# Openmolar User Manual

#### What does openmolar do when I add an item of treatment to a patient's treatment plan.

1. Openmolar checks that the patient has an active treatment course, and gets the user to verify which clinician is responsible for that course.
   If no active course is in place (or started at this prompt, the process is abandoned.
   Appendix i - What is an active course?
2. As an example, let's assume you are adding a small xray.
   For this item the treatment shortcut is "S" Appendix ii - What is a shortcut?
3. At this point the feescales are checked to get a price for this treatment. Appendix iii - feescales
   (ie. A key lookup for "xray S" is done.)
   At this point there are 3 possibilities.
   - The code matches an item in the patient's default feescale. Appendix iv - default feescale
     When this occurs, an estimate item is created, using the description and price provided by the item.
   - The code matches an item in another feescale.
     This can happen, for instance with some items that are only provided privately.
     Large white fillings in posterior teeth, for instance.
     If this occurs, the user is prompted for approval before the code is accepted and estimate generated from the alternate item.
   - The code is not found in any feescale.
     If this is the case, the user is warned, and asked what to do.
     Should this shortcut be used on the treatment plan, and an estimate item generated which refers to "other treatment"?

If we have got this far without the user chosing to abandon, we will have both a shortcut and an esimate object.
It is time to apply these.

- An "S" and a space is appended to the treatment plan's xray attribute. Appendix v - What is an attribute?
- This estimate is appended to the patients list of estimates.
- The user interfaces displaying this information are updated.

#### Appendix

i: What is an active course?
  An active course responds to a single data row with a unique id. Until that id is set, there is nowhere to save the treatment plan data.
ii: What is a shortcut?
  A shortcut is an abbreviation of the treatment being applied.
  Many are very common in dentistry, example "MOD" describes a specific thess surface filling.
  For non-filling items, shortcuts are less obvious.
  In fact, Openmolar allows heavy customisation of all these shortcuts, however consistency is key, and for historical reasons, in my practice, a small xray is "S", a medium xray is "M" a panoral xray is "P" and so on.
  Codes should be unique for each type of treatment (namely xray, perio, chart, denture, other etc.. ) and consistent across all feescales in use.
iii: What is a feescale?
  A feescale is an xml document stored in the database.
  More information can be found at feescales.html
iv: The patient has a default feescale?
  Yes. Assuming your system has more than one feescale, when a record is loaded, or a new treatment course started, the best match is used a a default.
  Criteria used are contract type (example NHS, Private or Insurance Plan), patients age, and the date the treatment course commenced.
v: What is an attribute?
  An attribute is simply a computer science term for a property associated with an object in memory.
  In the case of a treatment plan, this attribute is a sequence of space separated characters.
  eg "2S P M " as an xray attribute would equate to 2 small, a panoral and a medium xray.