Software

It’s not OK for your dental practice to use free cloud-based communication

June 10, 2021 By DentalBuzz Staff 2 Comments

It was nice – the way that the HIPAA police looked the other way as we all figured out how to take care of each other during the worst of 2020 – but now that we’re over that hump, emergency usage is no longer an acceptable excuse for a security breach or a privacy violation.

Before you begin defending the use of cloud-based messaging in your office by explaining that you never share protected health information (PHI) there, or that you have other security measures in place to protect you from malware, or hope that the regulations only apply to large organizations and not small practices, know that there is one rule that is hard and fast when it comes to using communication tools in healthcare:

Only Paid Versions are HIPAA compliant.

This is because free versions do not include something called a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). A signed BAA is required in order for cloud-based systems to be HIPAA compliant. It’s not as though you’ll ever need to exercise an audit, but if one becomes necessary, this is the safeguard in place to allow you to have the ability to prove that a program such as Slack or Microsoft Teams was not the source of the privacy breach. Here’s the thing: even if you’ve never shared sensitive patient information on any platform, it doesn’t matter if you can’t prove it!

And that right there is the crux of the matter. While you may think this threat is a flaming fear spear, remember, data has value, and there are those out there who seek it out in order to further enrich themselves. We all have an obligation to follow the recommendations set for us professionally. After all, you’re a patient, too. Maybe not always where you work, but if you have a body, somewhere you’re a patient in an office’s system, and as such, you’d like to know that the practices you visit are managing all of their privacy matters correctly. If they’re no being careful with something simple like communications, it makes you wonder where else they’re making mistakes.

While this is not a comprehensive list, these are the most common communication platforms that dental practices (and healthcare practices in general!) may encounter when they’re looking for a way to collaborate with their team members, along with the current pricing that users should expect to pay in order to safely utilize the software anywhere in their business.

As you can see, it starts to get expensive, very quickly, if you’re dead set on using one of these platforms. They don’t even do a good job of getting the right person’s attention at the right time, especially if people in the office don’t just sit at one computer all day. You can get so much more for your money once you accept that healthcare businesses must have a paid subscription to use cloud-based communication. It’s just a matter of doing a simple Google search to find many other solutions more tailored to dentistry, at a lower cost per year, per user, per month, whatever. Making do with the programs above means that you end up paying for things that most team members aren’t even using, like Microsoft Word, or screen sharing, or video conferencing.

In case you’re still confused, here’s the concise answer for each of the free versions of these platforms.

Is Slack HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Microsoft Teams HIPAA compliant? No.
Is WhatsApp HIPAA compliant? Never.
Is Skype HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Google Chat HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Zoom HIPAA compliant? No.

And for final clarification, you can become HIPAA compliant in the use of five out of six of these applications, but only once you’ve paid a subscription fee per user, disengaged any non-compliant third party integrations (so many rules!) and received a signed business associate agreement.

Otherwise, it’s time to look elsewhere.

Resources:

HHS.gov Business Associate Agreements: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/sample-business-associate-agreement-provisions/index.html

Slack Enterprise Grid for Healthcare (otherwise NOT HIPAA compliant): https://slack.com/resources/why-use-slack/hipaa-compliant-collaboration-with-slack and https://slack.com/help/articles/360020685594-Slack-and-HIPAA

Microsoft Teams for Healthcare: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compare-microsoft-365-enterprise-plans

Zoom for Healthcare: https://zoom.us/healthcare

Why COVID-19 increases your need for contactless payments

April 24, 2020 By DentalBuzz Staff 1 Comment

We love sharing good information that empowers dental practices to make unbiased decisions, which is why our friends at SoftwarePundit didn’t even have to send us any sort of payment, contactless or otherwise, to get the word out about their dental software review site. This category of solutions should be on the top of your research list right now, for obvious reasons.

by Bruce Hogan

Traditionally, dental practices have been slower to adopt new technology than other medical practices. Most dental professionals can understand why – implementing new technology is a time consuming and tedious process! However, the benefits of overcoming these barriers are often well worth the pain. Do you remember the days before automated appointment reminders? Without software tools, front-office staff were forced to manually call patients before every appointment!

