Professional Courtesy: Ask Not What You Can Do for Your Software by Dr. Thomas Giacobbi

by Thomas Giacobbi, DDS, FAGD, editorial director, Dentaltown magazine

I am the first line of tech support in my practice, mostly because I’ve always had an interest in technology—and dentists like to fix things.

Over the past 18 years, I’ve made countless calls to Dentrix, an experience that has empowered me to solve many routine problems. Last month was a different story, though: One of my team members came to me and said, “Dentrix disappeared from the consult room computer. Even the desktop shortcuts are gone.”

My mind went to malware or a virus, so I called Dentrix tech support, which solved the short-term issue by reinstalling the software on the workstation. I remained uneasy, though, because they hadn’t seen anything like this before. The root cause remained a mystery.

The rest of the day went well but the following day, a different workstation lost the program. This played over and over for a week straight, with no answers. By the time the pattern repeated again a week later—with the same computers losing the program a second time—I was in touch with higher-level tech support at Dentrix, who were studying this phenomenon because it was showing up in other dental practices. It’s a relief to know you’re not alone in your misery (even if what you really want is a solution).

In Week 3, my support contact called with an answer: Dell Support Assist, a utility program that runs in the background to keep computers running well with the latest drivers and updates, has an antivirus component that was treating Dentrix like a virus. This program runs on a schedule, which explains the pattern of workstations removing the application: Only the ones that had scheduled scans had been affected so far.

This series of unfortunate events underscores the importance of your practice management software to the operation of your practice. This month’s poll questions (p. 22) focus on practice management software, and I was particularly interested in the nearly even split of votes of which areas of software need the most improvement. Compatibility, customization, reliability and user experience were all equal concerns.

Another question pointed to dentists desiring an app for secure, remote access to their software. It’s a bit surprising that in this world of apps, smartphones and tablets that we don’t already have a great app companion to the major dental practice management software systems. Access to patient information after hours is important. Accomplishing this task now with third-party solutions makes a cumbersome, remote connection. Fingerprints and facial recognition have added layers of security to our mobile devices that should make development of an app more appealing and logical.

In the poll, Townies also expressed wanting inventory management tied to procedures. Imagine for a moment that your practice management software could analyze the procedures on the schedule and generate your supply order. (Many businesses around the world already have software that does this.) Once the current inventory is known, it’s simply a matter of calculating the procedures per item. While supplies don’t represent the biggest piece of your overhead, there is a significant amount of waste from expired product and lost production for items that were not ordered in a timely manner.

Other notable takeaways: 22% of Townies say that cloud-based software is desirable. Always up-to-date and accessible, this is an option that should always be on the table—if only for the security of not losing data hosted on a single, personal server. Critics who raise the alarm about outages due to poor internet connections should realize how rare this occurs. Lastly, some Townies are still looking for better online scheduling for patients. Most of us already have this feature in some form, but there are areas of improvement for sure. As machine learning and artificial intelligence increases, hopefully software companies improve as well to meet our needs.

What do you wish for from your practice management software? What are some of the tools you are currently using to make your practice run more efficiently? Please share your stories and comments in the online version of this article at dentaltown.com/magazine. Reach me at tom@dentaltown.com or on Twitter @ddsTom.