Insurances.net
insurances.net » Liability Insurance » A Paperless Dental Office Can Be Cheaper Than A Paper Dental Office
Auto Insurance Life Insurance Health Insurance Family Insurance Travel Insurance Mortgage Insurance Accident Insurance Buying Insurance Housing Insurance Personal Insurance Medical Insurance Property Insurance Pregnant Insurance Internet Insurance Mobile Insurance Pet Insurance Employee Insurance Dental Insurance Liability Insurance Baby Insurance Children Insurance Boat Insurance Cancer Insurance Insurance Quotes Others
]

A Paperless Dental Office Can Be Cheaper Than A Paper Dental Office

A Paperless Dental Office Can Be Cheaper Than A Paper Dental Office

I think the assumption that digital is more expensive than paper is inaccurate.


I'll lay out the numbers for you and base everything on a 5 year replacement cycle because all the items are warranted for 5 years in this layout.

6 Operatory - 3 FD - 1 Server all with 22" screens 5 year warranties and installation $18,500 -Our support contract on this system would be 410$ a month with unlimited on site support. The practice management support contract with Open Dental is I think, but I always say think its higher than it is, probably because it seems cheap to me. Lorne please correct me if I am wrong but I think its 160$ a month. Throw in a printer, a document scanner and a film scanner there is another 1400$

So we are at:

375.45 a month loan payment on all your computers, monitors, printers, scanner and film scanner for 5 years.

160$ a month for practice management

410$ a month for unlimited on site service

So going paperless costs you 945.45 a month

Adding digital to this 2 MyRay sensors $14,890 includes imaging software

Adding MyRay Hyperion Digital Pano with 3DTS imaging 47K$ (These prices include installation and training)

$1,225 a month for 60 months at 7% interest, if you have a line of credit with your bank you could probably lower this substantially.

So your fully digital technology nut is $2,170.45 a month. And if you always want to be under warranty and have new just assume this goes on forever. Obviously if you have a smaller practice this price comes down, I am assuming a 2 Hygiene 4 op practice single doctor. that sees 32 patients a day.

Cost of dealing with Paper:

http://www.gosisco.com/costofpullingpaper.shtm

Just dealing with the charts themselves in pay. I typed these numbers into the above calculator. 4 minute seek time (So I hope your employees move fast the study done by the university of Chicago suggests average record seek time to be 7 to 12 minutes because of misfiling, but I wanted to go optimum on this. And your employees wage with overhead $17.50 an hour.

Monthly Cost based on this just pulling and putting back files, lets assume it takes 0 minutes to get the file to the op, write notes in it and such.

Filing monthly cost: $808.27, you'll notice if your employees cost more than this the amount goes up quick.

Paper Costs: I'll just say your adding a perio and a regular chart each day.

32 patients a day 5 days a week, 42 weeks a year. I assume you take 10 weeks off if you don't the number goes up. 13,440 sheets of paper at 20 cents a printed sheet = $2,688 /12 months =224$ a month in printed paper (20 cents a sheet printed is really cheap, you still have receipts and other pieces of paper you print but you most likely have these if you are paperless as well so I didn't include them.

So cost of filing and cost of paper= $1,032 a month

Cost of Film(I'll assume your film processor is free and never breaks down. and that your holders are a wash because you need them for film and digital).

I will do a cost difference here to simplify. You need 1 barrier shield for each digital exam you need 4 films for each film exam.

20 cents for a barrier shield for digital.

http://padentalsupplies.com/x-ray-sensor-covers-universal-rs-barrier.aspx

43 cents for film bitewings

http://padentalsupplies.com/AgfaFilmM2-54E/FSpeed.aspx

25 cents for a clear 4H bitewing mount

http://padentalsupplies.com/Klear-VueX-RayMounts100/Pk4H.aspx

So consumables ignoring the liquids in your processing, mind you these are expensive, but I don't want an argument about how much fluid one processor uses against another.

digital 20 cents for 4 bitewings

film $1.92 for 4 bitewings

Difference $1.72 extra per 4 bitewings for film assume you have 2000 patients of bitewings a year, most people have more and this ignores any extra PAs you take.

$3,440 a year / 12 = 286$ a month

Cost of Panos assuming you take Panos on 1/4 of your patients a year so 500 of them.

$2.28 a pano X 500 panos = $1,140 in film for panos / 12 months = $95 a month

Filing Film for 2000 patients worth of filing at 4 minutes a filing and 4 minutes to pull film. Remember your staff is lightning quick. That's 266 hours of pulling and filing a year hopefully done by an assistant so your overhead is only $17.50 an hour on this worker.

387$ a month in filing and pulling film.

So your film cost with your paper and filing cost is:

387$ a month filing and pulling Film

286$ a month in extra film consumables

1,032$ a month in filing and pulling charts

95$ a month in film Panos

$1,800 a month

So quick recap, being totally digital, scrapping everything every 5 years even your digital pano:

$2,170.45

Cost of dealing with paper and taking films:

$1,705 a month

So it is $370 a month more expensive to be fully digital.

Take into account that I am assuming all of your film based hardware was FREE, your film pano was FREE, your film processor was FREE, you get your film processor fluids for FREE, you are in a state where you can still just dump your processing fluids down the drain and don't have to reclaim them and you can not get more than 5 years of life out of a digital pano.

If you assume 7.5 years of life out of your digital pano it reduces your digital monthly investment by $310 a month. Meaning.

$1,860 a month for full digital

$1,705 a month for a paper office

Remember this also means you are doing scheduling in paper and have zero computers in your office. If you have even 3 computers in your film paper office it adds the Practice management price to the paper office, plus a 3 computer price, plus a printer and scanner. Meaning suddenly your numbers look like this.

3 computers with 5 year warranties and printer $5,000 / 60 months = 83$ a month

Open Dental Monthly fee 160$ a month

Reduced PC support contract 100$ a month

$1,860 a month for full digital practice, all computers, no charts, digital intra oral, digital Pano with 3DTS

$2,048 Partial paper office, PM for billing and scheduling front desk only 3 computers

So with these numbers in mind how is it so expensive to be paperless? I do understand if you use Dexis you will have an additional $28K every 5 years and if you buy from the big boys your Practice Management, PC and Digital Extra Oral costs could be much much higher, but you don't have to buy from them.

The end result of my clearly labeled numbers all at Retail pricing shows that an office using film and just front desk computers is actually more expensive than a fully digital office. Even using preferential numbers for the time and costs of using film and paper.

$11K more expensive a year if you wanted to you could dump half of that on great yearly training to make your staff experts at your digital equipment.

by: Shawn Hall
How To Find The Best Payday Loan Office In Your Neighborhood Product Liability Insurance For Small Business Contractors Liability Insurance California helps both landlord and tenant Annual Limited Liability Company Report Form Are Insurance Quotes An Asset Or Liability? ABC of Contractor Liability Insurance Storm Warning – Slip and Fall Cases of Premises Liability Business Liability Insurance – An Essential Part of Your Business 4 Important Questions About Professional Liability Insurance Starting A Business From Home And Work From Home Office Architects and Engineers professional liability insurance Looking For The Cheapest Liability Insurance In Texas? Things You Should Know About Minimum Liability Protection Sr22 Insurance
Write post print
www.insurances.net guest:  register | login | search IP(3.90.187.11) Ohio / Columbus Processed in 0.015880 second(s), 6 queries , Gzip enabled debug code: 122 , 7304, 961,
A Paperless Dental Office Can Be Cheaper Than A Paper Dental Office Columbus