Practices nationwide are increasingly adopting payment processing technology called contactless payments. Contactless payments refer to a variety of ways that patients can pay for treatments digitally, whether it’s paying through a text message or using a mobile wallet like Apple Pay. Patients are no longer forced to pay by mailing a check.

Why are dental practices starting to offer contactless payments? It’s what patients want! A recent study showed that 35% of customers are interested in paying with a text from their phone, but only 4% of small businesses offer this payment option. Additionally, 62% of buyers under the age of 35 would frequently or always pay with a text from their phone if they could. Allowing patients to pay the way they want to is an effective way to increase revenue and patient satisfaction.

Covid-19 is accelerating the need for dental practices to adopt payment technology. With shelter-in-place orders, patients can’t physically come into your office to pay for treatment they have received. Many practices are understaffed or closed right now, and do not have the capability to print and mail statements. Most importantly, when patients do begin returning to practices, contactless payments will allow patients to pay without any direct physical contact with your team.

Benefits of Contactless Payments for Dental Practices

There are three primary benefits of contactless payments: they lead to improved operational agility during crises like coronavirus, increased revenue, and reduced administrative workload.

Contactless Payments are Particularly Beneficial During Coronavirus

Contactless payments are ideal during Covid-19 because it allows patients to pay for treatments without being physically close to staff. Practices can use contactless payments to collect payments for services they have rendered prior to the shut down. This would be especially beneficial for cash-strapped practices that need an immediate influx of cash.

Additionally, contactless payments could be a part of the operational changes that practices make to increase safety after reopening. Contactless payments allow patients to maintain a safe distance from front-office staff when making payments. It’s congruent with the social distancing behavior that we’ve been practicing since March.

Finally, contactless payments are a valuable tool for practices that offer teledentistry appointments. After appointments are finished, you can immediately send patients a payment request digitally. This makes the payment process much easier and faster for both parties.

When practices offer patients more options to pay, they pay more often

Weave, a patient communication software company, commissioned an independent market research firm to survey a random sample of 380 small business customers and 350 small business owners to understand their behaviors and perceptions regarding payment options. In this study, the research firm found that small businesses that offer more payment options increased revenue by 29%. The study’s conclusion supports a common sense notion that we, as consumers, can all relate to – we are more likely to pay, if we can pay the way that we want to!

Contactless Payments Makes Billing Easier for You

Contactless payment software also reduces a lot of clerical work for dental practices. Traditionally, the collection process involves printing and mailing statements, entering billing information, and managing merchant accounts. Most contactless payment software automates these tasks for you. For example, the billing process using Weave’s text-to-pay feature involves a single text. The patient inputs their own payment information, and the software automatically processes the payment.

Types of Contactless Payments

There are several types of contactless payments. While they differ slightly, all share the benefit of patients being able to pay remotely.

Send Payment Requests by Text

Practices can use software tools, like Weave, Podium, and Doctible, to send payment requests by text. You simply enter the patient’s phone number, input a treatment amount, and attach a statement. This is much easier than traditional collection methods that involve printing and mailing statements, collecting billing information, and charging each transaction manually! Patients input their own billing information into the text, payments are automatically processed, and the money goes straight into your bank account.

Send Payment Requests by Email

Many software tools allow you to send payment requests by email. The process is similar to sending payment requests by text. You enter the patient’s email address, attach statements, and enter payment amounts. The software takes care of the rest.

Process Payments with a Desktop Application

For patients more comfortable paying for treatment over the phone, many solutions have desktop applications with a payment-processing tool. Front-office staff can input card information directly into the app, and the tool automatically processes the payment.

