Are you looking for a Dentist Winchester VA who can provide the best quality care? When you find the right dentist for your dental needs you must consider certain important factors to ensure that you are choosing the most qualified and experienced one. Some tips are provided below to help you find the perfect dentist.

Tips to Help You Find the Perfect Dentist Winchester VA

You can start your research on the Internet as this medium is offering lots of valuable information on the dentists in your area. These days, the Internet is filled with endless resources which include ratings and reviews. You need to check the background information as well as the years of experience of any dentist that you are considering. In addition, the recommendations from other dental professionals and official institutes can help you to make the right decision.

Another way to find the perfect dentist is to get referrals or suggestions from persons who you can trust. When you get this information, you can also perform further research to know more about them. In most cases, the honest information that you will get from persons who have experience with a dentist is generally the best kind.

Now that you are armed with information about where to find your local dentists, you should get to know them. The perfect Dentist Winchester VA must be able to provide basic preventative details about your teeth health. Besides that you should feel comfortable enough to ask them the important questions with regards to good oral care. It’s very important to get treatments from a dentist who you can trust. This is why you should set up appointments in order to meet with all the potential candidates. You and your chosen dentist must have a good relationship that can last for the long-term.

When you are meeting a new dentist for the first appointment, you need to examine how the person operates at the office. You must pay attention to the cleanliness of the office as well as the attitudes and attentiveness of the employees. When you do this, you will get a good insight into the work habits of the dentists. A high quality Winchester dentist will most definitely maintain an office that is hygienic and clean.

Even though are looking for the right dentist for your dental needs, you should remember that nobody is perfect. Choosing the right dentist will be based your personal circumstances and needs, so a person who is right for you might not be right for someone else. Just ensure that you are choosing a Dentist Winchester VA with the right qualifications to offer the best oral health care. You should also try to maintain an open relationship with the dentist that you choose and stay informed to know what is good for your health.

A lot of my clients are not even able to completely do a program like that anyway.  So, we just have multiple touches.  We’ll hit a patient several times trying to get them to refer a patient to us in just very soft touches. We tell them how much we appreciate them.  We actually have a script the assistant says.  We’ve got a script that the front office says, and we have cards to give them.

We actually have an offer if you want, free exam, free x-ray card that we give folks to give out.  We say, if someone is like you in our practice, then, we definitely want them here, too.  Now, be careful.  Anything you do like this and I believe somewhere in Canada that is not culture, but this is a very specific template that we follow.  It just seems to work out overtime, and overtime it has gotten better and better.  Like I said, our direct referral numbers have never been better, and that has caused me to spend less and less on external marketing.

If you’re getting the same amount or better production out of fewer patients and you’re not having to spend extra marketing money, then, that’s just extra money in your pocket, right?  That’s just money you did not have to spend.

Dr. Lavine:

Yup.  Now, what about your staff?  Obviously, this system probably works very well.  If your staff promoted?  What are you doing to promote your staff?  Do you have some type of bonus system, or what are you doing to be effective?

Dr. Griffin:

You know, we’ve had a lot of promotion systems over the years.  I’ve tried them all and failed at most of them and settled in on a few.  A few years ago, we did a complete team bonus, and that was great at first.  I mean we got huge bumps. We were getting $50,000 a month, and then, when we bumped up to $80,000 or $90,000, everybody was so happy.  As we crossed over $100,000 and got up to the hundreds per month, the people in that bonus got to be making a lot of money.  It wasn’t that I hated to pay them, but the truth of the matter was it was not equitable because when I would hire new people, there was no extra money to pay them anywhere where the original people were making.  It just wasn’t fair.

