The Future of Dentistry: How Digital Technology Drives Modern Paperless Dental Offices

A paperless dental office can help you keep better records and communicate with patients more effectively

Transitioning to a paperless dental office can offer many benefits. Digital records are easier to access, edit, and share. Conversely, they're also harder to damage, misinterpret, and lose. Nonetheless, many dental offices have been slow to fully transition to a digital workflow.

Electronic records management and physical records storage don't have to be mutually exclusive. But, aiming for a digital-first dental practice can improve office workflow, information security, and even patient outcomes. All you need are the right digitization tools, and the skills to use them properly.

What is a paperless dental office?

A paperless dental office prioritizes electronic tools, from electronic health records (EHRs), to digital imaging, to remote consultations. By contrast, traditional dental practices maintain reams of physical records, often with limited storage space and arcane access rules.

Document digitization is perhaps the single most important element in going paperless. Rather than keeping records on shelves or in cabinets, a digital-first dental practice can use TWAIN-compliant scanners to send paper to their records management software, allowing them to collect, store, and update patient information as needed.

Electronic health records offer a number of advantages over their physical counterparts. You and your coworkers can access them simultaneously; you can securely share them with patients and medical colleagues instantly; you can modify them effortlessly. You can also track who accessed any given document, when they did so, and what changes they made. EHRs aren't prone to getting lost — and if they do, it's usually easy to access a backup.

A paperless dental practice does come with a few caveats, however. Just as physical documents may be prone to theft or mishandling, digital documents may be vulnerable to hacks, data breaches, and unauthorized access. To minimize risk, dental professionals must maintain good data security practices. These might include limiting user permissions, password-protecting sensitive documents, or keeping files on a local intranet rather than a cloud server.

Digital dentistry tools

Running a paperless dental office is primarily a matter of how and where you store patient records. However, forward-thinking dentists can embrace new technologies in a variety of other ways, including digital imaging and teledentistry.

Digital imaging allows dentists to upload x-ray images directly to a computer. Traditionally, medical professionals took x-rays on photographic plates, a practice that hasn't changed much since 1895. With digital x-rays, dentists can gather more images and compare them more easily, which could help them make more accurate diagnoses and recommend more effective treatments. Digital x-rays are also much easier to securely share with other medical professionals, should a patient require treatments that fall outside your practice’s capabilities.

The American Dental Association defines teledentistry as "the use of telehealth systems and methodologies in dentistry." Telehealth, the organization explains, includes synchronous video, asynchronous video, remote patient monitoring, and mobile health (public health initiatives that patients can learn about via their computers, tablets, and smartphones). Teledentistry is a broad category, and its implementation varies considerably from practice to practice. It could be as simple as emailing a patient follow-up treatment instructions, or as complex as employing a sophisticated webcam for a remote consultation.

Paperless dental office benefits

Do dental offices have to go paperless? Not necessarily. After all, medical practices have operated successfully with paper records for hundreds of years — and without any records whatsoever for thousands of years before that. However, the paperless dental office benefits are numerous for dentists, office staff, and patients alike.

First and foremost, teledentistry allows virtual treatment planning, in which dentists can communicate with patients electronically. There, dental professionals can share documents, including visual aids, videos, and treatment regimens, which would be either impossible or much more difficult over the phone. While this can't replace every in-person visit, it can streamline a lot of the administrative work that accompanies major procedures.

Electronic communication can also keep patients more engaged. For example, you could mail each patient a biannual reminder to call your office and schedule a cleaning, or you could text them a link to do so themselves. This gives patients a sense of autonomy and frees up your staff for more demanding work.

In fact, going paperless can cut out a lot of busywork for your staff. With an online portal, patients can schedule their own appointments, type up their own clerical information, and even provide their own payment methods. Furthermore, if your staff needs to share any of this information, they can simply open a digital file rather than having to sort through mounds of paperwork.

Digital technology has a proven track record in dentists' offices. A 2016 study from the Oral Health Workforce Research Center evaluated six different dental practices that adopted teledentistry, from Finger Lakes Community Health in upstate New York, to Polk County Teledentistry in western Oregon. Across the board, the study found that teledentistry was particularly beneficial for "people with developmental disabilities or special needs, nursing home residents, people in rural areas or inner cities, and children in schools and in preschool programs." Likewise, the study lauded "the beneficial outcomes from the services, including shorter time frames to abstain specialty consultations, higher treatment completion rates, lower no-show rates for appointments, and improved workflow efficiencies for patients, providers, and support staff."

Our recommendation: fi-800R

Those who are researching the feasibility of a paperless dental office 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.

The fi-800R is the ideal fit for front offices. Its compact design saves valuable desktop space, and it can tackle a range of documents through its fast, double-sided scanner and dedicated front feeder. The fi-800R’s integrated TWAIN compatibility means it’s well-equipped to work with your choice of scanning software solutions, and its skew correction and active separation technology allow it to work with minimal rescans or jams. Click here to learn more or shop the rest of our production scanner line.

Note: Information and external links are provided for your convenience and for educational purposes only, and shall not be construed, or relied upon, as legal advice. PFU America, Inc. makes no representations about the contents, features, or specifications on such third-party sites, software, and/or offerings (collectively “Third-Party Offerings”) and shall not be responsible for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of such Third-Party Offerings. Please consult with a licensed attorney regarding your specific situation as regulations may be subject to change.