Quality Assurance Support

[PeterShave]

We recently created a workgroup, made up of dentists and staff, that are going to try to address quality in our dental clinics. The actual measures haven't yet been determined, but we know we want to focus on events where a procedure was performed incorrectly or resulted in a later procedure due to complications.

Does Open Dental have any Q/A support built into it? Has anybody else implemented any Q/A processes with success in their practices?

Thank you,
Peter

[jordansparks]

That's a very interesting question. I feel that the future of medicine and dentistry rests solidly on the answer to that question.

No, OD does not have any Q/A support built in. I did talk to one dentist a few weeks ago who had been brought before their local board of dentistry; Michigan I think. The board was critical of the lack of documentation regarding the prognosis of each item on a TP. So this dentist was trying to find dental software that would formalize a per-procedure prognosis. I didn't think much of it until I saw this topic. Prognosis would be one part of a Q/A mechanism.

I see two ways to track procedure outcome. One simple way is to run queries on extractions and on multiple fillings on the same tooth within a certain window of time. The other way to track outcomes involves a lot of human input. Humans would actually have to enter the failures as needed and as the situation arose. No matter how we do it, there is a huge human error factor there. Everyone would be undertrained in this feature and it would be very easy to forget it or to even intentionally ignore it. So some thought will need to go into a better long-term solution.

[DavidWolf]

I have a procedure code for remake in my office, so if I redo something I use that code.
This would allow me to at least run a report for how many procedure I have remade in a certain amount of time.
It would also be possible to apply the normal fee to the remake and then adjust the fee off with a specific adjustment for remakes and then you would be able to track the cost of the remakes.

I guess this coud be a proceudre switch like do not bill, we could have a procedure switch for remake which could automatically not bill insurance and adjust off the amount. This would allow easier tracking of the exact procedures which have to be remade and by which provider. In a single Dr. office this is not as important as a large group practice or a clinic but I agree that building in these types of Q/A tracking would be excellent.