Dentrix Ascend

Pros: We truly love the ease of this software, it's easy to learn, anyone new in the office is able to learn the system very quickly. For our office, it was a perfect solution, we have multiple locations and can quickly toggle between locations for scheduling and payment, it has made it extremely easy to oversee both locations. Another great aspect to this software, since it is web based they are able to continually update and make it even better, this has been great, we are happy with everything they have created!

Cons: There are several features we are really waiting for, an online time clock, and online RX.

Comments: overall i like the product but correcting the accounting issues is something that is very frustrating and would possibly cause our practice to return to Dentrix

Pros: like that its cloud based and always evolving with updates as users make recommendations to improve. I like that I can access it anywhere.

Cons: I do not like the line item accounting and that credits can not be left on the ledger without affecting provider totals. A/R from previous months changes based on patient over-payments. We have all our fee schedules in and we do write offs at time of service /claim generation but there are still instances where we have over-collected and the only way to have the adjustment for the patient over-payment is to put the EOB in as insurance over-payment which is not accurate or refund the patient directly when the EOB is received, which is not practical

Comments: We are clearly making better decisions and better financial forecasts with the dashboard. It has made the phrase "work smarter, not harder" a reality for us!

Pros: There are multiple things to like about this software. First and foremost is the ease of use and intuitive flow. The second and for some of us, importantly, the support is immediate, friendly and definitive. Problems are easily solved during our busiest time at the office.

Cons: The end of month statement procedure took more time to generate initially than I thought appropriate. There have been continual improvements to that function.

Comments: I purchased a satellite office from a retiring dentist. I am practicing 2 1/2 - 3 days a week by appointment only by myself (no staff). I can't imagine running the office without Dentrix Ascend. I worked as an associate for 16 years at a practice that used standard Dentrix. I keep telling my old boss to purchase Dentrix Ascend. They never uploaded the updates that came via disk, so they kept piling up. They did not want to pay for the IT guy to come to the office to update the system.

Pros: I love the automatic updates to features that pop up when I log in with full explanations available for me to choose when to watch.

Cons: I have no complaints about this software.

Comments: We are a multi-site group practice so going to a cloud EMR just seemed essential. Going with HS made sense b/c of the stability. Some features are really great... and some are major works in progress IMO.... some are just lacking altogether. It seems with the financial backing of HS the software could really be developed faster and with more features and if it did that, would probably completely own and dominate the cloud platforms. Right now, within the community of DDS I'm associated with, I still hear people gripe about Ascend and talk about how the prefer other cloud based sofwares... but we just wanted to go w/ Schein b/c of the long term stability. So we're hoping the features that are lacking will be built in soon - hopefully 6-12 months max. Things like online forms, robust a medical history module, a great lab case manager module, and a referral module seem essential to modern group practices...

Pros: Ascend was the obvious choice for us b/c H.S. is a stable company that isn't going anywhere. though we had heard some really good things about a few other platforms... stability seemed critical. The support has been very good through the facebook group and the support of friday forums, etc... this has felt very good...

Cons: There are some - what I would consider very basic- features that I am surprised they would even launch a platform without. Starting with a robust - AWESOME - medical history form that new patients (and even existing patients) could fill out prior to their visit. This feature should be online and built into the software. From what I can tell, groups that have been on Ascend for years are still doing paper... scan... upload to the D.C. That feels very 2005. Thought Ascend is "new" (7 years?) it still lacks an online medical history form and a robust way of customizing, having it pop up at visits, etc. Dentrix core finally just got this... but it hasn't showed up in Ascend yet. Things like referring procedures in the software.... right now there is no way to track referrals. Things like a lab case manager... these are every day things in a dental office and we are stuck using major work arounds with paper tracking and google docs for lab cases and yes- we're struggling to get a good system going. This seems like after 7 years it should be in the software. I'd like to know some realistic timelines (+/- 3 months?) of when features like this might be coming. it's hard to know if "soon" means in 2-3 years or in 3-6 months. Hopefully some of these very "basic" features will be implemented soon.