So, then, we went to a different bonus system, and people rebelled on that.  Now, unfortunately, Lorne, to tell you the truth, I have a different bonus system for every single person in the practice.  We try to attach a statistic to each person that keeps them engaged in the practice.  It keeps them focused on their particular area.  I wish there was just a magic formula for that.  Unfortunately, the truth is actually have to manage each person individually to get the best out of them. That’s probably not what everybody wanted to hear, but that’s just the way it is these days.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  Yeah, I agree. That’s the reality of the situation.  I just want to make sure we get to a couple more questions before we have to wrap things up here.  For someone that wants to know a little bit more about lean management, is there a specific one book that they should check out that helped you in your practice?

Dr. Griffin:

I don’t think there’s one book, but just go to Amazon and type in “lean management”.  There’s a couple that were written that are really good on lean management applications to health care, and it really is not dentistry.  It is application into how the hospitals or big medical groups use lean management.  So, I was reading that, and I was like, “Well, certainly, if you can figure out how to make a car manufacturer work in the industry.  It’s a lot easier to figure out how it’s applied to a hospital or a medical group and apply that directly do dentistry.”

So, absolutely go to that.  Just go on Amazon and type it in.  Buy a couple of those if you want to, and there’s another concept about value string mapping.  You should get a good book on that, and you know what’s better?  You can go to Wikipedia, my gracious, and you could probably read all you want to on Wikipedia about this.  Go to Wikipedia and read about value string mapping and lean management.  That’ll take you a while.

I actually blew up my account.  Do you have an Evernote account Lorne?

Dr. Lavine:

Of course.

Dr. Griffin:

Yeah.  So, gee, I was on a frenzy left and right.  I was just taking stuff off the internet left and right, throwing it on Evernote and about maxed out my iPhone doing that.  So, yeah, I think you can find on the internet however much you want to mess with.  Then, if you want to go further, yeah, get those books off Amazon.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  Can we keep you on for a couple more minutes?  There’s a couple more questions I want to try to get to.

Dr. Griffin:

Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Lavine:

Than you.  We appreciate it.  What if I told you I really had a small practice, two chairs, one hygienist.  I’ve got one assistant, one front office person that basically does everything.  One of those rooms is for the hygienist, and the other is for the doctor.  Can they overbook?  Can they do what you recommend, doing that third column, or is that not going to work for a practice that small?

Dr. Griffin:

That is not going to work for a practice that small with two chairs and one hygienist.  Please don’t try this at home.  Don’t do it. You need at least three chairs to make it work, and three is pushing it.  Four for sure would work good, but no.  I wouldn’t do it with two.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  So, you’re only working three days a week.  You have no associates. You’re not available for four days.  What happens if someone needs to be seen?

Dr. Griffin:

You know, that goes back to the defect slide.  It’s against my nature to think about bragging, but I just think you need to take your trade seriously enough that you can go in and do that there doesn’t have to be mishaps on the weekend.  Things should be coming off, and teeth shouldn’t be breaking off.  Of course, people are going to get a toothache on the weekend.

Occasionally, we have a protocol for this.  Do we have a standard operating procedure protocol?  Absolutely.  We have a chain of command that a call goes to an answering service.  The answering service goes to a full time manager here at the practice.  They, then, sort through the call, and once or twice a month, I get a call, and I need to come up to the office.  I will either call in a prescription or come into the office, and then, that’s the way it works.

I have a lot of clients who have a problem.  They have stuff that goes wrong on the weekends, and I just tell them, “Try to think ahead.  I mean, if you’ve got a necrotic tooth, if the last day that you work on a week is a Thursday, let’s try not to put a filling on a necrotic tooth on a Thursday afternoon.”  How about that?  That’s not thinking.  I mean, you’ve got to use your head.  Think again, guys.  If you’ve a tooth that if you prep that thing, that’s going to have a resident adhesive cement to hold on there.  If you prep it before you go into town, the temporary’s obviously going to fall off.  Use your head when you’re [01:32:14].

This is simple stuff, but I mean, you just need to be thinking ahead.  Don’t do crazy stuff the last day you’re in the office in the week.  I’m all about same day dentistry, but there’s smart ways to go about it that you’re not going to have all these problems blow up on you during the weekend.

