Part 1: The Affordable Care ActPurpose of the Affordable Care Act:
◊ To increase the number of insured Americans by providing access to quality, affordable health insurance, thus creating a healthier country.
◊ To establish a health insurance marketplace, or exchange, that will provide greater transparency to the consumer when purchasing a health insurance plan. Consumers will have a better opportunity to make an apples-to-apples comparison of the prices, benefits, and the health plan performance of all available plans that are available within their State’s exchange. Private exchange options will also be available.
Beginning January 1, 2014, most consumers will be required to have a “qualified” health insurance plan in place or else must pay a tax penalty if they don’t. This requirement is in place to prevent only the sick from purchasing health insurance.
Key Benefits of Healthcare Reform for the Consumer:
Many of you may have missed this special occasion, but on April 30th the World Wide Web (www) turned 20 years old.
This tool has changed many aspects of our lives, so the occasion deserves a special mention in this space.
In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee developed a technology to help physicists in universities around the world to share information.
On April 30, 1993 the European science agency CERN, where Berners-Lee worked, officially made the World Wide Web software public domain, letting everyone access it.
This led to Google, Facebook, Twitter and even Right Click Dentistry.
Now Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet. The Internet already existed. He simply invented the protocol that allowed content to be displayed and navigated through.
Do you remember the first website you ever looked at? Was it a news site? A search engine? Maybe a product, hotel or airline reservation system?
Last August I wrote a post entitled “Do Tablets Have a Place in the Dental Office?”
Much has changed in the tablet arena and now anyone in the dental field can answer this question with an enthusiastic “yes”!
Windows® 8 was announced in October only to be followed by a pack of tablet offerings from the major manufactures.
Let me make a distinction with the operating system. There are two flavors of Windows® 8: Windows® RT and Windows® 8 Pro.
Windows® 8 Pro will run the full complement of standards desktop applications, while Windows® RT will run only third party applications available through the Windows® Store.
The Oregon Dental Conference took place last week (April 4-6) and my company participated with a booth in the exhibit hall. It may have been our 30th Oregon show, since our Daisy software product was first created in 1982, but nobody has been counting.
I thought I’d give you some impressions of the show from my perspective, as a vendor.
Here’s what I came away with:
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”
William Arthur Ward
April 4-6 is the Oregon Dental Conference and Karyn and I will be on the exhibit floor in the DMC booth (#525) for most of the conference. We will be giving away five $10 Starbucks gift cards every day to our readers.
Just come up to Karyn or me, introduce yourself and tell us what you’ve enjoyed reading about in the blog.
We want to hear what you like and don’t like about Right Click Dentistry. Are we too technical? Not technical enough?
Suggest some topics you’d like us to write about in the future.
We want to write on subjects that you will find interesting and valuable. Here’s what we’ve covered so far.
Hackers aren’t going to go after my dental practice; they’ll spend their time trying to break into a bank or major retailer’s systems, right?
According to David Kennedy, a security consultant at TrustedSec, healthcare is the most breached industry in the U.S.
He was speaking at this year’s HIMSS conference in a presentation, entitled “Hacking Your Life”.
Hackers are lazy. If given the choice between a bank with layers of firewalls and a security staff dedicated to keeping them out versus a dental practice with none of those assets, they will choose the dental practice.
And make no mistake, you have what they are after: names, birthdates, addresses, social security numbers, ids and perhaps banking information.
I can almost hear the echoes of Ethel Merman belting out this Irving Berlin hit as she strolls the aisles of a state or national dental conference.
Well, maybe not those exact words, but it is true – there’s nothing like a dental show.
Because this is a once-a-year occurrence for many of you, I thought I’d offer some tips on how to get the most out of these events.
Here are six suggestions.
When separate computer applications are connected we see words thrown around like bridged, integrated and native with the implication that one method is preferable to another.
It’s not a case of good-better-best, but of trade-offs. Understanding this is important when you are considering adding new software within your office environment.
Let’s start on the left side of our continuum, “standalone”.
This is where the two applications have no interaction with each other and are in no way dependent on each other. The operating system may give you some tools to move data back-and-forth, such as cut-and-paste, but this is entirely dependent on you and your mouse.
Integrate electronic prescribing into DAISY and elevate patient safety, prescription security, and efficiency.
eRx empowers dentists with rapid access to each patient’s prescription record and potential contraindications, triggering alerts when drug interactions are found.
Integrated electronic prescribing also simplifies insurance formulary cross-referencing. Fill and refill prescriptions from any location using your mobile device.
eRx handles record-keeping automatically behind the scenes – in real-time.
Get your free DAISY ERx demo today!
When you purchase digital X-ray equipment through DMC, we’ll manage all components of your X-ray imaging upgrade — and remain your first and only support call for life.
More downtime means less revenue, so our entire digital radiography business is focused on ensuring a seamless transition to the latest digital X-ray imaging equipment.
When you choose DMC for a complete X-ray systems upgrade, you can count on:
Schedule a personal consultation with a digital radiography specialist today for a cost-effective and worry-free transition to a fully digital practice.
DAISY Mobile lets you access patient and scheduling information directly from your smartphone.
Get anywhere, anytime access to:
A quick access icon on your smartphone takes you directly to the DAISY mobile dental app — there’s no software to download or install.
Available to all practices running DAISY, this mobile app for dentists helps you keep patient records confidential by eliminating the need to leave the office with paper reports.
Own a smartphone? Leverage the power of DAISY’s new mobile dental application today.
