Dental/Optical Software Packages

[Dustin Hennis]

Hello,

I have a couple clients, one is an eye doctors office, and another is a dentist office. Up until now, I have just done infrastructure and desktop support for them. Recently, I have been asked to assist with them either upgrading and/or (more likely) migrating to alternate software packages. Obviously these are mostly records management, but do have some retail and POS end point.

There are a few applications I am familiar with, but I was wondering what else might be out there. Any experience from others would be appreciated.

 

[Trevor Brindle]

Gonna be dependent on how big the practices are, how many doctors they will have on staff, and patient volume.

For optomotrist, I know my wife's employer is currently using OfficeMate but they have really outgrown it, it was good for when they were smaller but their business has probably tripled over the last few years, and they opened a second location. One of the programs she has looked at was Revolution EHR, the price for it was great, but the program seems to be all Web based and hosted off location which was a big factor in her looking elsewhere. They would have to close the office if their connection ever went down with no access to health records.

Make sure whatever you go with is ICD-10 compliant. Also depending on the doctor they might want something that has backward compatability with ICD-9 if they are just set in their ways and refuse to learn new codes.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Dentrix is sort of the gold standard for bigger places.
Patterson/Eaglesoft is another

...I prefer to stay out of recommending Line of Biz apps for clients. If you recommend something, and they pay up 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 grand for software...and they don't like it, they got a bone to pick with you. People getting into a business (like Dentists) have TONS of resources at their fingertips to give them many software packages...trade magazines, trade shows, colleagues, ..tons of resources.

 

[knc]

Most Dentists already are familiar with Dentrix and Dexis (digital xray). Either from working in other practices or college. I agree with Yeolde, they should decide. Henry Schein makes Dentrix so they are already (more than likely) using them for supplies, ask them to do a demo. I don't know Optical.

I support a few Dentrix offices and they all use Dexis for the digital xrays... Awesome system a huge learning curve but a nice package. The sensors alone are $15k each.

 

[Dustin Hennis]

Good input, thanks guys.

 

[Digital Micro]

What software are you using for the eye doctors office? I support an office with OfficeMate. It has caused me to loose hair.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I forgot to mention "PracticeWorks"..used to be under Kodak, is now under CareStream. For dental

I used to have an eye doc office....but they were too cheap so I let them go. Can't recall some of their software...VitalWorks rings a bell, Drawing a blank on the rest.

 

[Trevor Brindle]

What software are you using for the eye doctors office? I support an office with OfficeMate. It has caused me to loose hair.

My wife recently asked me to update a billing slip for her office and I went in to the program seeing what I could do and it pulled up a editor that looked like WordPad and I just shook my head and looked at her and said there won't be any easy way to do this.. and so far I have been proven right, their current IT company is pulling his hair out =/

 

[HCHTech]

What software are you using for the eye doctors office? I support an office with OfficeMate

Yup. I have an optometrist on Officemate as well. It is MUCH better since they have upgraded to the online version, but they have refused to even think about dual internet connections with failover. They have 3 locations and they are cheap. It is frustrating.

 

[BlackLabTechs]

For those of you supporting Dentrix - how is the software? In regards to update frequency, bugs, crashing, etc. I was at my dentist the other day for a cleaning and he was just a bitchin about a few computer people he's had in the past couple weeks. sounds like he keeps calling new places because no one seems to be able to fix the problem. I talked to him a bit about the XP machines he had and basically once my LLC is legit in Jan I'm going to stop by again for some business discussion. Never worked with Dentrix before so wondering what I'd be getting myself into there.....

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Set it up on good fast hardware, it's fine. Lots of side integrated services...so that's where the hiccups can occur. Most of the issues we get a call for are solved with a quick restart of the digital highway service on the server.

 

[BlackLabTechs]

Thanks for the tips. I know they are running XP on the workstations so that doesn't say much for staying up to date. Haven't seen the server yet or talked to them about any of their other problems. Just know that they need some IT help that actually cares they stay up and running.

