Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
As I look around our office, I realize how heavily we rely on computers, iPads and the internet to get things done. The digital world has become an indispensable part of dentistry.
There have been times in which we showed up to work with no power to the building, and we were pretty much unable to do anything. Thankfully, we had remote access to patients’ phone numbers via Dentrix to let them know we had to reschedule.
Earlier this week, it happened again.
We had a huge power surge that ended up bouncing half of computers in the office. The computer in my office didn't make it. It turns out the power supply got fried, and the rest of the machine was fine. However, it reminded me of how important good backups are for your practice. What about those offices shut down by Hurricane Sandy, or the random fire that consumes your equipment and that all important server? How fast can you get things back up and running again?
While this might seem an argument against going paperless, it by no means surpasses the overwhelming amount of efficiency and convenience of moving toward complete digital records. Plus, if your paper records went up in a fire, there is simply no way to replace that.
Instead, I look at that as a lesson in running your small business. Times have changed, and so should your workflow. Part of our budget is now IT expense, making sure we have a team on hand to take care of any machine or technical problem in our office.
We personally have a server with RAID 5, ghost copies of the server stored locally and on remote machines on our network, plus internet backups of all our information. We even drop a copy on a portable drive once a month that I take home to simply sit there just in case.
Your patient records are your most important asset. Do you have your backup plan in place?