So a lot of reason why you should consider going chartless. The way that most of these systems work and in your practise management software you can clock on a little button and it’s going to take you right into the software and it will have. Of course you can customise it anyway you want  and you will  have read documents  that’s always need to  be signed and  if it hasn’t  been signed you  need to  make sure you got the  signature on there.  Customize the forms anyway you want. If you want that those to look like paper forms great if not you can use the ones come with their software.  They basically use sign and signature tabs like I showed you that basically you sign the signature tab that I showed you in the Maxident slide, your tablet PC. The dentist signs it and you now have a document that is perfectly legal and acceptable in every state every providence that I’ve ever been in.
The other cool thing about their software is that it’s online.  So  what a patient can do for example is  your patient calls up  in your practise you can  send it to your website where  there is link that they can go on to  a secure website, they fill out their paper work and that information gets uploaded to your  server a couple of time per day . So the whole premise behind this is that the information on the patient shows up long before they show up. The patent comes in for their first visit, they sign the signature tab and you are ready to go ahead and see them. That was always one of the things that I found annoying when I was in full time practise and send my patients the paper work, I would schedule in 10 or 15 minutes early just in case they forget it. They would forget it and come in on time and 35 minutes later they are still on their paperwork. So this should help to avoid a lot of the problems happening. This software is fully customizable. You can do all kinds of questions types, you can do statement things, and it can be done on a regular pc or a tablet or whatever you want. So that’s the Dent Form software. Depending  on the  package that you get you are  looking at  somewhere around  $3000  give or take  of the  software and  training and support and installation and the online and all that kind of  stuff as well.
What about online collaboration? This is an  area that really have not  taken off in dentistry  and  I’m surprised about that because as offices are becoming  more chartless, more paperless this is a  real hurdle . What do we do with those referral slips, how do we communicate another offices for using different to programs. How do we communicate with our labs? That’s important as well. If you are going to be chartless or paperless those forms are no longer going to be around. Is there a digital counterpart. There is not a lot of great options out there yet. The one that I’m most excited about. They are called Light Squid, they stared out in Calvary a few years ago. They are now in the US as well. They did their big coming out party in Chicago for the winter and February of this year. Expect to see a lot more about them. I’m just going to show you a few slides of what they do  but basically it’s a  web based  online  platform for  multiple  people . The dentist, the lab, the referring office, the patient that you want them to have access to information and in real time.  Any of you who are  familiar with Facebook  are  probable  familiar with a screen  like the where  you can have a section for reading and  news blog,  this Facebook like  home page that  it keeps you updated on what’s  happening  with the cases. You’re got an area there where we can read comments for other people.
You basically have this online, ongoing dialogue with multiple offices. It  bridges to my knowledge with about 40 or 50 practise major programs. Pretty much every major one in Canada and the US so that’s not a problem. You can still enter in patients manually if you prefer as well. I think  there is this  really cool timeline feature as well that mouse over an area that you want ,  you mouse  over it and so you know when  something  happens or what’s  happening  at that particular  time . So really cool feature. You don’t have to use it if you want to just keep things chronologically as far as the other case that you have been working on.  Your can use a conventional system as well. You’ve got throw  online  lab prescription forms but  another really cool feature with this software you can take an  image on your  desktop , click and drag it to this white area and now your can upload it to  their  website. So really simple to click and drag and have access to images that your can share  with other offices. You’ve got this shipping check list, you have really nice view. You don’t need any special software. It’s all web based.
It also works with a lot of the cat canvases out there Catherine nitro and ND14 and Cirac. It actually has a built in 3D viewer as well.  So again someday who doesn’t have those machines can still take advantage of the products that you are sending to them. So great collaboration tools, security, manage your calling as far as who have access to what. You can certainly add calling as your feel you want to. That the Light Squid system. From my understanding  is  that the core system is going to run $129  ore  month  if you want  integration with the  Cad system  it’s going to be $199.
So keep your ears and eyes open for this. You are going to be hearing a lot more about it over the next few months. A few of the  things that i want to talk about in office communications. Certainly as you are going to have computers around the office does it really make sense especially for example for a  new office you really want to  go and  spend 5 or 6 thousand dollars on something that  is  older or light based , wired  systems. If you ‘vet got computers throughout the office why not use a software based system, software messaging systems. One that we recommended in the past is one called Soft Com a lot of practise management programs is built in as well. One we have recommended for a lot of practises is one that is called Bruno communicator. What I like about Bruno is that every person in the office has their own tone. So a lot of time you are trying to page someone you don’t know where they are. Are they in the staff lounge, in the operatory 3? As long as they can hear the page they can go to the nearest computer and reposed to that. So this is so really nice program. This m one runs around $800 for unlimited computers. So that’s one that i would recommend as well. We do get people who ask me about free programs like Yazd messenger and AOL messenger. I will be a little cautious about that. We are seeing more and more reports of spam and spyware and malware that affecting instant messaging programs. You wouldn’t necessarily want to put something like Ms Jones is here, sees a royal pain in the rear  that she usually is or something like this. Because when you are on this network Yazd messenger network you are on one that the whole world uses. So be a little careful about something like that. You tend to get what you pay off.
A  final program that I want to talk about and this is a n  area  that a lot of people  struggle with  as well is  progress note. If you are going to get chartless, get paperless how do you the progress note in there. The way  that  a lot of  practise  management progress notes  work is that u you will create h some type of  exploding code where you type this code  and  it’s  going to spit out the  procedure but then  you have to go back in there and  edit the tooth number and surfaces and the number of charpeals and anaesthetics . It’s just the pain. Often time you spend more time doing that then if you are typing from scratch. What if you can do the whole procedure with mouse click where all the setup is done ahead of time and you just click mouse, mouse, and mouse? We actually sat with offices that use this program and even to do a complex procedure takes them about 30 to 35 seconds.
So this is a program called Easy Notes Pro. It was created by a dentist, its Doctor David Burton in North Carolina. Just to show you some of their slides. This is the Easy Notes Pro software. Works with pretty much any practise management rat software. I’m not going to spend too much time on this but basically this creates another tool bar for you can put on top of your practise management software.  Completely customizable. As I said most of the work that you do with this program is done ahead of time where you decide how you want the surface to be laid out in your software. For example most practises don’t have 30 different anaesthetics on a regular basis. It might be 3 or 4. Again I’m not going to spend too much time on the slides. If you have a really old practices management software that doesn’t have a place for progress note you can absolutely use something like this. It as standalone program. Most people don’t want that, they want the progress notes to go right in the software and that’s what this program can do. Again this is showing your how this works. Really slick software we have installed it in dozens of offices over the years. Works with pretty much any practise management software out there. Not an expensive program. Usually around $800- $1300 for everything. It just depends on what features you are adding to it. So you are trying to go chartless, you are trying to go paperless, what is the game plan? How do you go about if I could give you a summary of everything that we have gone through in the last 45 – 50 minutes? Really there is no magic bullet here. It’s not like I have information that no one on the planet has. I’ve done this for a number of years but the approach that I took is a systematic one. It’s a series of systems, look at it as a sequence of steps to take.  Try to do things in order.  You don’t necessarily want to go out and buy that really expensive digital pen if you don’t have digital software that it can work with or if your practise management software is outdated. So take the systematic approach to doing it.