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Archives for June 2008

Upgrade to Vista to downgrade to XP

June 25, 2008 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Our resident gadget expert,The Computeritized Dentist, just wants his network to run properly and leaves the technical specs to the geeks. We asked him to read an important message that we got from Microsoft today.

The Computeritized Dentist will now translate this June 24, 2008 letter from Microsoft Senior Vice President Bill Veghte detailing the fate of Windows XP, among other things:

“Today, almost every dental office in the world that is computerized uses a PC with our software platform. And unless you want to ditch everything you’re already using, you’re stuck with us – and all the peripherals that try to get along with us.

“Windows XP is a dinosaur, and you may have heard that it is scheduled to be installed in the Museum of Planned Obsolescence on June 30, 2008.  Ha, ha, there’s really no such museum; that was just a clever metaphor that I thought of myself.

“Okay, so back with the XP thing. You dentists have mostly stayed on with using XP because it doesn’t throw up all over the perceived “security threats” like Vista does when you plug in a digital x-ray sensor or try to access your system remotely. It’s true; Microsoft will no longer sell Windows XP after this month, but now you will have almost six entire years until you will need to upgrade all of your equipment again.

“So the deal is, when you purchase a new PC from now on, you are also purchasing Windows Vista as its operating system. But because we know you dentists have issues with Vista, we’ve created something called “downgrade rights.” This means when you add a workstation, you have the option to downgrade your platform to Windows XP. And then when you are ready to upgrade, you are “future proofed” since you already have a license for Windows Vista. If you choose to downgrade, you’ll need to install Service Pack 3 and Internet Explorer 7, because it’s going to be hard for us to support you if you if you don’t.

“Hopefully all of your dental technology companies will have their Vista compatibility problems worked out before April, 2014. Because after that, we’re thinking…we might not be around anymore. Just kidding; we just haven’t promised XP support after that date.

“In the meantime, keep your eyes out for the Vista replacement, currently called Windows 7 and scheduled for launch in January, 2010. Our dominating market share depends on its success.

“Thank you so much for filling out all the error reports as well as you fill teeth. Your feedback has been filed away in some remote server in a dark room, but at least we try.  And we mean well. And…and…Go Windows!”

 

If you want to know where the Computeritized Dentist got all of this info, follow the link:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/letter.html

Filed Under: Practice Management, Software, Technology Tagged With: Microsoft XP, peripherals, Vista

Dental Design Rip-offs

June 22, 2008 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Looking around your dental practice, you wonder where the ideas for all those gadgets came from. Do you need help uncluttering the deja-vu from your mind?

Run your mouse over the product images to get a sense of their origins.

 

 

Unfortunately, the Luxatemp guns do not fire over long distances. That and they’re kind of runny.

 

 

Make sure that you’ve placed the right kind of suction tip in your patient’s mouth.

 

 

Laser dentistry. So easy, even a toddler could do it.

 

 

Enamel Pro paste appeals to hygienists who never grew up. Oh, the colors that end up in our children’s stomachs! Thankfully patients aren’t supposed to swallow this.

 

 

Who says you have to sit still while doing dentistry? The Evolution Chair also provides for good spinal alignment.

 

 

Hey, with an LCD screen, you can find the bottom of anything! At least the Vector Root Apex Locator comes with its own hook.

 

 

Never mind.

Filed Under: Featured, Fun, Products Tagged With: Enamel Pro, Fun, Gaiam, Luxatemp, Oroscience, Vector

Consumer Reports: What, no bill’em?

June 20, 2008 By Trish Walraven 3 Comments

Unbiased reporting about the consumers themselves.

 

It may be hard to believe, but patients all over the country are complaining that dentists aren’t asking them to pay their bills anymore.

For many years, consumers have taken advantage of dental practices’ good will by just “paying when they could” for their dental care. Unfortunately for many offices, this resulted in the expenses of staff time, mailing repeated statements, and simply writing off debts that were never paid.

Now that healthcare financing has come to the market, Consumer Reports (July 2008 issue) is pointing fingers at CareCredit, the Citi Health Card, Chase HealthAdvance, CapitalOne Healthcare Finance, and the dental providers themselves for allegedly taking advantage of the doctor-patient relationship.

There is no excuse for dentists who purportedly sign patients up for these programs while sedated, or otherwise abuse their patient’s credit for personal gain. Consumer Reports makes it seem like the American Dental Association itself condones this type of behavior. The purpose of healthcare financing is to benefit patients, dentists, and the participating banks. The article even affirms that the lenders take anywhere from 4.5% to 13.9% of the fees that are financed through their credit cards, which is much, much higher than traditional credit cards. Dentists pay these fees in order to give patients access to interest-free payments.

