Consult Manager User Guide

The Gaidge Consult Manager (GCM) is your headquarters for tracking your new patients from call to close. Stay organized and become more efficient with everything needed from the first phone call through start of treatment: new patient forms, appointment confirmation, insurance coverage, treatment presentation, contract creation and follow-ups all along the way.

Open the  Patient Queue by clicking the Consult Manager icon on your left-side menu.

Here you can see patients who are in different phases of the exam/start journey.

There are four filter drop-down boxes at the top: Location, Coordinator, Doctor, and More Filters. You may choose to look at your entire practice or a single location. Select patients of a specific treatment coordinator, all TCs, or patients without a treatment coordinator plus the same for doctors. 

With More filters you can filter, or limit, the number patients displayed in several ways, including exam date, follow-up and age. You can also search for a particular patient in the search box at the top of the screen.  We will cover search and filtering for specific patients a bit later in this document. 

Below the filters are buttons to Show me patients with… Missing Forms, Unverified Insurance, Contract Pending, Payment Missing, and Observation patients. These allow you to concentrate on just those specific sets of patients that need attention.

In the patient queue, patients are grouped by their current phase.  These phases include Exams/Consults, Treatment Recommended, Starts, and Closed.  If you have more than 25 patients in any phase, there will be multiple pages shown in the selector at the top right. Each of these sections can be set to show or hide which condenses the section to one line.

Patients may be added manually or imported from your practice management system, if integrated. When adding patients manually to an integrated system, the manual patients will display in  italics.

To add a patient, simply click the Add New Patient button at the top of the page.  

This opens the Quick Patient Add form.  Add the information you have for this patient and save.  It’s as easy as that!  This information can be updated later if needed.

Some fields are required, they are marked with an asterisk after the field name. You may add either an email or phone number, or both. When you attempt to save, you’ll see a red border around any required field that is not complete.

For practices on integrated practice management systems, please note that any changes made in GCM will be overwritten by practice management data at the next upload. So, be sure to update your PMS as well. In addition, any patients added directly to GCM will display in italics with an asterisk before the name.  *Will Jones

Working with Patients

From the patient queue, click on any patient on your list. Their checklist and patient header display on the right.

At the top, the header area displays an overview of the patient’s information with quick links to different areas.  

Color coding enables you to see at a glance if an exam has been scheduled, if forms have been sent or received, if there is a team assigned, etc.

• green - completed, 
• yellow - in progress  
• red - not started 

Patient details can be modified by clicking on any of the links in the  Patient Header.  For example, clicking on the patient’s name opens the Patient Details screen where you can update their name, address and whether they have insurance. The insurance designation determines if you can add an insurance carrier to the patient to be used in any future treatment options. 

View or update the  Exams screen. This page also has the team assignments. If the patient has been seen previously, their appointment history display as well.

Click on each chevron to display screens and update associated information.

The Exams Check List ensures that you have everything you need prior to the patient’s appointment to create a treatment plan and contract. This must be completed for a patient before advancing to the next phase of Treatment Recommended.

For example, once you've added the patient, send a new patient information form:

Click on each item within the Exam Check List to open the respective screen to complete the task or update details. Once details have been provided and saved for an item, the checkbox for that item will be marked as completed. When the check List is completed the patient's name displays in green.

Select the exam outcome for the patient if they are not proceeding to treatment. 

Based on the outcome selected, the patient status changes. If the exam outcome is Inactivated or NoTxIndicated, the patient will move to the Closed Phase.

Otherwise, once all items are complete, clicking on the Tx Recommended button will move your patient to the Treatment Recommended Phase with a status of Scheduled for Consult.

Once the patient moves to the Treatment Recommended phase you can create Treatment Options for the patient. Click on the patient in the list to begin.

The Treatment Recommended checklist has three sub-sections on tabs: Create TX Options, Gain Acceptance, and Sign Contract.

Create TX Options

Click on the  Treatment* drop-down list to select a treatment type, then select the Severity*: Mild, Moderate or, Complex. This fills in your default treatment time, description and fee, edit if desired.  

Next, add any additional charges, edit insurance if needed and apply discounts. You can also adjust the estimated treatment time, minimum initial fee, maximum months of payments and default monthly fee.

PIF discount allows you to control whether or not the patient receives a paid in full discount. This overrides the standard practice settings.

The treatment fee + add-ons, less discounts, and any insurance benefits are calculated for the Out-of-Pocket Investment and displayed in the Summary at the right.

You may add multiple treatment options, for example full braces with and without surgery or full braces and aligner treatment. Click Add Options to add more treatments.

Gain Acceptance

The Gain Acceptance screen lets you review the treatment plan options and present them to the patient. Click on Present on this computer to discuss with the patient/responsible party or share it with the patient or responsible party via email and save notes. The Analytics section at the right of the screen provides a detailed history of actions.

 The Treatment Presentation screen (a.k.a. Slider) displays when you select present on this computer as well as when you Share Treatment Plan (on the patient's screen.) It includes plan financial details on the left and a payment slider on the right where down payment and monthly payment amounts may be adjusted by moving the slider or editing the Down Payment, Monthly Payment and Payments boxes at the bottom of the screen. Click on the buttons at the top right to switch between treatment options.

Hover over the insurance estimate to view details:

When a patient accepts treatment, they can review their choices, select the day of the month for their payments and the cancel if they need to make changes, or accept to continue.

Once accepted, a contract is created, the patient’s status is updated to Contract Sent and the Treatment Option Status moves to Patient Accepts Treatment. 

Sign Contract

Once the contract is signed, the patient will move to the start phase.  

Click on present on this computer to review the accepted slider settings. When the patient/responsible party signs the contract electronically, GCM automatically changes the status to signed and moves the patient into Starts. To manually mark the contract as signed, click on Re-Send Contract to open the Send Contract Status screen and set as signed or resend the contract.

The filters on the Patient Queue allow you to limit the number of patients displayed. Location, Coordinator and Doctor filters can be set as defaults. This lets you set the system to show only those patients each time you log in.

More Filters lets you narrow down or search by exam date, Follow-Up, Phase, Appointment Type, Exam Outcome, TC, Location, Doctor, and Age. Each of these allows you to select one or more items from a drop-down list. The Custom Filter lets you select all patients whose appointments are in a specific date range. It includes 3 presets for: Last Week, Last 2 Weeks, and Last Month.

The search bar in the top of the screen lets you search for a specific patient or responsible party. 

Coming soon….