Dr. Lavine:

Yeah.  Okay.  So, last question.  I’m going to wrap it up as well.  What would you recommend if someone has a high volume practice, and there are a lot of cancellations? Is there one or two things that you would say to the person right off the bat like, “Here’s the case. You really need to focus on this concept to take care of this issue”?

Dr. Griffin:

Okay.  Two things.  Doctor’s side cancellations, I solved that problem.  How did I solve that Lorne?  Before a patient gets an appointment, they have [01:32:57].  Either they have a deposit, they need to pay for their treatment.  They have a deposit pay. They need to pay for their treatment, or they have a first payment of some kind of pay.  They have financial arrangements.  They already have their money or credit.  Whatever it is, they have something in the game, absolutely.

So, that solves the problem.  That’s why we don’t have doctor’s side cancellations anymore.  So, if it’s on the book, they’re coming.  Why?  Because they already paid something.  On the hygiene side, we didn’t feel that we could do that because of my terrible experience when I was trying to devote a practice, we tried something like that and lost a lot, a ton of patients.  So, no, I’m not doing that.  I’m not doing that again.  That’s how we came up with the book and the extra column more than the amount of hygienists that you have and have a system.

If you have four columns booked, three hygienists, if that person shows up, either have your assistants take the x-ray to start the flow up and then have somebody in there, or like I said, once every two months, I will actually have to do the hard tissue probing and scaling myself.  Big whoop. I’m not too good to do that every now and then.  So, that’s the solution we came up with, and we just rarely have a day when we don’t have much to do.

Dr. Lavine:

Chris, I want to thank you so much for tonight’s presentation.  We had a great turnout.  I’m hoping that you’re not going to be talking about doing something in a few months because this was just great material.  We had some people that were commenting that they looked at other types of systems to be more efficient where they’re looking at $50,000 bills in order to implement those systems.  The fact that you came on to the webinar and gave all this great information for an unbelievably low price of $397 that you have found effective.

So, speaking to individuals like you and learning from your expertise and going to the BB13 event and bring their staff and really get up to speed on this, really, I think that’s so generous.  I just want to thank you again for taking time out of what is very obviously a very busy schedule to be with us.

Dr. Griffin:

Well, Lorne. I did. I have to be honest with you. I did give up half a practice with my kids 13 and younger.  I coach a little league 13 and under baseball and I did have to give up half a practice. It hurts because I love coaching that team, but it was such an honor just to be with you tonight.  I can’t thank you enough for inviting me, man, and anything I can do for you in the future, I’m there for you.

Dr. Lavine:

Well, I hope the team doesn’t lose because of their lack of coach, but I thank you again. I encourage people on the call, please feel free to go to chrisgriffindds.com.  You can sign up for this excellent package, 60 day money back guarantee.  We know people who work with Chris that have raved about him, and that’s why we brought him on.  I don’t know anybody who would ever think of returning the product, but you certainly have that there.

For those of you who do want information about the recording, that will be sent out sometime tomorrow.  We’ll also resend the link that Chris had on his presentation, the Digital Dentist link, so you can go and get those screen shots as well.

Most of you know that we do these webinars on a regular basis.  We’re going to be switching gears tomorrow evening and talk about class II composite restorations.  We’ve already got 600 people signed up for that.  I think it’s going to be a great presentation as well.

I want to thank all of you for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us this evening.  Thank you, Chris, again, and we look forward to seeing everyone on future webinars.  Good night, everyone.

Dr. Griffin:

Good night.

Chiropractors offer complementary and alternative medicine in the health care industry. They use a different approach to healing using diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disorders of the neuro-skeletal system. Chiropractors are concerned about the disorders of the spine that affect others. They use manual therapy that consists of joint adjustment and manipulation with the focus on joints. There are chiropractors in over 100 countries all over the world; however they are more prevalent in North America, parts of Europe and Australia. People seek these services for low back pain. They adjust the spine and this is called a spinal adjustment. This is the most common practice in the field. They use thrusts at high velocity that has to adjust the spinal column. Spinal manipulative therapy consists of massage, mobilizing, adjusting, stimulate, apply traction to correct issues related to the spine and tissue.

