The focus of this year’s Interop Business Technology conference at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, NV was all about personal devices, such as iPads and Smartphones, being brought into the business environment. It is well known that the popularity of these devices has increased three-fold in the past 2 years, and it seems only natural that the prospect of accessing your business from anywhere your mobile device travels is a temptation many cannot deny. This movement is called BYOD, which translates to Bring Your Own Device to some, and Bring Your Own Disaster to others. Due to the uncontrolled [and unsecured] status of most personal devices, IT personnel caution businesses to evaluate existing wireless network appliances for proper security and necessary bandwidth before jumping cannonball-style into BYOD. The message was that businesses have no control over the installed applications and files contained on personal devices, and introduction of these applications and files into the business network is a serious risk that requires careful preparation. To combat the BYOD movement, network appliance vendors such as Gnodal, NEC and Alcatel-Lucent have developed new products that allow more WLAN bandwidth – up to 40Gbps – and more control within the appliance itself to determine who and what can connect to the network. This innovative new technology, known as software-defined networking (SDN), gives IT staff the tools needed to safely introduce personal devices on a business WLAN without compromising performance or accessibility for the users and/or applications that need it the most. The bottom line is that although bringing your iPad to work and connecting to your WLAN seems harmless on the surface, it is important to consider the security ramifications and additional wireless usage these devices will introduce. The last thing your network needs is death by Angry Birds.
XLDent™ and Tablet PC’s help to improve patient experiences
XLDent doctors and patients of XLDent offices share their experiences in the May issue of Dental Products Report magazine. DPR’s new Patient Perspective column and the Clinical 360 section are exactly what we’ve been waiting for! Finally, some content and perspectives highlighting experiences from the patient’s point of view. After all….it’s all about the patients and improving their dental health isn’t it? The entire flow and design of XLDent center around the patient experience and the circle of treatment. Dr. Willis says, “The main benefit [XLDent has] for the practice is the user-friendly features for patients….”(pg. 48). Patients of XLDent offices say it’s nice to review their prophy exam and xrays on a tablet with the doctor. They like to see photos of their problem areas and presentations of proposed work because it helps to increase their confidence in treatment (pg. 92). With XLDent and a mobile tablet, doctors and staff can easily and effectively engage patients in their treatment. These perspective articles on using mobile solutions to engage the patient are long overdue.
XLDent™ Version 11.7
With the release of version 11.7, XLDent™ continues to focus development efforts on the use of mobile technologies and ease of use. Treatment plans can now be created, presented and signed by patient/parent and doctor chair side in record time! Pediatric clinics using Tablet PC’s really love this new improvement. Plans can be archived directly to the patient’s electronic chart and either emailed or printed for the patient. The UI for ortho placement has been re-designed for click and drag functionality, turning this process into a split second routine. Additional reports have been added to provide eCommunication statistics for XLDent’s FREE eMessaging service and the new Patient and Doctor Portals. In addition to these and other user requested enhancements, the 11.7 release establishes additional sub-structure for multi-site clinic locations.
Do Dentistry, Not Time
XLDent recently had the honor of sponsoring a seminar in Pella, Iowa featuring speaker Dr. Roy Shelburne. I had the pleasure of hearing his message for the first time in person. Everyone came away with some tools for improving their records and audit systems.
Just to give you a little background on Dr. Shelburne… he went to prison for 19 months for health care fraud. His story starts as one like most dentists, setting up his practice in the community he was raised in and successfully running it for 27 years. He spent much of his dental career serving others through the Virginia Dental Association, various Mission of Mercy projects, and dental mission trips. Then, in 2003 the Commonwealth of Virginia and the FBI began an investigation of him and his dental practice. Dr. Roy’s case was subsequently brought twice before a Grand Jury, and tried in U.S. District Court, where he was found guilty by a jury of Health Care Fraud, Racketeering, Money Laundering, and Structuring. He was sentenced to serve 24 months in Federal Prison and an additional 36 months of supervised probation. He has chosen to use his story as a lesson to all those dentists that could all-too-easily find themselves in his position, unable to defend their records.
The premise of Dr. Shelburne’s message is: “if it’s not in your clinical record, you didn’t see it, you didn’t say it, you didn’t hear it, you didn’t do it, it didn’t need to be done from a legal perspective.” If keeping detailed and concise clinical records because they reflect your clinical expertise and attention to detail isn’t enough reason to do so, then staying out of prison should be.
