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Keep Your Data Safe and Secure With ADSTRA Dental Software

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ADSTRA Dental Software is now available as a cloud-based solution for your dental practice. This cloud solution is a safe and modern solution to your dental clinic’s needs.

In a day and age where everything you could imagine is available via the cloud – people are often left wondering what the benefits are to buying software, apps, music, movies, and more, in this way. Dental software, and really – all software companies, are striving to develop cloud computing solutions that offer the consumer countless benefits. But what exactly are the benefits to a cloud-based dental software solution?

Cloud Computing Offers “Insurance”

Owning a physical copy of something is a way of the past. What would happen if you were to lose all your CDs? You’d have to go and replace them, right? Now let’s say instead of having physical CD’s – you just purchase and download your music. You can’t lose something if it’s in the Cloud. The same situation can be applied to your data. What would happen if your dental clinic had a flood or a fire? All those paper charts and your computers themselves would be destroyed. Do you have a procedure in place to recover all of your patient’s data now? If your patient’s data was stored on the Cloud – all you would need to do is login from any computer to access it again.

ADSTRA Dental Software Cloud

The ADSTRA Dental Software cloud-based solution, ADSTRA Cloud, is hosted on a safe and secure remote server. This allows you to have the ability to access your data from anywhere on any computer or handheld device (phones and tablets).

ADSTRA Dental Software uses Microsoft Azure – the most secure platform in the world

Microsoft Azure is used by many companies, large and small, as the host on their cloud solutions, and ADSTRA Dental Software is one of them. Using advanced encryptions methods and meeting the highest safety standards, Microsoft Azure is recognized as the most secure platform in the world and has methods in place for protecting you against the loss or theft of your data.

With ADSTRA Cloud:

·         Your data is safe and secure ·         You have access to your software from anywhere
·         Your backups are done automatically ·         You do not need to invest in or manage servers
·         Your security needs are met ·         You get access to the latest version of the ADSTRA Dental Software
Protecting Patient Privacy Is A Must

Working in the healthcare industry – dental providers have access to a lot of confidential information about all of their patients. It goes without saying that they have a duty to protect this information and ensure it is all securely stored. Recently the in the US, The Office for Civil Rights’ sanctioned a private oncology clinic for negligence because an employee had her laptop stolen which contained unencrypted data for 55 000 patients. With a dental software solution like ADSTRA Cloud, this whole situation could have been avoided. Since all of the patient data is not hosted locally on each computer but instead on a safe and secure on a remote Microsoft managed server, the loss of the computer does not the confidential patient data at risk.

The ADSTRA Dental Software cloud solution, ADSTRA Cloud – is an affordable solution for dental clinics of any size. Partnered with the security of Microsoft Azure, ADSTRA Cloud is the ideal dental software solution for your dental practice.

CONTACT us today to learn how ADSTRA Cloud can help your modern dental practice become more efficient.

How A Dental Treatment Plan Can Help Achieve Overall Health Goals

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Dentists know the value of creating a good dental treatment plan for their patients. They are an important part of the record keeping that must be kept for each patient. A dental treatment plan could also play a key role in any legal inquiries years after the services were rendered. As a part of your management software, a dental treatment plan should offer you the ability to keep detailed notes of the problems, diagnoses, and proposed treatments for a patient. Your dental software should also provide you with reminders of patients with a current dental treatment plan that need to have appointments scheduled.

The overall health of patients is sometimes directly impacted by a good dental treatment plan. I’m reminded of story that a dentist told me a while back of a new patient to his practice. It seems that the patient was a recently retired senior who would never visit a dentist unless he was in pain. However, what spurred on the visit wasn’t any discomfort that he may be having – but an article that he had read on the ABC news website. The article was on ways that poor dental care can make someone sick and the following paragraph really hit home.

