The worst dental disasters of all time

July 8, 2015

Dr. Lorne Lavine, founder and president of The Digital Dentist, has more than 30 years invested in the dental and dental technology fields. A graduate of USC, he earned his DMD from Boston University and completed his residency at the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, N.Y. He received his specialty training at the University of Washington and went into private practice in Vermont until moving to California in 2002 to establish TDD, a company that focuses on the specialized technological and HIPAA needs of the dental community. He can be reached at drlavine@thedigitaldentists.com or 866-204-3398.

In my 17 years of providing it services to dental offices, I’ve run into pretty much every situation possible. While there are certainly many dentists who are quite computer savvy, this is not true for the majority of dentists; most dentists prefer to focus on doing dentistry rather than fix and support their entire computer network.

In my 17 years of providing it services to dental offices, I’ve run into pretty much every situation possible. While there are certainly many dentists who are quite computer savvy, this is not true for the majority of dentists; most dentists prefer to focus on doing dentistry rather than fix and support their entire computer network.

While there are hundreds of different problems that I’ve seen over the years, there are a few that are not only really bad, but are mistakes that I see dentists making over and over again. This article will focus on the worst technology mistakes that i see dentists making, and what can be done to correct them.

Not having a proper disaster recovery plan

This is far and away the biggest mistake that I see, and in my estimation, it applies to over 90 percent of the dentists I work with. Most practices have some sort of backup plan in place, whether it’s external hard drives, online backup, DVDs, etc. However, having a backup is just the first step. The better question that dental practices need to ask is, if the server goes down, how quickly can you get back up and running? With many backup protocols, that time is often measured in days, and that’s really not acceptable in my opinion. A properly designed disaster recovery plan should allow the office to be up and running within one to two hours at the most, and ideally less than that. Of course, the plan must be HIPAA compliant (more on that in a bit) and should be tested and verified on a regular basis.

Want to see the full list? Click here to download the e-book, "6 dental disasters all dentists should avoid."