One third of patients of licensed Canadian Chiropractors in a recent survey said that patients were treated with many techniques to help them cope with lower back pack. Full spinal manipulations, exercise, daily living activities, changing unhealthy behaviors, nutrition, relaxation, ice and screening for disease prevention early. There are many diseases of the spine that can begin as early as birth and chiropractors caution people to have a screening. A screening could save years of pain issues. Chronic back pain usually has several diagnoses on a patient at once. These include lumbago, degenerative disc disease, scoliosis, spondylitis, cervical degeneration and arthritis. This is a very painful disease and surgery is an option. Many doctors discourage surgery unless it’s a neurological issue of the spine that prevents one from walking.

Practice guidelines have been established by the professional community that specify which treatments are legitimate so they are covered by insurance companies. There have been some critical reviews about chiropractic services a 2010 survey stated that manual therapies were used commonly as treatment for neck, low back and joint pain. A 2011 systematic review of the survey failed to show effectiveness for any condition. Most research is focused on spinal manipulation rather than on manipulation. There is no way to measure it’s effectiveness on people. There is no way to conduct a placebo trail.

The care in general is safe when used appropriately. Manipulation is regarded as safe but as with anything, complications can arise. Chiropractic care has been known to have adverse reactions and risks. Chiropractors like any other primary care providers sometimes use X-rays, CT scans and that rely on radiation.

Chiropractors have been referred as medical quacks for medical doctors for many years. In the last few years they have been recognized as an alternative way to treat spinal and joint issues. Medical doctors now approve of them but each state has different guidelines and the problem now is physical therapists. Physical Therapy (PT) is now butting heads with chiropractic treatment. PT is determining what treatment defines chiropractic and what treatment defines physical therapy. Research all the information before deciding on choosing chiropractic treatment.

Now, if you want to read his testimonial it says, “I really love Dr. Griffin’s ideas and concepts. They have helped me organize my practice to a high level of efficiency that I could have never done alone.  The first day we implemented his system, we saw an immediate great improvement in our effectiveness. Thanks Dr. Griffin. I am now excited about dentistry again and cannot wait to see what tomorrow might bring.”  Now, this guy has a great story because he was on the brink of disaster a couple of times, and he has really bumped his practice up to the next level.  He just bought a space next to his old, crunched-in workspace.  Now, he’s got this beautiful standalone building.  He’s got a great story. I hope get to hear this.

I hope you come, and I hope you get to hear his story there.  Here it is.  So, just go.  If you want to be a part of this, go to chrisgriffindds.com, order the practice productivity package, and if you have further questions, you can get a hold of me at chrisgriffin@thecapacityacademy.com or you can call 662-837-8143. Okay?

Alright.  So, Lorne, are you still around, man?  Do you want to do some Q & A?

Dr. Lavine:

I certainly do.  The presentation almost makes me want to go back to full time practice and emphasis on the almost, but this is just great content. I can’t believe you were able to squeeze that much into about an hour.  So, I just want also thank you for being so generous with the offer that you and I discussed.  Maybe putting together a couple of the systems or pooling them together or 50% off, but you really went well above and beyond the call of duty.  So, thank you very much for that. I think it’s truly a generous offer.

Dr. Griffin:

Well, hey.  Thank you for letting me be a part of your group, man.  I’ve really watched you afar for many years and I’ve respected you.  I really appreciate you inviting me in.

Dr. Lavine:

Thank you.  So, one of the things that I notice whenever I do a webinar is there’s two criteria that I use to figure out if the webinar was a success.  Number one is do we have a lot of questions, and we have no questions, which means that everyone was probably listening intently and taking a lot of notes down.  I would certainly encourage it.  We have another space in the call for about another 15 to 20 minutes.  So, if you have any questions that he’s talked about or maybe just practice management, in general, or anything that you want to pick his brain about, we’ve got him on the line now. Please feel free to ask your questions.

