Clinical catalogue

By the end of this page you'll have a working clinical catalogue: the codes your clinicians chart and plan with, the fees each one carries, the price lists patients are charged under, the recall types that bring patients back, and the forms patients fill in.

The Clinical catalogue and Clinical templates sections of Settings are visible to everyone who sees the Clinical workspace, and the NHS or Insurance section to a practice in the country it serves. Only owners and managers can change it; clinicians read it.

Defaults installed for you

Every practice starts with a researched set of clinical defaults for its country, installed when the practice is created:

• practice codes for examinations, radiographs, hygiene, restorative, endodontic, prosthodontic, surgical, periodontal, orthodontic and cosmetic work, each with the chart icon and colour it draws with, plus the common findings a chart records (including Supernumerary tooth, which the chart's supernumerary slots record) and the tooth statuses and diagnoses of the chart's tooth menu (Unerupted, Partially erupted, Missing, Extracted, Implanted, Retained root; Drifted or rotated mesially or distally, Over erupted, Impacted, Mobility);
• the ten categories those codes sit in;
• three recall types (Examination and Hygiene every 6 months, Periodontal review every 3 months), triggered by the codes that complete them;
• a Standard fees schedule with a Private price list, and indicative fees on every researched code;
• appointment types, three treatment rooms per site, treatment templates, clinical note templates, letter templates, a Medical history form and ten consent forms;
• the country's common dental medicines for Medications, each with its form and strength only.

A UK practice also gets the NHS band items; an English practice gets the NHS price list too. A US practice's codes carry CDT-equivalent names without the ADA's D-numbers, which arrive with the practice's CDT licence entitlement. An Italian practice gets everything in Italian with euro fees. Any other country gets the English set without fees.

Each clinical catalogue and template page ends with a small Restore defaults line under its list (appointment types and operatories do not have one: once seeded, those lists are the practice's own). It names what that page is missing against the set above; Restore defaults adds only that, and never changes or removes a row you created, edited or archived — hover the link for that reminder. When nothing is missing the link is greyed out and the line reads All defaults present.

Procedure codes

A code is one thing the practice plans, charts or charges. Each code has:

Charts as existing and Treats offer your practice's active finding codes; a finding code that is archived later stays where it was already chosen. A finding code has none of the last three fields, and no Note template. Note template offers your practice's live note templates; one archived later stays where it was chosen. The default codes come with their template already set: examinations, hygiene, fillings and crowns, extractions, root canals and emergency visits each suggest the default template of the same name.

CDT codes (US) arrive with the practice's ADA licence entitlement; until then the Kind picker offers the practice, retail and finding kinds, plus the NHS band kind at a UK practice. NHS band and the NHS price-list kind are offered — and accepted — only in the UK. Click Edit on a row to change everything but its code and kind.

What the default codes treat

The default set comes with these filled in, and you can change them on any code:

FILL-1, FILL-2 and FILL-3 form the FILL surface family with 1, 2 and 3 surfaces.

Bridge codes

In the default set, BRIDGE-U (bridge, per unit), DENT-P and DENT-C (partial dentures) and SPLINT are charted over several teeth; a full denture covers its whole arch, so it needs no tick. A UK or Italian practice charges a bridge per unit with the same code on every tooth, so it leaves Pontic code empty.

A US practice bills a bridge by role, with a CDT code for the retainers and another for the pontics. Once your CDT codes have arrived, open your retainer code (for example D6750), tick Charted over several teeth, and pick your pontic code (for example D6240) under Pontic code. A bridge charted with the retainer code then gives each pontic the pontic code, and every unit is priced and claimed on its own code.

Fees & prices

Settings → Fees & prices prices every active code in one fee schedule at a time.

Fees are never edited in place. Setting a fee adds a new revision from its effective date, so a procedure charted last month keeps citing the revision it was priced with. Use Retire only for a revision entered by mistake; no new procedure can cite it. Once it is retired you can set the right fee for the same date.