 

[Markverhyden]

Most of the Dental practices I've worked with used Practiceworks. I've seen Dentrix a couple of times, part of Henry Schein, a major provider of dental products and services. Nothing with optometrists.

 

[putz]

There are a few applications I am familiar with, but I was wondering what else might be out there. Any experience from others would be appreciated.

Normally I see either Dentrix or Eaglesoft with dental offices as well as other applications like Evasoft for dental imaging, and Officemate or RevolutionEHR (web-based) for eye care. They all should be paying for support for whatever software they use as it essentially runs their business. I don't think I could ever recommend a specific software over another to a business like this. They would have see what works best for their practice, but whatever software they decide to use, they should be paying for support, so supporting it really isn't a huge deal because you're mainly contacting support and doing what they request. Neither of these software packages are really that complicated. Once you work with support on a few basic issues you will start to get the hang of doing simple support tasks with the software.

 

[HCHTech]

They all should be paying for support for whatever software they use as it essentially runs their business.

^^This right here. When one of my businesses ask for a referral for a LOB software, I always tell them to ask other business owners in their industry. For doctors & dentists, this is easy, they always are going to one industry convention or another. It's harder for mom & pop businesses like hair salons, though. I also stress as firmly as I can that "Your business depends on this software - you HAVE to have support - no exceptions". Mostly, that works after a few repetitions.

 

[cmonova]

I have used Open Dental http://www.opendental.com a few times and rather like it. Pretty easy setup and use plus their support is outstanding.

 

[resolvetech]

For those of you supporting Dentrix - how is the software? In regards to update frequency, bugs, crashing, etc. I was at my dentist the other day for a cleaning and he was just a bitchin about a few computer people he's had in the past couple weeks. sounds like he keeps calling new places because no one seems to be able to fix the problem. I talked to him a bit about the XP machines he had and basically once my LLC is legit in Jan I'm going to stop by again for some business discussion. Never worked with Dentrix before so wondering what I'd be getting myself into there.....

I have a client dental practice that uses Dentrix and I have them on a flat monthly "remote only" sort of AYCE plan that covers most of their IT needs and they hardly ever call me with issues. Most of their equipment is about two years old so that helps. They hate talking to Dentrix support so they don't call them much or have me call often. It just works most of the time when you get the proper "baseline". All dental software is slow and finky but there are some tricks you learn along the way. Stuff we used to do in the 90's...host files, power settings, etc.

 

[oldtech]

For those of you supporting Dentrix - how is the software? In regards to update frequency, bugs, crashing, etc. I was at my dentist the other day for a cleaning and he was just a bitchin about a few computer people he's had in the past couple weeks. sounds like he keeps calling new places because no one seems to be able to fix the problem. I talked to him a bit about the XP machines he had and basically once my LLC is legit in Jan I'm going to stop by again for some business discussion. Never worked with Dentrix before so wondering what I'd be getting myself into there.....

The current version(s) of Dentrix do not support XP so if he is running an out of date version you would do well to steer clear. He is also not HIPAA compliant if he is running XP.

 

[RCD_Technology_Solutions]

Currently I support E-MDS for General practitioners http://e-mds.com/
And for Eyes http://www.eyemdemr.com/


Bob

 

[fencepost]

Currently I support E-MDS for General practitioners http://e-mds.com/
And for Eyes http://www.eyemdemr.com/

We had one customer running E-MDs, but they migrated to Athena a year or so back. The old server is still up and will probably stay that way for some time even though it's 2003, because the migration really only took demographics (I did the data extraction from the DB). The practice was never really on paper, so that E-MDs server has all their old charts - they've been dumping to PDF and importing as patients are being seen. Doing a full dump of all charts didn't really seem to be an option - I think that's an issue with just about all of the packages, unfortunately.

The thing that made me insane was that either the previous IT company or E-MDs (or both) made all the users Domain Admins.