Linda Miles, Founder

Too many times the Scheduling Coordinator, hygienist or clinical assistant (if terminals for scheduling are chairside), think they are doing patients a favor to ask: "You like the 8:00 o'clock appointments, don't you?" Or they will ask, "What time is most convenient for you?" Those two questions are responsible for the "feast or famine" schedule. This means your prime time is scheduled weeks/months in advance and there's two to three hours of open time tomorrow and the next day. Instead ask only this question: "Are mornings or afternoons best?" If they say mornings, give them two choices of your most difficult morning appointments to fill...get rid of those first! If they afternoons, again offer the two most difficult to fill afternoon appointments. "Doctor can see you on the 14th at 2 PM or the 16th at 2:20. When people are given two choices they typically take one or the other. By doing this, the Scheduler is in control of the day's schedule versus leaving it up to the patients to pick and choose.

More About Miles Global... 

1. Physical Security. Protected Health Information, or PHI, must be secured at all times. If your practice is the target of burglary the first thing to go are the computers--and the PHI that goes with them.
2. Electronic Security. Your server is probably protected from digital theft by consumer-quality routers and firewalls, security tools that nearly an high school nerd could hack in minutes. Additionally, the fact that your server is probably not physically secure is a risk. If anybody, your team, the janitor, or the exterminator can touch the server, that's an issue.
3. Backup Integrity. There is so much that can go wrong when it comes to data backup. Backup tapes are unreliable. Mirrored drives don't mean squat if your practice burns. And almost half of all backup fail to restore.
4. Emergency Availability. HIPAA requires that you must be able to access PHI in the event of a local disaster. If you're not on the cloud you'll spend many hours, lots of dollars, and stress big time rebuilding your system.
5. IT Management. Because PHI resides in your office the burden of securing the data, backing up the data, and accessing the data after a disaster rests squarely on your shoulders. Surely you've got better things to do.

1. Physical Security. With the cloud your PHI is located in a nondescript, secure, facility with restricted access, video surveillance, and professional security. Nobody gets in or out without proper authorization.
2. Electronic Security. Professional-grade firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and high-quality hardware found in data centers is not something a practice could or would purchase--it's not financially feasible.
3. Backup Integrity. We're super serious about data backup. Specific to Curve Dental your data is backed up to the very last keystroke in multiple locations.
4. Emergency Availability. If stuff happens in your area all you need is a computer with an Internet connection to access your PHI.
5. IT Management. Because all of your data is on the cloud you don't worry about or stress over the management of backup systems or server crashes. You're a doctor, not an IT guy.

Download Our HIPAA Orangepaper

We wrote a document that tells you what the HIPAA requirements are specific to the Security Rule and how the cloud helps you comply with little to no effort on your part. Download the orangepaper now.

Want to learn more? Chat with one of our dental software experts at 888-910-4376. Ask about our Google Nexus 7 tablet giveaway for doctors who make the switch by March 28, 2014.