A code's prices and history

Click History beside a code's name to open every revision of it: each price with its quantity ("£90.00 each from 3 units"), the date it applies from, its site, and whether it is Live, Not yet in force or Retired. With Every site chosen you see the practice's revisions and each site's, named; with a site chosen, only that site's. Retired revisions stay hidden until you turn on Show retired. A live revision can be retired from here too.

When a treatment is priced, the site's own revisions are chosen before the quantity, then the price for the largest From units the treatment reaches, then the latest date.

Prices for one site

A site's price replaces the practice price at that site — it is not added to it. A treatment is priced from its own site's revisions when that site has a price for the code, and from the practice's otherwise; once a site prices a code, the practice's prices for that code, including any quantity tiers, are not used there. The same lookup prices the chart, treatment plans and insurance estimates.

With a site chosen, each code shows that site's price on the site's own date, or the practice price in muted text marked Practice price where the site has no price for the code at all, and Set adds a revision for that site only. A code the site prices only from a higher quantity shows Not priced: one unit has no fee there. Retire a site's revisions and the site falls back to the practice price. An archived location cannot be given prices.

Price list overrides

The second table holds a price list's overrides. Pick the list under Price list overrides. Each code shows what the list charges and where each value comes from: "£100.00 · from schedule" or "£0.00 · set on this list" for the fee, and the tax treatment "from the code" or "set on this list". Overrides apply at every site.

If someone else changed the same override after you opened the page, your save is refused and their values appear, with what you typed still in place. Check it and click Save again.

A price list is one arrangement — private, membership, or NHS at a UK practice — and prices from one fee schedule. An NHS price list prices England's scheme, so it is used only at locations in England.

Tax

Tax rates are the law of each site's country, and Smileline keeps them: you choose a treatment — exempt, standard, zero or none — for each code, and for a price list where it differs. The Tax picker on a price list shows what each treatment means at your sites, for example Standard — 20% (UK), and a code's Tax treatment shows it under the one chosen.

A treatment with no rate at one of your sites is flagged in red, for example Standard — 20% (UK) · no US rate. A charge with that treatment at that site posts with no tax, and an invoice that contains it is refused. Choose a treatment that has a rate there; a charge already posted is corrected by reversing it and charging it again.

Check a price

Check a price, below the overrides, works out a treatment's price exactly as charting will. Pick the Price list, the Code, the Site, the number of Units and the day (On, today by default), then click Check. It shows:

• the fee;
• the schedule revision that won, with its quantity, date and site (or Practice price);
• the fee or tax treatment the list sets, if it overrides either;
• the tax treatment and its rate at that site, or the warning that it has none.

When the treatment can't be priced it says why instead: the schedule has no price for that code, site and number of units on that day; the price list is archived; or the NHS list was chosen for a site outside England.

Fee schedules and price lists

Settings → Fee schedules names the tables; Settings → Price lists names the arrangements and points each one at its schedule. A membership price list also names its provider and band. Archiving either hides it from new work and keeps history intact.

List discount

A price list can take a percentage off its fee schedule: set its Discount %, for example 10 for "Members 10% off" or 50 for staff. Every code the list doesn't price itself is charged at the schedule's fee for the treatment's site and number of units, less that percentage, rounded to the nearest penny (a half penny rounds up). Tax is worked out on the discounted price.

• A fee set for a code under Price list overrides wins: that code is charged the list's own fee, with no discount. An override that sets only the tax still gets the discount.
• Discounts never stack: one price list prices a treatment.
• An NHS price list can't take a discount; its fees are the scheme's.
• Treatment already planned, accepted or charged keeps its price when you change the discount. Each treatment keeps the schedule fee, the percentage and the day it was priced, and shows them — see Changing the price.

A patient with a membership is priced on their membership's list automatically; see Member price.

Recall types

Settings → Recall types lists what patients are recalled for and how often (in months, with no upper limit). Codes that schedule a recall pick one of these.

Books online as is the appointment type a recall reminder's one-tap link books for that recall. It must be bookable online, with no deposit and no practice confirmation; otherwise the link asks the patient to call. A new practice starts with Examination booking the Examination type and Hygiene the Hygiene type; Periodontal review books nothing online.

