Tooth Number Reference

First, you will want to review the Tooth Number Reference, located in References Ability > Tooth Numbers.

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For the majority of US offices, you will want to utilize the Default preset, as it is a relatively standard numbering scheme. If you don't use that, you will want to add a new preset by clicking the Green Plus in the Sidebar. Once a new preset is named, you can then select any tooth or quadrant which will highlight the tooth or quadrants numbers in green. When highlighted, simply type the number or letters and the green highlighted section will be replaced with what you type.
Once you have determined which preset you are going to use, you will need to navigate to Preferences > Localization > Tooth Numbering, and select your Tooth Number set from the Tooth Numbering drop down menu. If you had saved a new Tooth Number preset, it will be present here.

New Charge Preferences

By default, MacPractice will prevent the Payment and Insurance Claim prompts from appearing if you are adding procedures in the Dental tab. However, you may want to confirm that this is set up appropriately.
Navigate to Preferences > Ledger > New Charge tab.

The highlighted section indicates the setting that needs to be enabled, "Ignore These Settings in the Charting Ability". This will ensure that when posting charges in the Dental Tab, you are not prompted to follow up immediately by posting payments and creating insurance claims.

Follow-Up/Recall Preferences

If your office utilizes or plans on utilizing Follow-Ups/Recalls, you may want to configure Ledger Preferences to prompt to schedule a Follow-Up/Recall Appointment when posting a charge that has a Follow-Up/Recall tied to it. This Preferences lies within Preferences > Ledger > General Tab.

Highlighting Options

In the Patient Ability, on the Dental Tab, you can access Dental Charts by accessing either Patient Chart, or Treatment Plans/Completed Procedures in an Incident. In the upper right corner of the window, you can see a Gear icon indicated in the screenshot below.

By clicking on the color blocks by Completed Procedures, Pre-Existing, and Treatment Plans, you can customize the colors associated with each of those categories to display however you wish. By default, MacPractice will display out of office work in blue (Pre-Existing), in office work in green (Completed Procedures), and treatment planned work in red (Treatment Plans).

Hide Material Colors

 In the same gear icon as listed in the above screenshot, there is a checkbox labeled "Hide Material Colors". This is useful and recommended for new users of MacPractice, as it will simplify charted procedures to display only as the three set colors for Completed Procedures, Pre-Existing Procedures, and Treatment Plan procedures.
However, with this option unchecked, it will differentiate the type of material used for some procedures, so at a glance you can recognize what is being used. These can be customized in References - Charting Material Colors.

Common Clinical Notes

Next, you'll want to set up commonly used Clinical Notes to save you time with entry in the future. Navigate to the References Ability > Common Clinical Notes.

From here, you can add or delete Common Clinical Notes by clicking on the Green Plus and Red Minus in the sidebar. You can name the note, and customize the text that will appear in the note.

When entering Clinical Notes on procedures in the Patient Ability > Dental Tab, you can either type the name of the Common Clinical Note, or a phrase or word within a Common Clinical Note, and the note will populate in a list as seen in the screenshot below. You can use the mouse to select the desired Clinical Note.

Print Surfaces Preference

There's one more Preference to review, located within Preferences > Restorative Charting.

The description goes into detail, but essentially this option, if enabled, will print Tooth Surfaces on the Ledger, Claim forms, or Treatment plans in the order which they were entered. Your office may prefer the tooth surfaces are ordered in a more traditional way, such as "MODBL" for posterior teeth, or "MIDFL" for anterior teeth. If you do, you will want to uncheck this box. Otherwise, leave this box checked.
For more information on Restorative Charting Preferences, please refer to Preferences - Restorative Charting.

Charting Code Map Setup 

The Charting Code Map is accessible via the Managers Ability > Charting Code Map on the MacPractice Server only. 

This Manager controls how your Charting Options within Restorative Charting links to your Fee Schedule and your procedure codes within the Fee Schedule. 

MacPractice is configured with a standard Charting Code Map that should suffice for the majority of offices by default. However, we will cover how to configure the Charting Code Map to fit your needs.
The majority of this set up will require that you have a Fee Schedule with all of your Dental codes present. If you haven't already set up a Fee Schedule, you will want to configure that first before proceeding.

Import the Charting Code Map

 First, if you have an exported Charting Code Map file, you can import it by clicking the "Import" button in the lower right corner of the Charting Code Map window, visible in the screenshot above. If you are just setting up MacPractice, you likely will not have one, or if you have it would have been provided by MacPractice Support.

Mapping New Codes

Next, you will want to start to map codes to different charting categories. This will tie the code to that category, so when you attempt to chart it by right clicking on a tooth and selecting a procedure, it will link to the appropriate code.

The upper left drop down menu indicates the currently selected Fee Schedule. Select the Fee Schedule that contains all of your dental procedure codes, and they will populate in the upper half of this window, as seen in the screenshot above. Blue codes have already been used in the charting code map, and cannot be used in multiple places. Black codes have not been used.

To assign a code to a particular category, drag and drop the code above to the desired category below. 

You'll note that some categories have sub-categories. You can also drag codes to these sub-categories for more specialized situations. For example, in Crowns, there are sub-categories for Full, 3/4, Provisional, Prefab, and Temp. Each of those can have sub-categories for a particular type of material, etc.
You can also remove codes from a category by clicking on the code listed in a category, and pressing the delete key on your keyboard.

You can add codes at your leisure, but if you ever need to remove a code, ensure there is at least something in that category, even if it's a dummy code. This will ensure you do not lose this category or sub-category. If you do this in error, you will need to revert to the default Charting Code Map.
For more information on related subjects, please refer to...

• Managers - Charting Code Map - Mapping Codes 

• Mapping Additional Fee Schedules  

• Categories and Subcategories

• Deleting existing procedures

Charting Shortcuts 

Our final task to set up Restorative Charting is setting up Charting Shortcuts to save you time when you have a common set of procedures you use when accessing the Dental chart.

MacPractice by default has several charting shortcuts pre-set to assist you, but you can also add to, edit, and delete these pre-sets. On a fresh installation, you will need to edit these shortcuts to correspond with your Fee Schedule.

To apply a shortcut to a tooth, simply click on the tooth, then click on the desired shortcut.

To add a new shortcut, simply click on the ellipses icon in the Charting Shortcuts section. This will open a set-up window where you can select the Fee, Tooth Condition, or Supercode to tie the shortcut to. You can also select the Surface to be applied to if relevant, and choose the Icon image.

To edit (or delete) a pre-existing shortcut, simply right click on the shortcut in question. Some of these shortcuts will require you have a tooth selected before you can right click on them. A set-up box will appear.

From here, you can either choose to select a Fee to tie the shortcut to, a Tooth Condition, or a Supercode. You can also adjust the Icon Image, or change which Surface the shortcut will apply to. If you wish to delete a shortcut, simply click the red X in the window.

Congratulations! You've finished setting up Restorative Charting! Click here for a guide on how to use Restorative Charting.