Secondarily, I look at the number of people that are on the call.  I actually looked at this before we started.  Normally, if I get 10%, 15% drop off during the webinar, I consider that to be successful.  We have 100 more people on the call now than we had at the beginning of the hour.  So, obviously a number of people have come on the call and have stayed on.

So, we have a couple of questions coming in now.  So, what are practice management software are you using, and is there a specific reason why you’re using it as far as efficiency systems in your practice?

Dr. Griffin:

No.  Well, look, I’ve used Dentrix since my inception in 1999.  So, of course, Dentrix has some cool things.  I think one of the coolest things I’ve seen lately is the bridge that they’ve got with this new marketing software that you can use called InfusionSoft, but I mean, it’s okay.  I don’t think it’s perfect, but the big three or the big four are all fine.

Whatever it is you have, once you start building your database, you’re not going to go and swap software.  It’s going to be very painful if you do.  Just make sure that you write down good standard operating procedures and make sure that you have proper training for the folks that are running that software.  It took me a long time to be able to maximize what Dentrix could do.  I’m sure all the big ones are similar.

It’s like your brain.  You’re using a percentage of your brain to just get in there, there are all these cool tools.

Dr. Lavine:

Yeah. I would back it up.  Our experience is we usually about 5% to 10% usage of people’s software.  So, you hit the nail on the head here.  Another great question here, Chris.  A lot of us have been inundated and we go to these shows.  We see all these companies really focused on dental practice marketing, whether it’s newsletters or flyers or social media.  I mean, that seems to be the big bugaboo right now.  How do you market your practice?  You didn’t talk about marketing once.  Why is that?

Dr. Griffin:

Okay, 2008 to about 2010, I average about 150 new patients a month, working three days a week, and that’s a lot of work.  I decided strategically that if I wanted to be a happier dentist, I cut my extra market budgeting to about, I started spending about $12000 to $15000 a month.  I went down to about $2000 a month.  So, now, most of my patients come from direct referrals.

We talked about that.  I shared that on that DVD, The-Fly-On-The-Wall, they film me doing it, but I think it’s really important because those patients have such a high value to the practice.  When you have 150 patients and most of them are coming from extra marketing, you have to spend so much time figuring out if this person who is actually going to stick to your practice.  That’s a lot of wasted effort, and I’m all about not wasting effort.

Now, I like marketing.  I’ve got like 1200 Facebook fans.  Go look up Griffin Dental Group on Facebook.  We’ve get 1200 fans.  I’ve yet to make 1200 fans translate into a lot of money.  Yeah, it’s cool to occasionally punch a button and make an offer, but truthfully, social media has not been the boom that I thought it would be.  The 60 referrals every month, those guys come into the practice. They’re there to believe that you say, and they’re here because a friend or a loved one told them that you were okay and a good guy.  They’re there to spend money.  They’re not there to be a [01:17:16].

So, that’s the way I do marketing.  I will do it.  I do do it. I have a whole program every month.  My clients get another marketing piece I’ve one in my practice successfully.  I’ve done some good ones, but I’ve just come to believe overtime that the real bounty in the practice lies in your hygiene department and your patient base and the right referrals.  That’s why we didn’t talk a lot about marketing.

Dr. Lavine:

Great.  We just got an e-mail here coming in.  So, someone just want to know how they could go about getting the special offer.  Do they just go to your chrisgriffindds.com website?

Dr. Griffin:

Absolutely, chrisgriffindds.com, and if there’s something there that you can’t get to work right, you always send an e-mail, or that phone number is just on the bottom of the page right now, the 662-837-8143.  You have chrisgriffindds.com.  That’s got the special.  It bypasses all the regular channels that we’re working through, and it just goes to the special channel.

Dr. Lavine:

Great. I see it now.  The Fly-On-The Wall, is that a DVD or is that a book?  It looks like it’s one of the Dummy books.