Document categories

Settings → Document categories (under Clinical catalogue) is your practice's own list of labels for filed documents — for example ID & insurance, Referral letters, Lab and Correspondence. The list starts empty; nothing is installed for you. Owners and managers add, rename, reorder and archive categories, and every role filing documents picks from them; see Categories.

Archive a category you no longer use: the documents that have it keep it, marked (archived), and it is no longer offered for new filing. Adding a category twice after a lost connection never adds it twice.

Payment methods and adjustment types

Payment methods are how the practice takes money — card, cash, bank transfer, online, card terminal, other. Each ledger payment and refund names one. Adjustment types are the named reasons for a ledger adjustment: a credit type reduces what the patient owes (a discount, a correction in their favour), a debit type increases it, and a type marked Write-off posts a write-off entry instead of an adjustment (owners and managers only). The practice starts with a sensible set of both; archive the ones you do not use rather than deleting them, because posted entries refer to them. A name has to be unique only among the active ones: once a method or type is archived, its name can be used again by a new one.

Booking deposits paid online post through the practice's active method of kind online. If there is none, Smileline adds one called Online — or Online (Smileline) while an active method of another kind already uses that name. An archived method is never used for them.

In an Italian practice each payment method also has a Traceable payment switch: whether its payments count as traceable when they are reported to Sistema TS. It starts on for every kind except cash and other. Change it to match how a method is really paid — an "other" method that is always a bank payment, for example. Changing a method's kind sets the switch to the new kind's default, unless you change the switch in the same save. Practices in other countries don't see it.

Note templates

Settings → Note templates holds prewritten note bodies a clinician can start from. Give a template a name and an optional category, then click Template on its row to write the text.

A short template is a phrase: typing / in a note lists your templates, and Enter inserts the one picked.

Questions

Click Questions on a template's row to add questions that are answered with every note written from it: yes/no, a choice, several choices, a number, text, a date or a heading. Tick Required for a question that must be answered before the note is completed. Use Show only when to ask a question only after an earlier answer, for example "Dose" only when "Local anaesthetic" is Yes. A question can only depend on one above it.

A note keeps its own copy of the questions it was answered against, so editing them here changes new notes only. Remove every question to make the template text only again.

Patient forms

Settings → Patient forms holds the medical-history, consent and questionnaire templates. A form has a stable Key, a Kind, an optional expiry (days after which a patient is asked again), an attestation the patient confirms, and whether it requires a signature and a clinical review.

Each field is a question with a type — text, longer text, yes/no, a choice, several choices, a date, a number or a heading. A yes/no or choice question can raise an alert (medical, allergy, medication, infectious or warning, with a severity and a title) and propose a medical fact (a medication, allergy or condition) for the reviewing clinician.

Show only when asks a question only after an earlier answer: pick the earlier question and the answer that opens it (Yes or No, one of its options, or a number). For a question with several choices, it opens when that option is among the ones ticked. Questions can depend on questions that themselves depend on others, but never on a later one.

For ages sets the ages a form is for, in whole years, from and to; leave both empty for every age. Smileline ships no age ranges, because there is no single child or adult cut-off. A form outside a patient's age can still be used: it is listed under Other ages, and asks why. See Forms by age.

Forms are versioned rather than edited: click New version, change what you need and Publish version. The previous version is archived and every submission keeps citing the version it answered.

Medications

Settings → Medications (under Clinical templates) is the practice's own list of medicines. When a clinician types a drug into a prescription, the medicines that match are offered beneath the field, and picking one fills the item.

Each medicine has a name, and optionally a Form, a Strength, a default Dose, Quantity and Directions, and whether it is a Controlled substance. A US practice also sets Refills (US); other practices don't see it, and Smileline refuses refills outside the US. A field you leave empty stays empty on the prescription, for the prescriber to fill in.

The list starts with your country's common dental medicines, with their form and strength only: Smileline ships no doses or directions, because the prescriber decides them. Add your own defaults if your practice always prescribes a medicine the same way.

Archive a medicine you no longer prescribe: it stops being offered, and prescriptions already issued keep their own copy of what was printed. Restore defaults under the list adds back any of the starting medicines you are missing.