Ambir Technology helps Boulevard Dental reach their goal of going paperless
07/01/08
Boulevard Dental is a thriving practice in Seminole, Florida, with two doctors, three hygienists and a forward-looking, business-savvy commitment to becoming completely paperless. According to Dr. Frank Moss, the practice’s senior partner, this is practically unheard of in dental care services.
“Nobody’s doing it,” said Dr. Moss, who first became aware of the use of scanners in a healthcare environment at one of his own doctor’s offices a couple years ago. Based on Dr. Moss’s assessment of the benefits, the lack of scanners in dentistry is a bit surprising. According to Dr. Moss going paperless is an important goal for Boulevard Dental, one he is convinced will bring notable advantages, many of which his practice is already enjoying since adding Ambir scanners to their technology arsenal.
“We began using Kodak’s PracticeWorks for scheduling some time ago, then added the charting and imaging modules in 2006 and decided our goal was to be paperless, which will save us time, reduce stress on staff, and we won’t have to purchase as many paper supplies,” said Dr. Moss. Since then the practice has been striving to make the system fully paperless.
Boulevard Dental’s first foray into digitizing images came with the addition of an HP X-ray scanner, which allowed them to email images to specialists when making referrals.
After seeing the Ambir scanner at his doctor’s office, Dr. Moss purchased one to try out in his dental practice. He liked what the scanner could do and decided that he wanted to fully integrate scanning capabilities with his PracticeWorks system. He contacted his IT consultant, Todd from Advanced Automation in Atlanta, and was pleased to learn that because the Ambir scanners are TWAIN compatible they could be easily incorporated into his Practice Works system.
After purchasing three Ambir TravelScan Pro 600 scanners, which are small and compact in size, Todd set them up in three of the hygiene rooms, mounting them on the wall and enabling them to easily drop down for use. Implementation was quick and easy, said Dr. Moss. “Basically Todd plugged them in, ran the disk and they worked. It took about two minutes.”
According to Dr. Moss, having the scanners right at hand in the hygiene rooms is ideal for his practice. “We have a lot of charts and documents that need to be put into the electronic system. It really piles up,” he said. “When patients come in we do a health history update. Since we want to be paperless we load the health history into PracticeWorks. Without the scanners we had to put the papers aside and load the information in manually at the end of the day – it got to be a burden.”
Using the scanners is so quick and easy Dr. Moss calls it, “a no brainer,” saying the scanners save a tremendous amount of time and keep the staff from getting backed up with manual data entry. The new system is saving the practice money as well, with no need for staff to stay late to do manual data entry.
Dr. Moss said his staff mastered the new system extremely quickly. The system itself is so efficient, with hygienists sliding the health history into the scanner and completing the process in the exam room in less than 30 seconds, patients hardly notice it.”
With the initial three Ambir TravelScan Pro 600 scanners working out so well, Dr. Moss said his goal is to purchase six for the remaining practice rooms and two for the front desk, to enable scanning of new patient forms.
“Our goal is to get them in all the rooms,” said Dr. Moss. “They’re not expensive and they’re making things a lot faster for us. Not only can we get the information in more quickly, we can quickly email it to specialists we work with.” Dr. Moss said the practice also uses the scanners to electronically capture referral forms, keeping Boulevard Dental’s records fully electronic while allowing patients to keep the paper copy – again, all from the exam rooms, further easing stress on the busy front office staff.
With these kinds of benefits, why aren’t more dental practices using scanners? Dr. Moss isn’t sure. And while he shied away from being called cutting-edge, it’s clear that Boulevard Dental is on to something.
“The scanners help us reach our goal of being paperless and make things easier for our front office staff,” said Dr. Moss. “Using them is very simple, very straightforward and not a major investment,” said Dr. Moss. “We plan to put one in every practice room.”
