Revolutionizing Patient Care: The Benefits of Electronic Health Records in Dentistry

Keeping electronic health records in dentistry can help your office operate more efficiently, and keep patients healthier and happier

As the dental industry continues to evolve, embracing digital technology is becoming increasingly crucial for practices to stay competitive and provide the best possible patient care. Most thriving dental practices have already undergone at least a basic digital transformation but many have yet to fully commit to the process — but they probably should.

While physical records storage is still an excellent backup option, electronic health records (EHRs) are generally simpler and more reliable. You can fit innumerable records on a single server; you can reproduce and share them with any relevant staff member; you can track who made changes, and when. Finding EHRs is simple, thanks to highly customizable metadata, and you can't accidentally lose them.

If you work in a dental practice and haven't digitized your records yet, you should strongly consider doing so. Not only will it improve your workflow, but it may well help your patients achieve better outcomes as well. All you need are the right tools for the job.

What are electronic health records in dentistry?

Electronic health records in dentistry are, simply, a digital alternative to physical records storage. Instead of (or in addition to) storing all of your patients' records in a locked file cabinet or closet, you digitize them and store them on a secure server. Whether you employ a hard drive on a local intranet or a remote cloud server, the end result is the same: a collection of highly organized, shareable records with searchable metadata.

With a powerful scanner, such as the Ricoh fi-8170, you can convert your physical records into electronic ones with much of the text already digitized and ready to search. This text likely contains valuable metadata, such as a patient's name, address, phone number, age, sex, medications, and date of last treatment. Using this metadata, you can search for individual patients with limited information, or organize your patient list any way you see fit, rather than just alphabetically.

Once your patient records are digitized, you can leverage this metadata, as well as a good piece of electronic dental records software, to access records instantly, share them easily, and manage them intelligently.

The benefits of dental EHRs

The advantages of EHRs over physical storage are manifold. First and foremost, your patient records are no longer confined to a single location or a single user. If multiple workers at different locations in the office need to access a patient's file, they can all do so simultaneously, and without having to leave their desks and keep tabs on an easy-to-lose key.

With the right paperless dental software, you can even track which users accessed any given record, and what changes they made. This creates an ironclad paper trail for patient record revisions — and since those revisions are digital, you'll never have to deal with illegible handwriting, either.

EHRs can also be a tremendous asset if you need to collaborate with other medical professionals. With a digital record at the ready, you can reproduce a patient's information in far less time than it takes to dig a file out of a folder, scan it, and email it. Whether you need to share x-rays with an orthodontist, a medication regimen with a pharmacist, or treatment history with an oral surgeon, EHRs make it much easier to coordinate among multiple offices and practitioners.

All of this can contribute to happier, healthier patients as well. Whether a patient requires a new medication, a second opinion, or a form for an insurance claim, simply sending a digital document is much faster and more reliable than creating and sharing a physical copy. Not only does this save patients time, but it may also be the difference between them getting the treatment they need and getting lost in the shuffle.

Challenges and legal compliance in dental EHRs

While keeping electronic health records in dentistry is generally a safe and reliable method of records management, there are a few caveats to bear in mind. Creating, maintaining, and disposing of digital information requires both online security measures and legal compliance.

First and foremost, any digital document may be prone to mishandling. A hack or data breach could expose confidential patient information on a cloud server. A careless employee could create unauthorized backups on a personal computer. A mistaken set of permissions could let your entire practice see every patient's full medical history.

There is no single solution to these potential problems, since data security is a complex and evolving field. However, employing a set of records management best practices can help. Restrict permissions to employees who need access; encrypt or password-protect sensitive documents; keep particularly private patient information in a separate file; and, of course, be sure to delete patient data after an appropriate amount of time has elapsed (subject to any applicable laws or requirements).

Storing and deleting patient data is, in fact, a matter of legal importance. While state laws vary considerably on how long to keep dental records, you'll want to keep most files for somewhere between five and seven years — and destroy them as thoroughly as possible after that. Depending on what records management software you use, you may have access to a secure file deletion option.

Our recommendation: fi-8170

Those who are researching electronic health records in dentistry and looking for digital solutions have no shortage of options. We take great pride in having spent the last 50+ years researching, designing, and developing some of the most advanced and powerful electronics in the world, including our professional grade fi and SP series of scanners.

Built to purpose for the most demanding document handling jobs, fi and SP scanners are capable of processing tens of thousands of pages per day at the highest levels of accuracy. Their intuitive integration capabilities with all existing work suites minimize time-to-value for businesses looking to invest in tools that will pay dividends for years to come.

Consider the fi-8170 scanner, which can scan up to 70 pages per minute and accept 100 pages in its feed at a time. Our proprietary Clear Image Capture (CIC) technology ensures that your digital records will be just as clean and legible as their paper predecessors. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.

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