Responsible Party Names Only
The Patient Report prints patient names. This is sometimes what you want, and at other times it may not be. For example, if an account has four patients and they all qualify to print, then all four patients will print. If your needs require only one name per account, click the Responsible Party Names Only option. The report will print only one name per account, and that name will be whoever is entered as the responsible party for the account. The Patient Report itself will change in format when this choice is selected. The column heading will be:

• Account Name
• Account Number
• Balance
• Due Now
• DDS (assigned doctor)
• Last Posting Date (usually coincides with last visit date)
• Home Telephone
• Work Telephone
• Work Extension

The Patient Report Options
The Patient Report Parameters screen is loaded with options. The function of most is quite obvious, but we will now discuss the options that require some explanation:

• Patient Birthday Range - You will be asked to enter two ranges. The starting range indicating a month and day, and an ending range indicating a month and day. For example, May 1 to May 7 will display all patients whose birthdays fall with this range. The years that they were born are not a factor.
• Limit By Employer, Benefit Plan, Carrier - You are first asked if you want to search by a Specific (employer, benefit plan, or carrier) or a Search Group. Search Groups are names you create to gather these items together. How do you print a report for all patients who have Blue Cross? If you have nine Blue Cross entries in you carrier file (with slightly different addresses), a specific carrier search will require nine individual Patient Report printing to account for all of them. However, if you have created a carrier search group call that all the Blue Cross carrier share, then you could perform the search on the Blue Cross Group and one printing would gather all the patients for all the Blue Cross carriers together in one report.
• Limit By Employer, Benefit Plan, Carrier KeyWord - This option can have the same effect as the Search Group discussed above, and without the trouble of marking individual records with a Search Group Entry. A KeyWord is a common string of characters that appear somewhere in the name. For example, if you want to find all patients who work for Blue Diamond Cement Company and you search for the word “blue”, you will find all those people, but you will also find Blue Hornet Trucking, The Blue Moon Café, and the Bluefish Restaurant. Make your Keyword specific enough so it finds only the entity you are looking for.
• Non-Zero Balance or Treatment Not Complete - These are people in accounts that are considered active. Active means that you are still working on them (treatment not complete) or they still owe money (non-zero balance).
• First Visit Date Range - You can use the Patient Report as a new patient report will this option.
• Include/Exclude If Word Letter Sent - You will be asked to select the name of a MS Word Document and enter how many days since the letter was mailed (printed would be more accurate). You can include or exclude patients based on these parameters. This is fully discussed in the chapter on MS Word Merge Letter Printing.