“Some research suggests there may be a tie between poor oral health and an increased risk of dementia. One study that followed 118 nuns between the ages of 75 and 98 found that those with the fewest teeth were most likely to suffer dementia. Experts think oral bacteria may spread to the brain through cranial nerves that connect to the jaw or through the bloodstream, and may contribute to the type of plaque that’s been linked to Alzheimer”

After the initial exam, the dentist sat down with the patient to review his findings. He asked the patient why he only ever saw a dentist when something was wrong. It seems that because of his crooked teeth the patient was never happy about his smile.  When he was younger his parents couldn’t afford to fix them, so the patient figured as long as he brushed his teeth, the only need he would have for a dentist was if something was wrong.

Dental Treatment Plan

The dentist seized on the opportunity to not only allay the patient’s fear but inspire the patient to a smile that he had always wanted. He created a general dental treatment plan to bring the patient’s oral health back to where it should be. He then also created a separate Orthodontic and Periodontal dental treatment plan. When he went over the plans with the patient, the patient was so happy and encouraged that he followed every bit of advice that the dentist and his hygienists offered to improve his dental health. So much so, that on subsequent appointments the patient’s overall condition was improving faster than expected.

The dentist told me the ease with which his software allowed him to keep track and update the patient’s progress for each dental treatment plan was amazing. He said trying to juggle all three simultaneously on paper would have been much more difficult, especially when arranging to see specialists and keeping track of their results.

How A Dental Treatment Plan Can Help Achieve Overall Health Goals

The ability to create and manage a dental treatment plan is a very important feature in today’s dental software packages. Paperless planning the patients’ objectives of long-term treatments is not only convenient but also is easy to follow through completion. In addition, being able to share each dental treatment plan with all the associated specialists makes the health goals of each patient much easier to reach.

Getting a Bigger Bang for your Buck with your Dental Software

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“There’s gold in them thar hills, boys” is a phrase attributed to one of Mark Twain’s characters. In California during its “Gold Rush” period, Twain kept hearing a story from the miners who had come from Georgia. It seems in an attempt to keep the miners in Georgia an assayer of the Dahlonega Mint in Dahlonega, Georgia stood in the town square and proclaimed “Why go to California? In that ridge (as he pointed to the hills surrounding Dahlonega) lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There’s millions in it.” Now, whether Twain used a writer’s license and deliberately changed the original quote or it was misquoted to him from the beginning makes no difference to the topic at hand. Both, Twain’s quote and the origins for it apply in getting more out of your dental software.

Beneath the routine day to day tasks of billing, scheduling appointments and providing daily reports, lies informational gold. This information allows your office to provide your patients with superior service which in turn strengthens your relationship with them. Stronger relationships mean more referrals and an increase in revenue. Your software should be able to track these referrals and remind you to thank your patients for them. Even better your software should offer you a means to send out these thank you notes either by mail or e-mail.

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Other ways that your dental software can help automate your office and help provide better service thereby increasing your revenue:
  • Following up on uncompleted treatment and unscheduled treatments for which predeterminations have been completed
  • Tracking and reminding the front desk personnel of cancelled appointments which have not been rescheduled
  • Providing reminders of recall appointments whether scheduled or not
  • Confirmation of upcoming appointments either by phone, email or text message
  • Tracking insurance benefits so as to be in a position to provide treatment reminders at appropriate times for your patients’ financial benefit
  • Keeping track of patients with open treatment plans but no appointments
  • Generating a list of patients with balances over 60 days old
  • Sending welcome packages to new patients and birthday wishes to existing ones
  • Sorting patients’ names by relevant information such as employer, date of last treatment, or type of treatment required

In addition to providing you with more revenue through tracking and providing reminders for cancelled and missed appointments, unscheduled recall and predeterminations, as well as increased patient referral, integration of your dental software will reduce administrative errors and provide greater management control with fewer front desk hours.

