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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

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

Patients won’t even notice it

June 6, 2008 By Trish Walraven 3 Comments

Internal Memo, Bright Happy Smile Dental Associates

From: Dr. Stan Freebie

To: All office personnel at Bright Happy Smile Dental

My dear team:

It is with great joy that I share this news with you! Starting next month, we will begin offering all of our patient services free of charge. This in no way affects your paycheck because our funding will come from generous sponsors instead of from the patients themselves.

Our insurance coordinator, Kathy, will be changing positions in the practice to take over the duty of implementing this new and exciting program. In order to qualify for this sponsorship, we will all need to modify our office routines in the following ways to allow for maximum product placement:

  • When answering the phone or greeting a patient, business personnel will mention the name of the building sponsor. As an example: “Thank you for calling the Bright Happy Smile Dental Associates, brought to you by Comcast. How may I help you?”

 

  • Any items that are given to the patient for use while in the practice (pens, cups, tissues) should be called by the name that is printed on them. Be sure to use the logo name and not the customary name; for instance, a patient napkin will now be called the Red Lobster bib.

 

  • The liquids dispensed in any form, whether from an air-water syringe or a high-speed handpiece, should be referred to as Coca-Cola coolant.

 

  • All crowns, fillings, and inlays/onlays will be described to the patient as dental restorations by Kay Jewelry. The exception to this are veneers; they will still be called Lumineers.

 

  • Patients who come in for preventive maintenance will need to be informed that their dental prophylaxis appointment is now called a Jiffy Lube.

 

  • To reduce no-shows and to improve communications with everyone who visits our practice, Kathy will be collecting the cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses of each patient so that we can send them periodic newsletters, text messages, and appointment reminder emails. Our sponsor’s logos will be included on all correspondence.*

 

I hope that this new series of changes inspires all of you to continue to strive towards dental excellence and office harmony. If you have any concerns about this please speak with Kathy about the policies. I’ll be taking the next two weeks off as I recover from my LA-Inked full-body Google tattoo.

Sincerely,

Dr Freebie

 

*This part of the memo is for real. DentalSenders currently offers the unlimited service for free to all dental practices, as long as you don’t mind the extra product placement on emails sent from your office. There are no contracts, no software to purchase, plus you’ll be able to ramp up your office efficiency by reducing the amount of time spent on the phone confirming patients. Dental Senders integrates with most practice management software programs, and it’s definitely worth a try.

 

Filed Under: Marketing, Practice Management Tagged With: advertising, emailing patients, humor, insurance, Lumineers, Marketing, no-shows

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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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