Sample note:
Composite restoration
MOD composite on #19 with local anesthetic, isolation, and shade. Transcript on the left, the note as it appears in CareNotes on the right.
Dentist and assistant, general practice. Procedure type set to Composite before recording; the phone stayed in the dentist's pocket. Names, dates, and identifying details are fictional; the encounter is a composite written for illustration.
What was said
Excerpt. Speech-to-text ran on the phone; this text is all that left the device.
Dentist: Okay, so we're doing the filling on the lower left today, number nineteen, the MOD. Any changes to your health since last time, any new medications?
Patient: No, nothing new. Still just the blood pressure pill. Busy weekend coming up though, my daughter's soccer tournament is Saturday.
Dentist: Good luck to her. You'll feel a little pinch. Topical's been on a couple minutes. One carpule of lido with epi, inferior alveolar block, and a little long buccal.
Dentist: Let's get the rubber dam on. Clamp on nineteen.
Dentist: Old amalgam's out. There's recurrent decay under the distal box, I'm going a bit deeper on the distal. Pulp's fine, no exposure. Caries indicator, rinse.
Dentist: Sectional matrix, wedge on the distal and mesial. Etch fifteen seconds, rinse, dry, bond, cure. Shade A2, let's go A2.
Dentist: Flowable on the floor, then packing in increments, curing each one. Okay, finishing. Check the occlusion. Bite down, tap tap, grind side to side. High on the distal marginal ridge, take that down. Good.
Dentist: Floss passes, contacts are tight. You're all set. Numb for about three hours, don't chew on that side till it wears off. If the bite feels high after the numbness is gone, call us.
Patient: Will do, thanks.
What CareNotes wrote
The generated note in the CareNotes note viewer, before the clinician's edits and signature. It is interactive.
Daniel R.
How the pills work
Procedure type was set to Composite before recording, so the Tx section ends with the built-in Composite sentence. Each bracketed value is a pill: the value heard in the recording fills it, and tapping it opens the full option list (tooth number, anesthetic, technique, materials). A pill with a star is this doctor's saved default; starring a choice in the picker makes it the starting value next time the same procedure is selected. An empty dashed pill, like Rx here, is a blank the doctor can fill or leave. The words around the pills are editable prose.
How it lands in the chart
On the free tier the clinician copies this note from the app or carenotes.ai/notes and pastes it into the patient's chart in any practice management system. On Premium the same note is uploaded into the chart in Open Dental, Dentrix Ascend, Eaglesoft, or Curve after the clinician taps Ready to Upload. Headings, order, and wording follow the office's own template; the Progress Note template above is the default.
What to look for
Tooth numbers and surfaces are carried from speech into the note. Anesthetic, carpule count, and technique are written out. Materials and shades are named. The medical history review, consent line, post-operative instructions, and next visit are present even when they were said in passing. Personal details the patient mentioned go to Side Note so the doctor remembers them next time. Anything not said is not invented; if a dose or a step is missing from the recording, the clinician adds it on review.
Record one visit and compare
Core notes are free with no cap. Use your own template or start with the default.