There is an axiom in software development called the 90/10 rule and it stands for 90% of any software users will only ever use 10% of the software’s capabilities. Although the percentage may vary from software to software, I have found this axiom to be quite true. Even in software as specialized as dental software, I have noticed that most offices do not take full advantage of most of what their dental software has to offer. After learning the basics of entering patient information, billing and booking appointments they get caught up in the day to day operations. They will not take the time to look into other ways that the software can help them not only manage their current patients but get new ones.

Remember to look for the potential untapped value that your software can bring to your dental practice, and find the gold laying just beneath the surface.

How Using Microsoft Word Templates Can Allow You To See More Patients

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Writing consultation reports can be a time consuming, daunting task. Most reports are done using Microsoft Word and when using Microsoft Word templates to write them the task becomes every so slightly less onerous. Going a step further, imaging software that has a user-centric design and deep level integration with Microsoft Word can make report writing a breeze. In the case of dentists, this allows them to save time in the writing of referrals or reports so that they may see and spend more time with their patients.

Microsoft Word templates are a great tool for any type of document that has a standard format and is needed often. Microsoft Word templates will have predefined page layouts, fonts, margins and styles. They can have recommended sections or required text as well as content controls such as a predefined drop-down list or a special logo. You can Google and find thousands of different types of templates already created for Microsoft Word.

But what most people don’t know is – how easy it is to create their own Microsoft Word templates.

Microsoft Word Templates

Getting Started with Microsoft Word Templates

The best way to start, is to analyse which documents are created most often, and if there are sections of the document that are always similar in content and/or format. They are good candidates for becoming a template for use in the future. Once you find one, open it in Microsoft Word, go to the File menu and choose the option Save As. Give it an appropriate name and change the Save As type to Document Template.

Congratulations! You have just created your first template if you have never done it before.

Well not exactly, what you’ll want to do next is get rid of all the parts of the document that aren’t always the same, leaving you spaces to fill in as you need for each unique case. You could have areas of empty space that you type into or drop-down boxes with fixed selections or even check boxes. Many great how-to articles can be found on the Internet, on Microsoft’s own Office site or videos on YouTube. Just remember to look for ones that are using the same version of Microsoft Word as the one that you are using, as features both old and new and ways of adding them to the template can change with each version of Microsoft Word.

Would it not be great if you could open a patient file in your dental imaging software, and quickly associate both the patient information and images needed for a particular report or referral in a ready to send document? ADSTRA Imaging does have this ability.

Microsoft Word Templates and ADSTRA Imaging

By directly interfacing with Microsoft Word templates, ADSTRA Imaging allows you to create or modify templates that will import all relevant information like patient name, date of birth, provider’s name, practice name, and practice address, and it will also import specified patient images from ADSTRA Imaging directly into the Microsoft Word templates eliminating even more typing and importing of images into reports or referrals.

This is easily done through ADSTRA Imaging, on the Menu under File there is the Word Template option. This then gives you the option to open a Predefined template, Create New template, or Edit an existing template. The first option is the simplest because all that needs to be done is have the patient for the report selected in ADSTRA Imaging, open and highlight the desired images used in the document, and select the correct template. The only thing left to do is to make any adjustments in the document that are unique to this patient. The second and third options are similar. One allows you to create a new Microsoft Word template from scratch or from an already existing template. The other allows you to edit or modify an already created Microsoft Word template.

The only difference when creating or editing Microsoft Word templates when opened through ADSTRA Imaging, is the availability of a container toolbar that allows you to place the predefined elements that will be received from ADSTRA Imaging into the Microsoft Word templates.

As an example, you have a document that normally requires two images that are coming from a patient file in ADSTRA Imaging. You create the remainder of the template as per normal but, to indicate where the first image will be placed on the document, you click on the Image Container button on the container toolbar. A little window will open indicating the image number one and will have options for you to select for orientation and what image properties you would like to include with the image. Once you click OK, a template with two boxes will appear. The top box is the area where the image will go and the bottom box will be the area that will display any image properties that you selected. Both boxes can be dragged and resized anywhere on your template. You then repeat the above process for the second image. Once completed, whenever you select two images in ADSTRA Imaging and open this template, your document will have the two selected images placed and sized exactly as you wanted when you created the template.

