see the vide0:Â http://vimeo.com/15257480
Dr Lavine: People are joining us right now but we are already a few minutes after 5:00. So thank you, welcome everyone. A pleasure to have everyone here on the webinar. As of this morning we had 276 people register for  this webinar and close to half of  you are  already here so  thank you very much for the  confidence you have given me throughout the years . It’s great to have some many people joining me this evening.
A little house keeping here I’m going to be speak for about 45- 55 minutes or so. I want to leave as much time as possible to answer questions. Every one of you should have a little box on your go to webinar control panel where you can ask the questions. So feel free to ask them throughout the webinar as you think about them but I won’t be able to get to any of the questions until after I’m done speaking. By tomorrow I will be sending you all a number of things. You will get a  short survey ask soon as you log out of this webinar and  please indicate  on that survey  if you want my office  to arrange a  personalised call with your office . I don’t charge for my time to speak to practises and give you one to one help.
You are  also  going  to get email with links  to download the lecture notes  from this evening which is basically a copy of all the slides that  I’m going to show you . So do not worry if you have to take a phone call, if the kids are screaming or whatever. You are not going to miss anything. I will also have Amanda from my office email  everyone who attend this evening the CV form that is good for an  hour and half of CV reference.
So most of you already know who I am and what I do. I did  practise as a periodontist for 10  years and  over the last  8 years I have been exclusively  workign with  office to help them  basically get into 21 set century as  far  as technology is concerned. I travelled all over North America to give offices individualised  help , we work with offices to get their  computers up and running,  digital X-rays, cameras, basically try to help you avoid making any types of mistakes and you go through this process. If you want to keep up with the latest in technology I do have a blog .It’s digitaldentist.blogspot.com. I will put something on their every single day. I’ve done this for a little over 5 years actually. We would love to have as many people as you want. You can’t see on the screen here but there actually a place towards the bottom where you can sign up to the blog. So rather than you going to the blog every day it comes to you. There no charge for tat.
We have about 1000 people who subscribe and about another 200 or 300  who will come on a daily basis. I do write a tech guide every year. The latest one the 2011 guide is little bit delayed. We are negotiating with another company to publish it so that will be coming probably sometime by the Chicago Mid-Winter Medium, which is probably in February. So keep your eyes open for that. This webinar is actually the first of a series of webinars that we are we going to be doing.  They are all going to be about 5 or 6 weeks apart. We are going to spend some time in October looking at infrastructure, computers and networks and important things like that. Another hot  topic that was in December the  2nd  there will be image  management, digital x-rays  to  radiography and  the final one of the series which  to me so probably the most important and  really kicks  up a  lot  of practises is  data backup and data  protection .
All of you will get notification of that, this whole series will be free so we are more than happy to have as many people here as possible. One thing that is somewhat unique to this webinar series is that typically I lecture in Canada or the WE and I will normally adjust my presentation based on whatever country I am in at that time. What  I really wanted to  do for this webinar  is to  try to  create a series that has  value to the  dental  offices in both  countries at the same time  since many of the  products and  services are  really readily  available in both  countries.  You see the stakes here in 2014 and it’s certainly and in this county, in the states, not so much for Canada yet. Canadians still need to be aware of what’s going on out there. My understanding is there has been an exceptional [Inaudible] from the federal government which relates to allowing eligible computer software purchases to be 100% written off in the first year that it’s available for use. Very similar to what we into country on the schedule 179 reduction. So it really doesn’t make a difference if you’re in Canada or the USA. As  far has  going chartless and paperless I think there  is  ma lot  of reason  to  pitch the  move forward with that . Why in 2014 important besides the fact that according to the Mayans world we all would have been dead for 2 years already at that point.