Dr. Griffin:

Well, yeah, it actually kind of looks like that.  I actually like those books, Lorne.  Hey, I can tell you.  Every time I start to use a new software, I go buy the Dummy book for that software at Barnes and Noble, but yeah. It’s a DVD.

We took the DVD, and we transcribed it because some people like to watch DVD and pause it and underline and make notes in the manual.  So, it’s just a manual to go with the DVD.

Dr. Lavine:

So, I’ve got a couple of questions here about your practice as far as how many staff you have.  Is there another dentist in there?  What’s the makeup of your individual practice?

Dr. Griffin:

There is not another dentist here.  A long time ago, I thought that I would have this dental empire where I would have multiple practices, but then I decided against multiple practices.  I said, “Hey, that’s too much work.”  Then, I thought I’d just have one gigantic practice so I built on until I had 14 ops.  Then, I decided I’m not going to get an associate because that’s too much work, and I’m pretty darn happy working three days a week and making a nice living in Ripley, Mississippi.

So, we turned several of those options into work stations for when we have visiting dentists. Now, we use those for fun.  I work out in the office with three hygienists. So that’s the setup of my practice now.

Dr. Lavine:

Is there a minimum number that you need?  We have one of our listeners saying they’re a four chair, single doctor practice with one assistant, one hygienist, one front desk, one sterilization room assistant.  Are they going to need more than that to implement your system?

Dr. Griffin:

No.  Four ops is good.  We used to have one hygienist.  You have three chairs.  Absolutely, you can use these systems.  You would be surprised how much more capacity you have out of a four chair practice with one hygienist.  You said you have a sterilization assistant.  So, you really have two assistants.  It’s just you put one in sterilization.  Sterilization assistant can absolutely run one of those color-coded setup rooms.

Our setup room, one half is sterilization.  The other half is setup for the next procedure, and a person that’s dedicated to that room can make a world of difference in the amount of production you can get out of that practice.

Four chairs is great.  I mean, the more chairs, the more people you’re going to need to man those chairs.  I often think, netwise, you’re ahead.  I mean, I might theoretically make more money working nine chairs net, but if you consider how much harder I’m working to keep the nine chairs, I like the four chair practice.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.  You can absolutely do with four chairs.

Dr. Lavine:

You talked about the importance of limiting or reducing your no-shows.  How do you feel about some of the confirmation systems out there?  Demand is my favorite, the Red Lighthouse, Solution One, like those. Do you ever use those in your practice?

Dr. Griffin:

Absolutely.  We do it all, Lorne.  I love those.  We do the e-mail confirmation.  We do text confirmation.  I’m not kidding, we do Facebook confirmation.  We do every kind of confirmation that you can do, and all of it is automated, pretty much, except for the Facebook.  It’s like my office manager goes in and private messages people just to give them a general reminder.  That works pretty good, by the way.

Bottom line is even with all of that, we only cut our no-show rate a small percentage, and so, that’s why I started booking that extra column, one more column that I have a hygienist.  That’s what really saved the day and solved all the production problems in hygiene forming.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay.  The DVDs.  How long are those?

Dr. Griffin:

“Fly-On-The-Wall” is an hour and 15 minutes.  The “Efficient Doctor” is more.  It’s like, I could be wrong about this.  I want to say it’s two DVDs, and it totals up to about 2 hours, 3 hours.  That actually comes with a couple of manuals and bonus materials.   You’re probably looking at 4, 5 hours worth of materials in the efficient doctor system.

Dr. Lavine:

Okay, and we’ve got some nice comments coming in already.  People are already buying it, and I certainly encourage people that this is a great special.  You’ve only got a few slots for the conference.  I would highly recommend that you get on the website and buy.  How long is the conference by the way?

Dr. Griffin:

It’s a three-day conference.  It’s a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and I believe a couple of people who are on this program are going to be there as well.  Dr. Erin Elliot.  She’s going to be speaking.  Dr. Brady Frank.  He’s going to be speaking.  Of course, I’m going to do my multiple session song and dance to get more people to be efficient and an easier workflow.  Yeah, I think we’ve got a good show.

