Developing a Paperless Practice P2

Don’t put the chart before the horse. I’m going to give you the next  slide,  basically the game plan or  a treatment plan of  how you  should  go about  going chartless. The mistake that we see a lot of offices do is that as dentist we like things that we can touch and feel and that have hard numbers associated with it. We tend to forget about [Inaudible] stuff. You don’t necessarily want to go out and spend $20 000 on censors or spend $30 000 or $40 000 on digital pen and find out that it does to work with your software. So don’t put the cart before the horse, try to do things in order. That really what I consider to  be the  one of the best things  that I can give to you on this presentation today and you know in real estate they always talk about the  three most  important things are  location , location and location. For me it’s planning, planning, planning. There  is nothing wrong with  doing things in stages as long as you’ve got the game plan and  treatment plan of  how your are going to go about  it. Of all the slides that i have this is probably the most critical because this is the sequence that we talked about. This is really going to be the format that we used for this for a webinar series. The things that we are going be focusing on this evening  which I think is easily the most important decision  that you make , the practise management  software , its  third party  program ,  to get  your chartless. They are not a lot of software program out there that can really get your to the point where you are almost chartless or paperless. I’m definitely gaging to give you an example of one this evening that can but most of the program out there we cannot. You’re going to need to supplement   it.

Image management we talked about that. That’s going to be in a couple of webinar. This a critical decision for a lot of offices as well. Operatory design is also of ergonomic issues that we will need to be figured out when you are designing your operatory. Our next webinars will look at computers in your operatory versus the front desk versus the server. We will look at digital  technology that is  part  of the image management  as well and  finally  again which  think I so critical and that why I saved it for the end is going to be  data protection and  data  back up . By the way you all this covers a lot of stuff. We have plenty of time this evening to take questions. It don’t have to be on practise management software. So if you can’t wait for the other webinars and you have certain questions that you need to have  answered  I’m  certainly going to  do everything in my  power to answer those for you .

It’s kind of interesting to note how this specific webinar came about. Many of you know I was born and raised in Canada and I do a fair amount of my training and consulting it offices in Canada. About a year and a  half  ago I have visited some offices,  one in Winter peg , one in Calvary, Toronto and I was  kind of  surprised  that all of them were using the same  software  program. It   was called Maxident. I’ve never heard of it before.  I decided maybe I need to know little bit more about this. I was happy to hear when I spoke with them well they have started off in Canada, that they were available in the US as well. What really impressed me about their software  and I am going to show you some  examples of  that this  evening  is that  of  all the programs that I work with on a daily basis they really had a ton of features that  allow an office to be  completely  paperless without the need to  have  a  lot of these add on programs . So we definably are going to focus on that as well. I will show you some slides. This is an example of what I feel is a good practise easement software, what it should be able to do. On the call with me tonight is Sheryl Canhive who is Maxident GDM. She will be available at the end of the webinar I anyone has any specific questions about their software. Please understand as  I am  going through this  I don’t  work  for Maxident i don’t  sell it . Every single one of you went out and bought I would not make a penny off of that. I’m simply using that  as an  example of software  program  that  I think really does thing  the way  it’s  supposed to be.

How do you go about choosing a practise management software? About 10 years ago Gordon Christensen, clinical research associate they identified 200 different programs per year. Now I think some people had a different definition than I do of practise management software. I’m sure some people considered quick books, outlook to be management software I do not. That number is significantly smaller today. Probably around 30 – 40. I would guess there is about a half of that I have never heard of. I mean it’s probably about a dozen so that you never heard of. We should thank companies like Practise Works, Shine in the US. You know Shine has a company in Canada that has a lot of consolidations that we are receiving right now.  In this country, in the US there is really three major vendors, there is Kodak, Egosoft and Dentrix. Those account for about 75% of the market.

If you would have asked me a few years ago what are my feelings about using a Mac in a dental office I would have said absolutely not. If you ask me do today you have many more options? A number of practise management programs work with both Mac and PC software because of the fact that Mac can now run pc program using something called a boot camp, parallel to VM ware. You have more options available. So certainly of you are a Mac and you want to have Mac to the office I am a little bit more not as hesitant as I used to be about recommending it? I still feel that if you are running PC application you  probably shouldn’t  be  running that on pc most of the times but if you want a max it should not be out of the  question as it was few years ago .

So one of the things that I really recommend that your do is  keep in mind that when you talk to the sales  rep  form  practice management  software companies they are  going to show you all the  bells and whistles  and the things that’s really  unique to their program . For most offices in my estimation we are using maybe 5 – 10 % of that the program can do. So there are certain core functions that you’re always look for in a program because those are the things that you do every single day. It might be scheduling, it might be insurance estimation, billing, running perhaps practice reports, production collections reports or something like that. One of the things I suggest as a way to do this have when you are getting a demo of the software have them actually lock in an imaginary mutation through the office. You want to see how easy it is going to get them I the software. Now we put them in, we want to simulate them coming for their first visit, we want to charge them, we want to treat them, and we want to get them out of the week schedule.  As you go through that  process with multiple programs you are just going to get a  feel  that one of this felt better to me than the other or  just felt a little but  more intuitive to me than  there. That’s the one that probably right for your individual practise. As we mention you’re going to look for integration with third party programs we are definitely going to some time at the end of the presentation talking about that. What i really want to talk about is how you really find a good practise management software. What are the things that you really should   be looking for in your practise management software? We’ve talked about the fact that Maxident is one that I really think meets those criteria.   That really my goal here to show you what types of things Software Company and should be doing in 2010. I was actually a little bit surprised that when i got the supplies from them that they have been around for 30 years. I’m just kind of  embarrassed that I’ve been in the field  of  density since 1984 and doing  technology  full time for the last   8 years and have not heard  of  them and  off course  that has definitely change in the last  year and a  half or  so.

What are the things you look for in your practise management software? What are the features that should be part of it? Well certainly you want it to be able to run on any types of computers that you have. You want it  to  run on any window servers, on  XP or  7,  you want to be able  to use your  Mac , you want to be able to  32 or  64  bit platform  which I’m sure a lot of  programs can’t do. That’s one feature that I think you need to look for.  It would be nice if you ca all get them to work over a wide area of networking. Many of you would have certain web based program out there. There is something coming along that a lot of them in their early stages. That’s one of the  that you can deal with that but wouldn’t it be great if your can use the software you are already using in one  office over a wide area of network  so that  you can time multiple  office and don’t have to deal  with all the issues of  remote access and things  like that . That’s another feature that you look for in your practise and management software.

Look for something that is really designed properly or it’s come with multiple module, multiple ways to work with the program. All kinds of features. These are the types of thing that we recommend our offices do as we are going through the process of to choose your practise management software.  You want to something that is going to make it easy to deal with, to scan your existing images into the software.  You have something that can basically help you to develop some electronic medical or dental record.

The last point on here is digital integration with any imaging software.  That’s a really key feature as well. unfortunately a  number of practise management  software programs tend to of lock you in to their  specific  program  and you find that most  of the dentist that I am working with have  very good  idea of what they want right  but not necessarily what they want down the road. You wait to keep those doors that what we always recommend. Get a really good open ended a program to choose any image software that you want versus the one that the down supply company says you need to get.


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