Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

• What is Dental Practice Software?
• The benefits of Dental Practice Software
• Typical features of Dental Practice Software
• The cost of Dental Practice Software
• Considerations when purchasing Dental Practice Software
• Relevant Dental Practice Software trends

What is Dental Practice software?

Dental Practice Software enables dental clinics and orthodontist labs to manage activities such as appointment scheduling, patient billing, documentation, and communication.

It streamlines patient care and clinical processes such as notes compilation, medical report generation, payment processing, patient data sharing, and claims processing.

The benefits of Dental Practice Software

• Secure storage of patient data: To comply with patient data protection regulations, these solutions come with several built-in security measures. This adds a layer of protection to the data accountability dental practices are liable to. Additionally, storing medical documents in digital format is more secure than printouts, which can be easily misplaced, forged, or damaged.
• Reduction in no-shows: Dental practice management software sends timely reminders to patients and notifies dentists about upcoming appointments. This improves the availability of both patients and dentists for their scheduled visits and reduces no-shows.

Typical features of Dental Practice Software

• Appointment management: Schedule patient appointments, manage waitlist and no-shows, and reschedule appointments upon requests.
• Charting: Create dental charts detailing the health of patients’ teeth and gums.
• Appointment reminders: Send alerts to patients for their upcoming appointments via email or SMS.
• Patient management: Manage interactions with patients and capture and store their medical data.
• Treatment planning: Maintain records on patients’ medical history and formulate treatment strategies.
• Billing: Charge patients for delivered dental health services and accept payment via various channels.

The cost of Dental Practice Software

Most products on the market are priced on a per user, per month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.

Price ranges*:

• $10 - $57
• $57 - $167
• $167+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of June 25, 2019. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

The above list provides summarized pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product, that is priced higher, may include additional features such as staff notifications, custom domains, a website manager, patient portals, and an insurance portal.

Considerations when purchasing Dental Practice Software

• Ease of use: Most practices look for solutions that are easy to use and come with a small learning curve. While choosing a software, ask for a free trial or a demo from the vendor and invite all stakeholders to participate. It is necessary to gather opinions from all users to gauge the acceptability of the software.
• Compliance with industry standards: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has the widest coverage when it comes to data protection in any healthcare domain. While HIPAA-compliance is the first thing to begin with, check with the Standards Committee on Dental Informatics (SCDI) about the latest standards for choosing software solutions.

Relevant Dental Practice Software trends

• Cloud-based dental software tools are gaining traction: Cloud-based dental software makes it possible to access clinical data on various types of devices including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones from anywhere, at any time. More and more vendors are offering cloud-based dental practice software.
• Dental care mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular: Dental care organizations are increasingly adopting practice software solutions with mobile applications. These apps are not only beneficial from an administrative standpoint as they improve the tools’ accessibility but they also enhance patient experience by allowing them to communicate more easily with a practice.