Sarah Anwar

Meeting HIPAA compliance standards is a requirement, not a choice.

At the 2017 Yankee Dental Congress on Friday, Jan. 27, Danielle Sheer discussed HIPAA compliance, a subject she deemed “near and dear” to her heart.

Sheer is vice president and general counsel at Carbonite, a company that provides automated data storage solutions for businesses. She explained that there are three main safeguards, or 

 enacted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to protect patient privacy: administrative safeguards, physical safeguards, and technical safeguards.

Administrative safeguards are security measures that restrict access to patients’ electronic protected health information, keeping out unauthorized persons. Vulnerability of patient information should be tested, she said. Does your system detect intrusion, and are there rules to manage a breach? Sheer referred to this method of testing vulnerability as “ethically hacking” the system. She said that this safeguard “ensures confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.”

Physical safeguards are restrictions of physical access to healthcare facilities. Physical access should be limited to authorized personnel. Furthermore, all patient data must be disposed of securely, so that it is irretrievable, she said.

Technical safeguards are a means of encrypting and decrypting electronic protected healthcare information. Only those who are authorized should have direct access to patient records. It is imperative that electronics containing private information are password protected and automatically locked after the electronic device has been idle for a pre-determined period of time.

According to Sheer, there are three common mistakes that dentists or other healthcare practitioners often make:

1. Using a flash drive or external hard drive to back up data

2. Using public software, such as Google calendars or Google Docs

3. Using a program that syncs data rather than backs it up

With the first mistake, losing a flash drive or hard disk can cause several problems. While encrypting data is not required by HIPAA, not doing so causes vulnerability, said Sheer. If the data on your lost drive is not encrypted, someone can access those files. On the other hand, even if the data is encrypted, you still run into the issue of having no backup files.

In addition, when using public software to set up patient appointments or store patient information, you have now made what is supposed to be private data public. 

Finally, syncing data refers to keeping data consistent on all your devices. It does not, however, create a copy of your data as backup.

Ensuring that HIPAA compliance standards are met within your practice can help you avoid lawsuits with the government and settlements that sometimes range in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Sheer advised.

Articles

Danielle Sheer, vice president and legal counsel at the data storage and security firm Carbonite, explained what dentists need to do to keep patient data secure at the Yankee Dental Congress on Thursday, Jan. 27.

Does Your Practice Meet HIPAA Compliance Standards?

Have you ever had a new patient walk into your practice and you think, “She looks familiar,” but you can’t quite put your finger on where you know her from? Then, only later do you realize — after the front desk staff pulls up her file – that she was one of your first clients when you opened your practice. Then, you start thinking to yourself, “Why has it been so long since she last came in for a check-up?”

Due to time constraints or lack of a reminder, most people go longer than six months between dental check-ups. At the 2017 Yankee Dental Congress held in Boston, Mass., Blair Drenner, vice president of strategic business development at eRelevence Corporation, discussed marketing strategies to get old clients back through your practice doors.

According to Drenner, it is far more profitable for you as a practice owner to retain old clients than it is to try and acquire new ones. In an interview with 

, Drenner attributed this to cost, noting that it is much cheaper to drive “repeat business” from your existing patient base. This was the focus of his continuing education session.

Drenner discussed several marketing tools that most dental practices use, including email, Facebook, and targeted mobile notifications. However, he said, it’s important not to use these strategies blindly. In order for you to know whether your marketing is successful, you need to gauge its success with analytics.

One of the most commonly used tools, he mentioned, are emails. Not only is the national open rate for emails around 20 to 22 percent (meaning that approximately 80 percent of emails go unopened), most emails are sent en masse and written by, as Drenner refers to them, “overworked” employees who have other responsibilities around the office and who rarely have enough time to spend on customizing emails. In essence, Drenner says, you are utilizing a marketing tool with limited reach and uncertain results.

Instead of sending out one email to your entire database, says Drenner, try a different approach: First, break down your email list based on demographic or procedural interests based on dental history, and then send targeted emails to each patient group. For example, you wouldn’t send a patient in their twenties an email advertising that your office is offering a 15 percent discount on dentures. Moreover, he noted the “rule of seven,” which says that you must reach out to someone seven times before they act and actually engage with your email. Following up after an appointment, or sending a reminder about getting a semi-annual check-up are great strategies to get the patient back in the office, he said. Unfortunately, not all people tend to pay attention to their emails. With some generations, social media is the best approach to market your brand.