Receive Payments Through Mobile Wallets

Many patients prefer paying for treatment using a mobile wallet, like PayPal OneTouch and Apple Pay. Making this payment option available makes the billing process more convenient for your patients.

How to Get Started with Contactless Payments

Here’s a list of steps that we recommend when searching for the right vendor. Typically, the process takes about 1-2 months from initial research to completed software implementation.

Create a Short-list of Potential Vendors

Make a list of the vendors in the market that interest you. We recommend Doctible, Podium, and Weave to get your list started.

Research Each Vendor

While doing your research, keep an eye out for the most important qualities in the vendors. This includes price, features, and quality of customer service. SoftwarePundit provides in-depth analysis on many vendors that provide contactless payments. Check them out!

Talk to Existing Customers of Each Vendor

One of the best ways to learn about vendors is to speak with customers who have used the product first hand. Customers will typically speak candidly about what they like and dislike about the product, and give you a clear idea of what you should expect. SoftwarePundit for Dentists is a Facebook group created to serve as a platform for dentists to discuss dental software.

Go Through Sales Process

Reach out to each vendor, and begin the sales process. The sales process typically involves a series of steps including:

Introductory call
Product demo
Product testing
Contract negotiation & signing
Software implementation and staff training

Are You Ready to Find The Best Software for You?

Finding the right software to implement contactless payments can be a confusing process. Our job at SoftwarePundit is to make this process easier, and help you pick the best software that fits you and your team’s style and needs. Come visit our website if you have any questions about contactless payments in dentistry!

Bruce Hogan is Co-founder & CEO of SoftwarePundit, a technology research firm that provides advice, information, and tools to help businesses thrive. Bruce has experience investing at multi-billion dollar private equity firms, leading teams at venture-backed Internet companies, and launching new businesses.

Great dental practices are run like great kitchens

February 26, 2015 By Trish Walraven 4 Comments

Here’s something you might not know: my husband creates communication software that helps medical practices stay on time, and as his marketing manager, I thought it was ABOUT TIME (bad pun, *snort*) that I wrote an article about our behind-the-scenes passion. Ooh, that sounded honeymooney, but no, not that. I’m talking about the passion we both have to help people communicate better, and in the ten years since we launched the software we have helped thousands of offices – dental, medical, veterinary, optometry – who were plagued by the inability to move people quickly around their practices.

If you are well-aware that your office needs some improvements when it comes to knowing when patients arrive, when dentists need to get their BUTTS MOVING TOWARDS A HYGIENE CHECK, if you’d like to not have to ask “pretty please” any time you need an assistant to visit your operatory, or you just need to scream with your fingers to everyone in the practice because an appointment isn’t going well, I can help. Click here on this BlueNote Communicator link, or in the Sponsor box on the right. Please don’t send money or your Visa card number, just use the software in your practice for free for a month, and work with it to bring out a little of the magic that I’m going to spend the rest of this article talking about. You see, it’s the magic that’s really the most important here, not the way you make it, after all.

____________

You probably already have some good work habits and routines in your practice, and you’ve realized that the efficiency you’ve gained from those routines gives you a feeling of having it all together. Until you realize that you don’t. This is because you are part of a group of people that are dependent upon one another to get stuff done. You each have your good moments and your weak ones, and sometimes you’re so focused on the details of your own job that it can be tough to remember that they must fit in seamlessly with everyone else’s details. Otherwise the patient ends up with a cold steak.

I’m going to pick up that random cold steak now and drop it into the metaphor of a dental office being like a fine culinary experience. Weird, yes, but work with me here. The inspiration for this article all started after I heard this radio story about mise-en-place, a French phrase used in the cooking arts that refers to the gathering and arranging of ingredients and tools needed beforehand. What struck me is that mise-en-place, for many people in culinary institutes, becomes the way they relate to the world. They organize not only their kitchens, but their closets, their desks, their entire lives around the philosophy that those things that are reached for most often are the most strategically placed. It becomes an obsession, almost. Here’s the part of the story that really grabbed my attention:

“A chef, because of mise-en-place, he’s always on time,” says Andre Soltner, dean of the International Culinary Center in New York City. He demands the same kind of efficiency outside his kitchen. “If I go to the doctor, and if he’s not ready, I leave. And that’s because of mise-en-place.”

