As a dental professional and practice owner, you know that your most valuable resources are your dental expertise, your time, and your money. When you waste one or more of these resources, it is bad for your patients and your practice.
To best focus your expertise and attention on your patients, why not let an outsourced information technology partner worry about your practice’s technology needs?
There are many benefits to outsourcing your IT to a certified partner. Here are the 5 most important ones:
Do you know what to look for in a managed IT service provider?
Download our checklist to learn if you’re making the best choice for your practice.
Save Money
Outsourcing your technology needs to an outside IT company will save you money. Most dental practices cannot afford a full-time professional staff, or just one IT staff member. Outsourcing IT services to an experienced IT vendor is much less expensive than hiring a full-time employee. We are not talking about a friend or relative who is “good with computers”, but a professional IT company with properly trained and experienced technicians. Preferably, they should be very familiar with the technology needs of dental offices. Even if your practice can afford an IT employee, you still won’t have an effective return on investment (ROI) until your practice has about 50 employees.
Using outsourced services will give you access to the resources and experience of an entire IT team; far more than one IT professional could offer. Outsourcing dental IT gives you access to technology that helps you save time. Your outsourced IT partner can help with business planning, continuity, project implementation, compliance, security, new technology installation, and support, for a fraction of the cost of hiring staff to do the same.
Control Legal Risk & Non-Compliance
Using an outsourcing IT company will help your practice manage risk and comply with regulations. As a dental business owner, you have to make sure your practice is compliant with many types of regulations. Laws are constantly changing, and it’s your responsibility to keep up.
Your practice needs help with things like making sure patient data is encrypted, securely backing up data, sending information via secure email, and restricting data access. Improper setup of any of these could leave you vulnerable.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a major set of rules and regulations with which dentists must be compliant. This U.S. law, designed to provide privacy standards to protect patients' medical records and other health information, has undergone many changes since its enactment in 1996. Failure to adapt to and incorporate those changes into your workflow would put your patients and your practice at risk. An outsourced IT partner with staff who are well educated in HIPAA standards would be able to advise you about how best to keep your technology HIPAA-compliant. There are strict HIPAA standards with regard to IT that your outsourced IT partner should be able to address.
If your office accepts credit card payments from your patients, there are electronic security standards covered under Payment Card Industry (PCI) rules. An outsourced IT partner could make recommendations for your network which would help your practice be PCI compliant.
An outsourced IT partner who is well-versed in HIPAA and other regulations can help your practice become compliant and help you to maintain your compliance, leaving you to focus on your patients and patient care. The right partner will not only be there when you have questions, but proactively put a plan in place to make sure that your existing procedures will not get you into legal trouble.
Gain Access To Expertise
An outsourced IT company will allow you to gain access to expertise in the tech field. Where do you go when you have an IT-related question? Google? Your peers? How well can you trust the answers you find? Do you spend a lot of time validating the answers you find? As the dental professional, you are the expert, the one with the answers. For your dental practice, it makes sense to have access to IT expertise through an outsourced IT partner.
Streamline Your Processes
Many practice owners don’t realize how much time they spend on IT related issues.
An outsourced IT partner is responsible for making sure your tech processes are efficient as possible. By updating your technology, data management software, and network solutions, your practice will be able to maximize efficiency and provide a superb level of care to your patients. Even when it comes to things like employee technology training, an outsourcing IT partner will help get your staff onboarded to new dental technologies that will help them do their jobs better.
A seasoned IT partner, especially if they are familiar with dentistry, will provide you with access to years of experience and continued learning. They can address all of your IT concerns so you can focus on dentistry. IT experts can help you answer questions regarding compliance, security, hardware, software, network, and more.
By outsourcing to a company that provides IT expertise, you will have a resource when your practice requires technical support and advice. It is important that your chosen outsourced IT company personnel are accessible, courteous, and responsive.
Focus On Other Aspects of Your Dental Practice
First and foremost, you are a dentist and business owner, not IT professional. You wouldn’t let an IT pro perform dentistry, do why would you to handle your tech needs on your own? Providing quality care and helping people are just two of the reasons you might want to consider outsourcing your IT. Focus on growing your practice and helping your patients while your IT partner helps keep your practice’s operations running smoothly.
Conclusion
Don’t let IT nightmares impede your ability to make your practice grow. Now that having electronic health records makes healthcare providers technology dependent, they need the help of IT specialists. Every good dental practice owner wants to provide the best possible care for their patients. Outsourcing your IT to a partner can allow you to focus on what matters most to your practice: good patient care.