A huge lesson for anyone working in the dental office is a quote of Dr. Roy’s that started the day: “I was unwilling to plead guilty and go to prison. The errors were not intentional and I ignorantly believed this was an adequate defense. I learned ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law.” Rather than let his trials and tribulations extinguish him and his faith in the dental care system, Dr. Roy has turned his unfortunate circumstances into a tool to help other practices. His message has left me with a new outlook on the future and purpose of clinical electronic records. XLDent has always strived to focus its systems and tools on being patient-centric, working towards improvement in outcomes and providing clinical decision support. It wasn’t until I heard about the things found lacking in Dr. Roy’s records that I began to realize the important role software and the systems it can help implement are playing in protecting dental staff from going through anything like he went through. And maybe even a more important consideration is that clear, concise records support a more patient-centered care approach.
A good part of the talk was spent reviewing record keeping basics. I can’t go over every aspect here, but these are just a few of the important things that I left with a better understanding of:
- The Doctor is held to the highest level of responsibility for the accuracy of the chart, but every person in the dental office is and will be held accountable for what is/is not documented. The Dentists, Assistants, Hygienists, and Administrative Staff are all responsible for their role in coding, billing, and what is in (or not in) the record.
- Most often than not, a doctor or staff member doesn’t intentionally try to miss-code something or leave something out of the chart. Unfortunately, the law states that “No specific intent to defraud is required.”
- Record-keeping needs to be defensive… include what was seen, what was said, what was heard, what needed to be done, why it needed to be done, that it was done, and what occurred during that visit.
Suffice to say; in my 13 years involved with dental practice software support, implementation and sales, I have seen all too many records – paper and electronic – that are lacking in most of these areas. The good news is XLDent gives Doctors and Staff the tools to create the kind of bullet proof clinical records Dr. Roy lectures about. Of course, Doctors and Staff are ultimately responsible for what is in their clinical records, but the systems in XLDent are designed with efficiency, accountability, and accuracy in mind, providing a means to document completely. I hope this gives everyone a wake-up nudge to evaluate and improve the systems and records in their practices, if not only to protect themselves, but to also protect their patients.
Intel ‘Ivy Bridge’
Intel is set to launch what has been termed the ‘Ivy Bridge’ update. Ivy Bridge will replace Sandy Bridge sometime in April but it will not be generally available until summer.
Ivy Bridge will feature 3D transistors instead of 2D transistors providing a 37% performance increase. Intel is also adding a couple new Hex core CPUs that will require an all new motherboard that plans to feature the LGA 2011 socket. The LGA 2011 will replace the LGA 1366.
In addition Intel has started shipping their new Atom CPU ‘Cedar Trail’ N2600 & N2800, which will feature a more widespread implementation of WiDi, something XLDent has been waiting for in higher end chipsets. Cedar Trail also features a new graphics card that offers two times the performance of previous generations and reduces power consumption by up to 20%.
Intel will be launching a new XEON CPU early in 2012 called the “E5”. The XEON E5 will succeed the 5600 chips which are based on the Westmere architecture. The New E5 will be based on Sandy Bridge. Additionally they will offer “E7” XEON CPUs with up to 10 cores however these will be based on the older Westmere technology.
With all of this said, we may see a delay in launches and adoption due to the hard drive situation. As noted, there are new sockets, which mean new motherboards, which mean new chassis, which mean…we will make sure Intel has all their ducks in a row and everything works together before we launch our new 2012 platform. As is consistent with our development philosophy, we are for leading edge….not bleeding edge.
XLDent Launches a New Website
We are very excited to announce the launch of our new website. Here at XLDent we are always evaluating new technologies and testing new ideas. In the redesign of these pages, we felt that it was important for our website to represent what we are trying to deliver in our products. XLDent is an efficient and easy to use software system that always makes use of the latest, cutting-edge technology. We hope the new look and feel portray this.
Now that I’ve introduced the new site, feel free to explore some of the new features and tell us what you think about some of the changes we’ve made. We are hoping to have a new blog roughly every week to keep you up-to-date on what we are doing. You can let us know your opinion in the comments section below.
Why did we decide to rebrand XLDent?
Because we are a forward thinking, forward moving company. Our look was starting to become dated and it was time to update our fashion statement, so to speak. We needed to deliver a smart, simple, bold statement about who we are and where we are going in the presentation of our logo. We also needed to introduce an icon. This icon will be included in all future versions of the XLDent software. The colors in our new logo are representative of the healthcare and technology sectors.
The color shades in the logo are considered “new and modern” and were selected with “smart” and “bold” in mind. The logo is 2-color to represent simplicity. It’s a clean, simple look representative of clean, easy-to-use software. 
Gradient appears in the triangular area of the icon to represent the forward movement of our software development philosophies. The circular shapes in the icon are solid to give a sense of the stability of our company. They also represent forward movement to new technologies. The shape of the letter “e” was selected simply because we liked it and remains embedded in the letter “d” to symbolize a connection to XLDent’s beginning and history. Our software architect also had a reason for making it this way.
The tag line says it all, with definitive blue periods to accentuate each statement.