Ouch. What a sucky reason to lose patients. The reality is that, if people are picky about the temperature of their steak, imagine how bent out of shape those same people would be about the quality of care they receive in a dental practice.

You’re probably thinking that you don’t want to have to deal with PITA patients like that because who really walks out on a doctor for being ten minutes late? But the problem isn’t them. We train our patients to expect mediocrity when it comes to being on time. The issue isn’t really about being late either. It’s about getting into that wonderful flow that decreases anxiety levels so that you actually enjoy being part of dentistry and taking care of people.

Busy kitchens have to orchestrate all of their actions to synchronize the plating of a dish without being chaotic. Every movement is deliberate and necessary, there’s no gravy on the floor, and it all has to happen behind the scenes. Diners only see the seamless completion of their meal as it is presented to them. That flawless execution means that, hey boss, we all did our jobs, and we did them together! How does this happen?

By having systems. You’ve probably got these already so I’m not going to play Practice Management Consultant with you today. What I am going to emphasize, though, is that, like a great kitchen, your practice can calmly see many patients at once without ever getting crazy, and that’s when you’ll know that your systems are working.

Dr. Michael Ling states this better than I ever could:

“In a restaurant there are no small jobs. Every person has their place in a bigger system. It doesn’t matter if I am working the grill and cook the steak perfectly if the system breaks down and the guy making the veg isn’t ready at the same time. The plate goes out cold and the customer is disappointed. And do you know why the guy cooking the steak can do it so effortlessly? Because he was set up by the teammates and the steps in the system that preceded putting the meat to the fire – the meat was butchered to the exact thickness he requires, it’s stored in the right place at the right temperature, his grill is clean and set up, and he knows from experience that if everything is set up properly, 3 minutes each side equals perfectly medium rare. If the grill wasn’t cleaned properly and doesn’t get hot enough, or the guy cutting the steak gets sloppy and starts cutting 2.25 inch pieces instead of 2.0 inches, the whole system falls apart.

“Your practice systems are the recipes of your ‘kitchen’. There is a little room for creativity and improvisation, but if you don’t follow your part of the recipe closely, then you let down everyone else counting on you and the dish fails. If you don’t communicate how your part of the dish is going, your teammates won’t have the opportunity to adjust, and the dish fails.

“So that is why I love taking my staff to dinner at restaurants with open kitchens whenever possible. It’s a great way to get the message across about teamwork, communication, attention to tiny details, and the fact that following rigid systems (or recipes) doesn’t necessarily mean doing things without passion and energy.

“Start with some small talk, joking around, have a few drinks to loosen everyone up. And then steer the conversation towards work, or how the conference was that day, what we liked or didn’t like, etc. And then I take control of the conversation and explain to them why we are there. How our office is a lot like this restaurant. Our patients have very high expectations, and there are a million moving parts that have to come together behind the scenes to pull it off. Patients never really appreciate how much we care and how hard we work, just like as restaurant customers we just want to enjoy our steak, we don’t give a sh— how hard it was to make it. As we watch the cooks work, I point out the different stations in the kitchen and how each of them is focused 90% on executing their portion of the dish to perfection, and 10% to what is going on around them and how their portion is going to fit with everyone else. They constantly communicate about where they are, what is coming next, and how much time they are going to need. If you don’t pay enough attention to what you are doing, your work gets sloppy. If you pay too much attention and get tunnel vision, your portion turns out perfectly, but you miss out on how it fits with everyone else, and ultimately the dish fails.