Facebook can be effective, Drenner said, but most individuals go on Facebook not to go to their dentist’s page, but to scroll through their newsfeed. Fortunately, with personalized ads, Facebook allows you to target ads to specific age groups in your own geographic area. These ads appear in the newsfeed of the specified targeted audience of your choice. You can 

For those patients that are neither interested in email nor in Facebook, there are targeted mobile notifications. With targeted text notifications, you can choose to send opt-in or opt-out messaging to your patients. Opt-in messaging requires the individual to choose to receive your messages. This can be done easily by adding the option to the forms patients fill in while sitting in the waiting room. Opt-out messaging, on the other hand, allows you to send messages automatically to your patients without them having to sign up; however, there must be an option to opt-out of messaging. Drenner refers to opt-out messaging as the more aggressive approach; he advises to be cautious not to annoy the patient. It is important, however, to check the anti-spam laws in your state before taking this approach.

Ultimately, having a multi-channel approach to your marketing strategy will only do your practice good. No matter which approaches you choose to implement in your dental practice, make sure you check analytics to know whether or not your strategies are working, Drenner says. Using a trial-and-error approach to your marketing strategy can help you identify which tools give the best results.

Blair Drenner, vice president of business development at eRelevance Corporation, discussed strategies for driving business from your dental practice's existing clientele at the Yankee Dental Congress in Boston, Mass.

Keep Your Patients Coming Back with Targeted Marketing

One of the pressures of being a business owner is the responsibility of managing that business. Unfortunately, not many dental schools teach you how to manage your own practice and not let the overhead monster take you down. However, according to Chris Salierno, DDS, you have to try really hard in order for your dental business to fail.

At the 2017 Yankee Dental Conference, in Boston, Mass., Dr. Salierno noted that the failure or default rate for dental practices was less than 1 percent.

“Those are pretty good odds,” he said.

However, open doors do not equate to profit. Dr. Salierno recommends investing in practice management software to increase profit. He also believes that your accountant is just as important as anyone else on your team. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t rely solely on an accountant to examine the investments and spending of your business. Every business owner must know not only the net income of her or his business, but the gross income as well — and everything in between.

In his continuing education session, Dr. Salierno discussed two key strategies that can increase a practice’s profitability: 1. Cut spending where it isn’t needed; 2. Calculate the gross profit margin (GPM) for your most frequently performed procedures to understand which are the most profitable.

Analyzing your semi-annual income statement is one practice Dr. Salierno calls a must. It’s not just enough to bring in more patients to try and increase your profits. Sometimes you have to crunch the numbers. He advises that some increased expenses are needed, for example, costs of composite material or staff payroll.

Although there is no industry-accepted standard on how much you should be spending on lab fees, dental supplies, or payroll (this number should fall somewhere close to 25 percent of expenses), some numbers are just too high. For example, if you’re spending $30,000 on office supplies, maybe you need to cut back or change your provider. While it’s important to minimize your spending rates, it’s even more important to maximize your performance revenue.

The GPM of a procedure is the incoming revenue after direct labor and direct material costs are deducted. To calculate the direct cost of a procedure, Dr. Salierno uses the following equation:

By calculating this number, you learn which procedures are most profitable and whether you have room to charge less. Since calculating GPM for dental procedures is not common practice, there is no industry standard for how profitable a procedure should be. However, Dr. Salierno notes that 30 percent profitability is quite low.

With this, you will find that some procedures are more or less not worth performing. Nonetheless, when deciding against performing a procedure Dr. Salierno recommends doing it ethically and without mention of finances. For example, patient X needs dentures, which have a GPM rate of 35 percent. Instead of simply refusing to perform the procedure, you can instead refer patient X to a prosthodontist, stressing that she or he will “provide the best specialized care” to the patient.

On the other hand, while high profitability is the ultimate goal of performing procedures, sometimes reducing costs is not a bad idea. Although you will not be turning the same profit from each individual procedure, you will most likely be performing more procedures, thereby making up for that lost revenue.

There are several ways to increase your dental practice’s profitability. Whether you’re cutting expenses or cutting procedures, be sure to be transparent with your staff, since they play an important role in booking procedures and ordering supplies. 

Chris Salierno, DDS, discussed his approach to reducing overhead within a dental practice at the 2017 Yankee Dental Congress in Boston, Mass. on Thursday.