ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW: Dentists have much invested in their practices. They need to protect their practices from fraud and noncompliance. The author provides practical suggestions for how to significantly reduce the risk of fraud and theft in the practice without disrupting day-to-day operations. CONCLUSIONS: By adhering to nonintrusive policy and procedure changes, dental practice owners can reduce inherent risks of fraud and theft, while increasing financial and human resource knowledge regarding their practice. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Practice owners with the appropriate policies and procedures benefit from significantly lower risk of loss from fraud and theft. Furthermore, they have a better understanding of their practice's finances and human resources.
Subject(s)
Practice Management, Dental , Fraud/prevention & control , Humans , Personnel Management/methods , Practice Management, Dental/organization & administration , Risk Assessment , Theft/prevention & controlABSTRACT
Health Information Technology (Health IT) constitutes an integral component of the operations of most academic dental institutions nowadays. However, the expenses associated with the acquisition and the ongoing maintenance of these complex systems have often been buried among costs for other electronic infrastructure systems, distributed across various cost centers including unmeasured central campus support, covered centrally and therefore difficult to quantify, and spread over years, denying school administrators a clear understanding of the resources that have been dedicated to Health IT. The aim of this study was to understand the financial impact of Health IT at four similar U.S. dental schools: two schools using a purchased Electronic Health Record (EHR), and two schools that developed their own EHR. For these schools, the costs of creating ($2.5 million) and sustaining ($174,000) custom EHR software were significantly higher than acquiring ($500,000) and sustaining ($121,000) purchased software. These results are based on historical data and should not be regarded as a gold standard for what a complete Health IT suite should cost. The presented data are intended to inform school administrators about the myriad of costs associated with Health IT and give them a point of reference when comparing costs or making estimates for implementation projects.
