Useful Features of the Patient Report Parameters Screen
The Patient Report Parameters screen has several features you might find useful in generating merge letters. These are:

• First Visit Date Range - This will find patients who are new to the office. Use this in conjunction with Diamond Dental Software’s Welcome To the Practice letter.
• Patient Birthday Range - Use this to find patients who have a birthday coming up and send them Diamond Dental Software’s Birthday letter.
• Include If Sent Word Letter - See discussion about this item above in the Accounts Receivable section.
• Exclude If Sent Word Letter - See discussion about this item above in the Accounts Receivable section.

The Patient Report has a multitude of options and the PTmerge.doc file has numerous fields making the merge letter possibilities unlimited. The ability to create your own merge letter documents will be discussed later in this section.

Patient Report - Responsible Party Names Only
When using the Responsible Party Names Only option from the Patient Report Parameters screen, the data records will be limited to only the responsible party names of the patients who qualified for the report. So if you want to send a letter to all Blue Cross patients, there will be only one letter generated per household, not multiple letters for each family member who is a patient. With the exception of the output, much is the same with the Patient Report when using the Responsible Party option as was discussed earler. We will now highlight the differences.

Patient Report (Responsible Party Only) Data File (PTAmerge.doc)
The data file that Diamond Dental Software creates for the Patient Report using the Responsible Party Only option is PTAmerge.doc. This is a different file with different fields then that created for the regular Patient Report output which was PTmerge.doc. The PTAmerge.doc file is created in the Diamond Dental Software directory (STARWIN) unless you modified this setting in the Microsoft Word Mail Merge Maintenance screen. The PTAmerge.doc file data has the following fields (all fields refer to the responsible party for the account):

• Account_ID
• FirstName
• MI (middle initial)
• LastName
• Title
• SrJr
• SalutationName (whatever was entered in this field by user)
• FullFormalName (such as Mr. Thomas A. Edison Sr.)
• FirstNamePlusMI (such as Alfred E.)
• Street_Address
• City
• State
• Zip_Code
• HomePhone
• WorkPhone
• WorkExtension
• BalanceAmount
• DueNowAmount
• CurrentAmount
• Over30Days
• Over60Days
• Over90Days
• LastPaymentDate
• LastPaymentAmount (from the patient)
• LastStatementDate
• First_DDS (first name of assigned doctor)
• Last_DDS
• Degree_DDS