Most patients do pay off their balances within the interest-free period. Those 20 percent who do not were originally the kind that were most likely to show up in the dentists’ accounts-receivable column at the end of the year. Only now it is the banks who have accepted the burden, and because contracts are involved, so are consequences.

Is it really the dental equivalent of subprime mortgages?

Consumer Reports seems to think so. While not exactly an adjustable-rate mortgage, the default retroactive APR of 22.9% when a balance isn’t paid in full after 24 months is not news to anyone who reads the fine print on any typical credit card statement. The only money crisis in healthcare lending is that consumers are now being held accountable for their actions.

It is our culture that breeds the opinion that consumers deserve what they want, exactly when they want it, and it is this belief that is the underpinning of excessive consumer debt. Most patients want a perfect smile, but only the ones who don’t have the self-discipline to know whether or not they can even afford the payments are the ones getting snagged by the banks.

In defense of Consumer Reports, however, it does appear that some of the terms of the loan agreements are difficult to stomach, and it is agreed that some reform here would be beneficial to everyone involved.

Many consumers believe that teeth are more of a luxury than a life-and-death issue. Affirming this is the prosperity of quality dental practices which do not rely on insurance payments for their livelihood. And the bottom-line truth is that edentulism is not a risk factor for any other diseases, so it is not a liability to the overall health of a patient.

Dental insurance is a form of consumer entitlement, and healthcare financing is one strong step away from this dependency and expectation. Insurance justifies the acceptability of mediocre dentistry to the consumer. Perhaps the reality is that every dentist should move towards the model of providing excellent dental care at fees that will keep them in business, without taking advantage of those patients who need much more than just a good set of chompers in their lives.

What’s next?

Our prediction: haircare financing.

Filed Under: Dental Debates, Money, Practice Management Tagged With: CareCredit, Consumer Reports, dental crisis, dental insurance

Keeping it clean

June 14, 2008 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment


Throw away all your battery-powered unmentionables and welcome a familiar friend to your bedside drawer!

The Oral-B Pulsar disposable electric toothbrush is the discreet answer to better pleasure, vitality, and all-around good vibes.

Once found only in the oral care department of superstores, the Oral-B Pulsar has now been endorsed by a pioneering gynecologist and may soon be the first product on the market to simultaneously receive the ADA Seal of Acceptance and the ABOG Standard of Therapy Seal. “Never before have we realized that a single product can fulfill two needs – perhaps even at the same time if the spouse is an enthusiastic brusher,” said one dental hygienist who wishes to remain anonymous.

Furthermore, the low cost of the Oral-B Pulsar opens the door to many more users who could not otherwise afford a vibrating device or who would stoop so low as to think of handling a toothbrush in this manner.

Readers of this blog who want to be further humored are highly encouraged to first read this actual news article from the Palm Beach Post, then to go play with the Pulsar Flash Video on Oral-B’s website. It will definitely change the way you look at power toothbrushes forever.

Filed Under: Fun, Preventive Care, Products Tagged With: Electric toothbrush, Fun, Oral-B, Pulsar, vibrator

The real reason for the mask

June 9, 2008 By Trish Walraven 1 Comment

It is about time that periodontists, oral surgeons, and all dental professionals hear a public apology like this.

Today NPR aired a Fresh Air segment featuring writer David Sedaris. The morbidly fascinating sense of personal maladies that he brings to his humor dwells in a special place in our hearts. Or at least in our noses.

Here’s an excerpt of the 25-minute interview:

Terry Gross:

“You talked about the boil [on your backside], and you wrote how horrible the stuff that came out of it was; that it smelled like evil that had been trapped in your body. I would like you to reflect on that, feeling like you’d been the host to this stuff.”

David Sedaris:

“Well, it was my second time when I realized that I was a host to really what had to be the foulest liquid on earth, and it was more horrible than anything, smell-wise. But a couple years ago, when Hugh did lead me to the dentist, who led me to a periodontist, the periodontist cut my gums from top to bottom, and then he lifted them up, and he scraped that very same thing from the roots of my teeth. It smelled just like that.

“And I couldn’t feel a thing because he’d shot me full of Novocaine, so it was this odd sensation and I saw him, you know, sticking a knife into my mouth, and I saw his hand going back and forth, and I knew it, that I could taste blood, and I knew that there was stuff going on in there.

“But it wasn’t until I smelled it, and then, I just said “ Ahh sohhhay,” and what I was saying was “I’m sorry.” I was so sorry that i subjected anybody, it must have cleared the building. And to know that that was just there, hidden, hidden beneath my gumline.”

You can listen to the entire interview at NPR.org.

Filed Under: Anecdotes Tagged With: audio, authors, periodontics

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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