Open Dental API

Name: Open Dental API API
Brand: Open Dental API
Availability: InStock

✓ Official Vendor SpecHealthcareEhr EmrapiKey215 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Read and update dental practice records — patients, appointments, procedures, claims, and clinical notes — across 215 endpoints of a clinic's Open Dental database.

Connect the Open Dental API to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the Open Dental API, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with Open Dental API API.

Look up and update patient demographics, contact details, and balances through /Patients and /Patients/{id}

Schedule, reschedule, and cancel appointments using /Appointments and /AppointmentTypes

Record procedures, diagnoses, and treatment plans against a patient's chart

Submit and track insurance claims and their procedures via /Claims and /ClaimProcs

GET STARTED

Start building with Open Dental API API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

The Open Dental API exposes the practice management database used by thousands of dental clinics through a REST surface covering patients, appointments, treatments, claims, and accounting. With 215 endpoints across resources such as Patients, Appointments, Procedures, Claims, Allergies, and Recalls, it is the integration point for clinical add-ons, patient-engagement tools, billing reconcilers, and reporting dashboards that need bidirectional access to a clinic's chair-side data. Authentication uses an Authorization header carrying both the developer key and the practice-issued customer key.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use Open Dental API API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Patient Engagement and Recall Automation

Build a patient communications app that pulls upcoming appointments and recall lists from Open Dental and sends SMS or email reminders. The /Appointments and /Recalls endpoints supply the schedule and the due dates; /Patients gives the contact details so the messaging tool can personalise outreach. A typical clinic with 50-200 active patients per day fits comfortably within standard pagination.

Call /Appointments?DateStart=2026-06-12&DateEnd=2026-06-12 and return each appointment's PatNum, ProvNum, and AptDateTime.

Insurance Claims Reconciliation

Reconcile a clinic's claim submissions against payer responses by pulling /Claims and /ClaimProcs nightly. The endpoints expose claim status, amount billed, amount paid, and per-procedure breakdowns so a back-office tool can flag claims that need rework. Reduces the manual queue review the office manager would otherwise run in the desktop client.

Fetch /Claims with ClaimStatus=W (waiting) and /ClaimProcs for each, then list claims older than 30 days that have no procedures paid.

Clinical Add-On Integration

A clinical add-on (imaging, perio charting, treatment planning) writes back into the patient chart using /Procedures, /Allergies, /Medications, and /Commlogs. The clinic stays in Open Dental for billing and scheduling while the add-on focuses on its specialised UI, with the API as the source of truth for what gets recorded against the patient.

Post a new entry to /Procedures for PatNum 123 with ProcCode D0150 and AptNum from the day's appointment.

Agent-Driven Practice Operations Assistant

An AI agent acting as a practice-operations assistant can use Jentic to discover the right Open Dental endpoint for a request like "book a hygiene visit for John Smith next Tuesday at 10am" and execute it with the patient's resolved PatNum. Jentic returns the input schema for /Appointments so the agent posts a valid appointment, and Open Dental's audit log captures the agent's identity via the developer key.

Through Jentic, search for "create an appointment in Open Dental" and post to /Appointments with PatNum, ProvNum, AptDateTime, and Op fields.

Key Endpoints

215 endpoints — the open dental api exposes the practice management database used by thousands of dental clinics through a rest surface covering patients, appointments, treatments, claims, and accounting.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

GET

/Patients

Search and list patients

GET

/Patients/{id}

Get a patient record

GET

/Appointments

List appointments by date range or operatory

POST

/Appointments

Create a new appointment

GET

/Claims

List insurance claims by status

GET

/ClaimProcs

List per-procedure claim line items

GET

/Allergies

List allergies on a patient chart

GET

/Commlogs

Communication log entries for a patient

GET

/Patients

Search and list patients

GET

/Patients/{id}

Get a patient record

GET

/Appointments

List appointments by date range or operatory

POST

/Appointments

Create a new appointment

GET

/Claims

List insurance claims by status

GET

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

Open Dental requires both a developer key and a per-practice customer key in a single Authorization header. Jentic stores both encrypted in MAXsystem and assembles the header at execution, so the agent never sees the raw secrets even when calling 215 different endpoints across many practices.

Intent-based discovery

Agents search Jentic with intents like "book a dental appointment" or "submit an insurance claim" and receive the matching Open Dental operation along with its required path and body fields, removing the need to scan the 215-endpoint resource map.

Time to first call

Direct Open Dental integration: 1-2 weeks for auth, customer-key onboarding, error handling across resources, and pagination patterns. Through Jentic: under 1 hour to call the first operation.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Alternative

DrChrono API

Multi-specialty EHR API including dental, where Open Dental is dental-specific

Choose DrChrono when the practice runs multiple specialties on one EHR; choose Open Dental for dental-specific clinics.

Alternative

athenahealth API

Large multi-specialty EHR with broader medical scope and a different scheduling model

Choose athenahealth for medical practices on athenaNet; choose Open Dental for dedicated dental practices.

Alternative

Dentally API

Cloud-native dental practice management API focused on UK and AU markets

Choose Dentally for UK or AU clinics already on the platform; choose Open Dental for US clinics on Open Dental's deployments.

Complementary

Epic FHIR API

Hospital-system FHIR API used to import patient data adjacent to a dental practice

Use Epic FHIR when integrating dental data with a hospital record; use Open Dental as the system of record inside the dental clinic.

FAQs

Specific to using Open Dental API API through Jentic.

What authentication does the Open Dental API use?

The Open Dental API uses an Authorization header carrying two API keys — the developer key issued by Open Dental and the customer key issued by each practice that authorises the integration. Jentic stores both keys encrypted in MAXsystem and assembles the Authorization header at execution so neither value enters the agent's prompt context.

Can I create appointments for patients with the Open Dental API?

Yes. POST to /Appointments with at least PatNum, ProvNum, AptDateTime, and Op (operatory). Use /AppointmentTypes to pick a default duration and pattern. The endpoint returns the new AptNum which can then be used to attach procedures via /Procedures.

What are the rate limits for the Open Dental API?

Open Dental does not publish a single global rate limit; throughput is bounded by the cloud database tier the practice is on and by best-practice guidance to avoid concurrent bulk reads during chair-side hours. Use targeted queries with date-range filters on /Appointments and /Procedures rather than full table scans.

How do I look up a patient with the Open Dental API through Jentic?

Use the Jentic search query "find a dental patient by name". Jentic returns the /Patients GET operation with its query parameters; the agent supplies LName and DateOfBirth and Jentic executes the call against the practice's keys. Sign up at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

Is the Open Dental API free to use?

Open Dental practices pay a monthly fee for API access, and developers register for a developer key separately. Pricing is published by Open Dental and depends on whether the practice is using the cloud or on-premise deployment with the API service enabled.

Can the Open Dental API write clinical notes back into the chart?

Yes. Use /Procedures for billable procedure entries and /Commlogs for communication notes; clinical observations also have dedicated resources such as /Allergies and /Medications. All writes are audited and tied to the developer and customer key making the call.