These conferences are a lot of work, and so I would love for you to come.  We’re going to try to put on the best show we possibly can, and one night we’re going to have a band.  We’re in Nashville, right?  So, we’re going to do it right in the country music capital of the world.  So, come on down, guys. I would love to meet you.

Dr. Lavine:

Very generous.   You talked about the referral system for your patients.  What exactly do you do?  You probably don’t have to time to go into details, but what do you do to encourage your patients to refer other people?

Dr. Griffin:

Well, as you probably know, a lot people, a lot of states, a lot of countries, have great difficulty in doing referral program.  If you give any kind of amount of money or anything of value to someone, in some of the state boards, you’re going to construe that as being against the regulation.  So, I just decided at some people that we’re going to play a completely straight.

Every time I go to a new doctor I get about an inch thick pile of paper forms to fill. Naturally they ask for for my driver’s and insurance identification card yet I need to repeat what on these documents like five or more times on the various forms. Some of these papers have been photocopied so many times that not only the image has been bent on the corners but also the image and text print quality is often at the edge of ability to read it.

I’m not a doctor, any other health care professional, not an administration workforce member of any healthcare facility but even as a software developer I can clearly see how much the system could be improved. Having the most expensive health care system in the world I refuse to believe this paper based, ninetieth century, information handling is obsolete due to lack of funds for improvement. Even if the large sums set aside for healthcare go to suing for medical malpractice settlement schemes there still should be enough left to reduce paper load. Especially since it’s everyone’s best interest.

Let’s actually speak in more accurate terms, the end result is in everyone’s best interest. Here is the holy grail the way I see it. I come to a medical facility, they ask me for driver’s license and insurance id badge, the receptionist scans both documents and hands me a tablet device where I confirm that the scanned data is accurate, enter any information that is missing, accept any disclosure, terms and conditions etc. Period. Not a single sheet of paper wasted. Information gets stored in the system, no need for manual data entry, storing tons of paper, scanning. Simple and easy.

Why this is not happening then? I’ll give you my idea from system architecture and project management perspective.There a 2 main reasons this has not happened and will be a bumpy ride when it happens.

1. Software running such system would have to be universal, meaning the same for all health care providers in the country so that information can be stored in a standard format, encryption and could be transferred on demand. This means a project would have to be handled by a large software vendor which makes it very hard to manage consistently during the project life. You could see on Microsoft product examples how buggy the software could be that it’s not even cross platform yet. Also what was witnessed during Obamacare implementation from the IT perspective gives an idea what kind of challenge such project could be. No chance for change then? Not necessarily; I could see this happening from a garage startup perspective where a very solid piece of software is developed, gets attention and the snowballs down the hill. With well coded and architected core a system could become modular enough to accommodate the health care system needs. Still, this would need very talented people, substantial funding, industry lobbying and quite a bit of luck.

2. Industry inertia. Do you sometimes get a feeling that people tend to spend extra energy to perform a task that could be executed in a much simpler and efficient way? I do a lot and almost everyday. It’s an article about health care industry and not me so let’s focus on that. Those paper load you get on your first doctor visit, they’re all photocopies. It would be much easier, more efficient and end result would look nicer if the forms were printed instead of copied. Seriously, smudges eat up toner and look sloppy on the form. Why is it this way then? I think because nobody forced hard enough to make a change happen. We’re running low on form XYZ, where I can get more? just take the last one and copy it … That’s how it goes. I’ve seen once id cards made on photocopier with photo attached using paperclip in one dental office.

I think the change is imminent though, just because the world that surrounds us is changing too much and island of paper ruled industry can’t hold alone. I get some of this in my gig. We make id badges , also for health care industry. We try to make the process as simple as possible but it still involves a learning curve but since we’re very cost competitive health care staff keeps ordering from us.