After personally evaluating several software programs, the bottom line is...they are all pretty much the same when it comes to practice management. All of them track and crunch numbers and generate a myriad of reports based upon patient and production information. Some offer thousands of built-in reports, others allow you to create custom reports, and then some include both options. Dental software is vastly different from one another when it comes to electronic patient records (paperless records). There are two significant differences, both extremely important to the practice. First is the look and feel of the program and second, more important than the first, is the legal integrity of the patient record in its electronic format.

Look and Feel
A software program should look and feel better than a paper chart, without question. Users must be able to navigate between parts of the electronic record more quickly and efficiently than they could sort through paper pages. Dental and periodontal chartings are electronic reproductions of the mouth. This means that the mouth as it presents today is totally and completely recreated as an electronic image, including accurate shape, size and location of teeth and any anomalies. Ideally, the electronic image can be manipulated for viewing 3-dimensionally.

Legal integrity
Integrity as it relates to patient confidentiality goes without saying. With regard to software, there must be security features that prevent unauthorized users from a ccessing all or part of the patient record.