Route Slips or Patient Visit Forms: Which is Right for Your Office?

Offices that are “paperless” can still require some paper. In Dentrix, you have two different paper options that can help to complete a successful patient transition throughout the office: the Patient Visit Form, or a route slip. Both are beneficial to use at different points during the patient appointment. Route slips and Patient Visits Forms are documents that have pertinent patient information such as their health history, outstanding treatment, account balance, and insurance information can be very useful to use throughout the patient’s appointment.

These forms can be used in the morning meeting or Daily Huddle and discuss topics among the team such as:

• Patients with Health History items that may require extra attention
• Patients who need to stop at the front desk and pay their account balance
• Patients with outstanding treatment that needs to be scheduled

A route slip or Patient Visit Form can also be a useful tool for the clinical team to refer to when the patient is being treated in the operatory. Staff members can easily see what the patient is coming in for, and if there is any outstanding treatment that we may be able to add to today’s appointment. The route slip or Patient Visit Form can also provide a good place for the assistant and hygienist to make quick notes which they can refer to when writing their clinical notes.

I find that having a route slip or Patient Visit Form can be especially useful during patient checkout. Any additional procedures that were added to the patient’s appointment can be noted on either of these forms and handed to the front desk. This eliminates communication problems if the front desk team is busy while the patient is brought to the desk to check out. 

Patient route slips and the Patient Visit Form each have important information that is useful to your office staff. Which form you choose to use in your office will depend on the type of information you want to see. 

Route Slips

The route slip is very clean and easy to read. It includes Patient Notes (from the Family File), the patient’s Health History, patient account balance and insurance information, continuing care information for the patient and other family members in their Family File (including scheduled appointments for those types of procedures), and treatment plan information. 

While I like the route slips, they aren’t customizable, and some offices prefer to choose what type of information is being displayed. 

Patient Visit Forms

If you would prefer to customize your form, you should use the Patient Visit Form, which allows you to display or hide patient information including Patient Notes, patient alerts, account information, insurance information and more. 

You also have the option save these settings as the default for when you generate them in the future.

Choose what you want to display on your Patient Visit Forms.

I recommend you view both the patient route slip and the Patient Visit Form for an upcoming patient appointment. Review it with your team and determine which is best for your office based on the type of information you want to see.

For additional information, see the following topics in Dentrix Help:

• Printing patient route slips
• Generating Patient Visit Forms

Email me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.


Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

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