Using Microsoft Word templates through ADSTRA Imaging is extremely beneficial to busy clinicians as it significantly increases the efficiency of preparing consultation reports. A little time spent upfront in creating a template for a document needed often should pay dividends many times over, thus allowing dental providers to spend less time writing referral reports and more time to seeing their patients.

A Surprising Usage of SMS Text Messaging

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The other day, while on my way to grab some lunch – I received a text message from a friend of mine. She was meeting up with a few other friends at a local café, and invited me to join. What perfect timing! As we were enjoying the sunshine on the patio, my phone rang. I looked down and saw an unfamiliar number, so of course I declined the call. The last thing I needed was to take another marketing call and interrupt our lunch; we have voicemail for a reason, right?

Man Smiling While Looking At His Cell Phone

Technology is everywhere we look nowadays. Our cell phones are often not further than an arm’s reach at any given time. They are our main form of communication whether making calls or sending messages, and our cell phones are full of apps for ordering food, checking our bank account balances, tracking our fitness journeys – and everything in between.

There is an app or a function on our cell phones for everything, it seems.

While these apps and cell phone functions make our everyday lives more convenient, they are benefiting companies and businesses as well. For example, our preferred banking apps offer the ability to perform routine transactions easily, which is allowing the bank’s staff to have more time to devote to more complex transactions, or even bring in new customers.

Whenever a new app or cell phone function is brought to my attention, I’m still impressed. Between accumulating points on purchases, paying my bills online, and even those friendly reminders that I need to visit the gym again – technology is advancing, and it only makes sense to keep up with it.

Over lunch, my friends and I discussed all of these new apps and cell phone features, even reminiscing about how easy it was to communicate when we were younger and in school. In class, we could easily send SMS text messages to each other without our teacher knowing. Now that we’re older – we find that SMS text messaging is one of our main forms of communication.

Whether we’re taking a midday break at the office to send our loved ones a message, or even arranging plans to meet friends for dinner (or last-minute lunches!) – SMS text messaging is an easier way to communicate than making an actual phone call, and has become a vital part of our every day lives.

The next day was like any other day, except I had that nagging feeling that I was forgetting something. While at work, my phone rang and once again – it was that same unknown number from the day before. Being at work, I was unable to answer so the call went to voicemail, again. A few minutes later, that’s when it clicked that I hadn’t actually checked my voicemail messages from the previous day. I dialed in and the first message was from the phone call yesterday. It was my dentist’s office calling to remind me that I had an appointment scheduled for the next morning. The second message was left from the call I had just been unable to answer. Again, it was my dentist’s office leaving me a message – this time to let me know I had missed my appointment altogether.

I knew that I was forgetting something that morning!

Two phones calls and two voicemails later – I had still missed my appointment. I so easily respond to multiple SMS text messages throughout the day – yet it didn’t dawn on me to check my voicemail once. Not only had I missed my appointment, but the staff at my dentist’s office had spent time on the phone, calling me and leaving voicemails.

Having the option to easily reply “YES” to a simple SMS text message, would have not only ensured that I showed up for my appointment, but also it would have allowed the dentist’s office staff that called me (twice!) to take care of other (more important) tasks.

Alas, I am left feeling frustrated and having to take more time out of my busy day to call back my dentist’s office and reschedule my appointment. While doing so – I mention to the pleasant voice on the other end of the call how much easier this whole process would have been had I been able to confirm my appointment via SMS text message. To my surprise, she informs me that their ADSTRA dental software has actually just released this feature and that their office will be implementing it in the next little while.

And just like that – advancements in technology, and SMS text messaging – solves another everyday problem!