Dental Offices

Information technology, or IT, devices and applications for dental practices have multiplied tremendously during the last two decades. While many of these innovations can bring significant benefits to clinical practice, integrating them into a smooth working environment is a significant challenge.

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” —Mark Weiser1 (1952–1999), creator of the “ubiquitous computing” concept

While it clearly still is possible to practice dentistry without computers, information technology has become the lifeblood of many practices. In the administrative areas of practice—billing, insurance processing, treatment tracking and scheduling—computers are all but ubiquitous. In the clinical area, computers are making significant inroads. On the basis of data from an ongoing study, we now know that approximately 25 percent of general dentists in the United States use computers at chairside (T. Schleyer, D.M.D., unpublished data, 2004). However, in many practices, chairside computer use is limited to only a few areas of clinical documentation, such as charting, treatment planning and, occasionally, the recording of progress notes.

One of the major reasons for dentistry’s reluctance to adopt clinical computer technology to a larger extent is the lack of integration of information technology with clinical work environment, but more notably the lack of IT expertise from dental office employees. Often, hiring a full-time IT person is not economically feasible.

Computer security

in a dental office can take many forms. Financial and clinical data is routinely kept on personal computers. This data is important not only to the financial health of the practice but also to the patient who expects the information contained in their record to remain private. Every effort should be made to keep this important information from being lost or stolen. The security of this data faces several possible threats:

Accidental loss or corruption may cause the data to be lost.
Data transmitted from the office to and from various third parties may be compromised while in transit.
The office computer system needs to be secured from outside attempts to read or destroy confidential information.

Data Backup

As more clinical and financial data is stored on computer systems, the data contained by those systems becomes increasingly valuable. The principle method of preventing this data from being lost in the future involves using a regular backup routine. As more computer programs are used in the dental office by different team members in multiple locations throughout the office, the chances increase that some action may garble the data. Also, no complex computer program has ever been written without several programming bugs. There is always the possibility of fire, theft, disgruntled employee mischief or viruses causing the practice to lose the data stored in its systems.

Secure Communication of Data

Electronic data is often shared between the dental office and various third parties. These transmissions could include insurance claims, e-mail, consultations, and electronic commerce with suppliers. Recently, there have been companies that will keep the practice’s data on their computers with the ability to remotely input data from the dental office or any other location. It is important that confidentiality be maintained when it concerns the privacy of individual patients. Most electronic claims software uses dial-up direct telephone modem connections between the dental office and a clearinghouse. This method is as secure as normal long distance telephone calls.Most practice management software packages advise the practitioner on the best way to backup the practice’s database. In the past this has be done on some type of removable media that someone takes home with them periodically, ideally every night. Historically, removable media has included: tapes, ZIP disks, floppy disks, recordable CDs and removable hard drives. The most recent concept for backup is the transmission of your data to a remote storage site via the Internet. This is the way that KITS does it!

From small businesses to large corporations, the critical task of PC and server backup can be expensive and challenging. Fortunately, Kelly Information Technology Systems has made enterprise back up possible for everyone with its affordable, secure solution that’s simple to manage and even easier to use! Whether you’re the office manager for a small size medical or dental office, or the CTO of a large corporation KITS is your enterprise solution for guaranteed secure backups. See more about our Data Backup services here.

Office Productivity

A national statistic is troubling for most employers; the average employee in any office in the US today, spends 2 to 2.5 hours a day surfing the Internet. This is time they are being paid for! Our web filtering can be as confining as you need. From blocking any web site and allowing only certain web sites through, to blocking just harmful web sites.

No dental office is too small to worry about data security. No longer do you have to outlay large sums of money to support your Hipaa requirements and keep your data safe! Let KITS show you how easy IT can be.