“I’ll look at one of the plates served to us, and ask one of my team how long it would take them to cook this dish at home. And why is it that this kitchen was able to push this dish out perfectly in only 10 minutes? It’s all about systems, being confident that everyone on the team is following the same systems, and having everything prepared and at your fingertips. Cooking is so much easier and faster if you have everything prepped and ready to go, mise-en-place as they say. Aren’t there ways that we as a dental team can prep for our day, instead of scrambling at the last second?

“The restaurant is another really good way of emphasizing the importance of teamwork, systems, communication, etc. And oh, by the way, you usually get a kick ass meal out of it too.”

What do I want you to get out of this article? Probably the realization that you have some systems in your practice that aren’t working. Change them. Bring in new ones. Discover what mise-en-place can do to close the gaps in your office flow and maybe you’ll discover your own magic recipe for greatness, served on a plate piled high with quality care for your patients, more time to do the things that matter, and maybe even a little extra income as the sprinkles.

The other takeaway? It’s time to invite everyone out to dinner.

Health IT Security: THE GAME

October 14, 2013 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

There is just nothing, nothing at all that is alluring or interesting about the need to safeguard our patient data. We want to pass the buck, let SOMEONE ELSE HANDLE IT, not our problem. Except that if your dental team doesn’t know better there’s a chance that they’re setting you up for a security breach out of mere ignorance. Trust me, you do not want to go there. Instead, our government spent a whole bunch of money, probably, to make a video game for you and your office to play and learn about CyberSecurity.

Wait, before you pass judgement like I did and say either (1) This can’t be real, it’s a joke or (2) it’s stupid to play a game about medical data security, just click on the image above, type in a random name, and PLAY IT. You’ll be surprised what you do and don’t know about the HIPAA and HiTech laws that affect you and your practice, and that it’s actually a pretty interesting way to learn.

What’s that? Should you allow your team members to play it during work? If they have basic knowledge of proper security protocols they will be much more likely to understand the importance of any changes that may be rolled out with the way you handle patient data in the near future. And you’ll get bonus points for being kind of cool, but not really, because it is still work, even if it’s disguised as fun.

Here’s the link:

http://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/cybersecure/cybersecure.html

It should only take you about 15 minutes to complete the entire game, unless you’re actually looking for all that extra real estate that it promises to give you.

And really, consider the source.

Future “drug” for dental phobics

April 12, 2013 By Trish Walraven 2 Comments

It looks like virtual reality may actually be almost Matrix-quality in a few short years, and our patients will be able to immerse themselves fully in another world while they’re getting their dental work done. But because there’s a lot more money to be made in gaming (and there’s a MUCH wider customer base) don’t expect that this technology will have a dental application any time soon. Here’s a decent introduction to the concept featuring Palmer Luckey, the originator of the Oculus Rift headset:

These sorts of glasses have been intriguing to me for years, but all the previous versions mentioned here on DentalBuzz basically make it seem like you’re watching a TV screen from a distance. Oculus Rift is different. Users have described the feeling as being totally disconnected from reality. And isn’t that what recreational drugs do? Isn’t that what dental sedatives do?

Imagine a dental appointment where a fearful patient is allowed to slip into a virtual playground where they don’t even need to move their head much in order to initiate the immersive feeling of being elsewhere while they hold their totally oblivious mouths open. Patients’ ears will hear the sounds of their “other world,” letting them slip away from their bodies for a little while so that you can manage all the dental unpleasantries for them.

Here’s another preview of Oculus Rift:

There are many software developers in dentistry that are in search of the next big thing. The 3-D milling technology is pretty awesome these days, but indirect dental software such as patient education, practice management and the like are also looking for the leg-up. Oculus Rift is looking for developers right now, and my guess is that they haven’t even imagined its application in dentistry.

But that’s because you haven’t yet picked up their development kit to make it happen.

Here ya go, and good luck:

Only Paid Versions are HIPAA compliant.

Benefits of Contactless Payments for Dental Practices

Types of Contactless Payments

How to Get Started with Contactless Payments

Are You Ready to Find The Best Software for You?

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