The reason why it’s  important and many of  you may heard about this is that according to the federal government and  be aware  that it’s not a  law , it’s not a regulation . There is unfortunately some sales rep out there that will tell you that it’s mandatory. I think it’s  going to happen on way or the other whether  it’s  through the government , whether  an  insurance companies saying we are no longer taking  paper claims or film or just  peer  pressure  but then eventually we are all going to be at this point where all patient  records both  medical and  dental are supposed to be electronic by the end of the  year 2014 . This is actually a federal mandate  again its not a law, not a regulation but my whole premise his  behind this is  that you don’t necessarily want to wait till the middle  of  201  to  decide to do something about  it .
This was first  propose by  president Bush as a younger version in  2004 , president  Obama , the American  dental association is  a 100% behind it’s well. One of the thing to keep in mind is that really right now and if you have practise management software you are aware of this there really are not standards of being able to share information among multiple offices. You look at maybe what happen in the midterm elections and that may delay thing and hefty the government maybe just don’t know.  As I said really my premise in presenting this information to you is that you really don’t want to necessarily guess wrong on this one. In my experience of going chartless, going paperless it’s a fairly long process. Most of the practices that we have worked with its anywhere from about a 12- 18 month process. Again  you  don’t  want to  wait till the middle of 2014 and find that the federal  government saying  I got to do this  in the next 6 months because you are really going to  be scrambling . If you don’t believe me on this there is ton of websites that you can get more information about it. If you just google  EHR  which stands for electronic  health record  or EMR, electric medical record or EDR for dental  record  in  year  2014 your will get  dozens  and dozens  of hits that  you can read more abut . Since you are all going to get a copy of the slides you can just go through the links and it will show you here as well.
So the federal government in all their represent recent states, in all their wisdom said we have the way that we can try to encourage people to move forward with this. We can give them the carrot, not necessarily the carrot but a carrot or the stick. What is that carrot? In the states many of you may have heard this. It’s called the steamers bill, the steamers package. It’s all a bunch of terms that you may have not heard about. The ARRA, the high tech act, the CC hit which is the body that licenses software as well. What you may be hearing about the fact is that there may be anywhere from $45, 000 – $44,000 per office available  for offices that have gone paperless, staring the year 2011. That is true as long as you are not a dentist. CC hit which is pretty much the licensing body had pretty much said that dental is not on their radar any point in the near future. The  key in all  of this is that the  software  has  to be certified in order  for you the  be  eligible  for the  funds. There’s a lot of other factors that comes into play as well. The key factors are that it has to be meaning full and certified and really there are very few programs out there that are going to fall for something, certainly in the dental realm. It  does start  in the States in  2011 and right  now  there each on dental software that is certified  and I would be choked if anything happens  in dentist in the next  few years. More are going paperless because you  are expecting to get this  $44,000  don’t  hold  your  breath , don’t  blame me  if you don’t  get it , don’t  call me  upon and send me a bill because I don’t have it  but be aware that  there are a number of things that are  being done  out there to  try and encourage  people to go paperless  one way or the other. Again there is  plenty  of  in formation out there that if you go to any  type  of website,  do google search on this you can find a lot that’s  out there.
When I’m working with offices or when I am lecturing on technology I’ve always felt that  I don’t have  to  be necessarily entertaining for the entire process.  If i can get a few nuggets or pearls wisdom that is going to help me in making my decision then it was worth wild. So instead of making you wait towards the  end  I will give it  to you  know and that way if you I can’t make it to the  end then don’t worry about it, you’ve got the  important stuff here. This  is a very common  question  that  I get  from a lot  of  offices . I’m looking a practise madman software. I’ve seen your lectures or  I’ve  seen  some of  your  articles but don’t  go through the whole process with me. Just tell me what the best one is. The problem is that there really is no right or wrong decision or best. It what’s its best for your individual practise but there is a lot of factors that can go into that. We are looking for software for example.  The one that has the most feature.  The one that’s the easiest to do for you and your staff.  One that’s the least expensive, the one that integrates best with your image management program. What I do as a consultant  is to work with an office that  says  we don’t  know what we want but  here’s what is important  to  us and then I can  help you to  narrow  down the choice.