With Dental Mac now in “maintenance mode,” we’re presenting a list of other Mac OS compatible dental software that’s been mentioned to us over the years. We, not being dentists, haven’t checked them out personally, but offer them for consideration by those Mac users in the dental profession.
ACE Dental Practice Management Software
ACE Dental Practice Management Software from ACE Dental is a comprehensive practice management system for dental offices. The principle emphasis has been on ease of learning and ease of use. It offers scheduling, plain paper forms, electronic claims submission, accurate insurance estimation, flexible cycle billing, as well as a host of other features. A complete video tutorial is included with the program. ACE Dental runs on any Mac.
Blueridge Technologies
Blueridge Technologies Inc., doesn’t specifically tailor its software to dentists, but makes a document management system that can be customized to serve the needs of a dental office or any other business.
“What our software does is basically allow anyone to scan multipage documents, index them using a real database that you can design to fit your needs, and retrieve them very quickly,” says Craig Landrum, chief technology officer. “This could be useful for capturing patient records.”
Blueridge’s single-user system is available for free and can be downloaded from their Web site. It includes six generic indexing screens, but a Screen Generator program allows end users to build their own for special purposes. If you need multiple scanning stations or have a large number of documents, you can step up to a full Unix or NT-based server system. Landrum says there isn’t any other document management company around that builds large multiuser systems for the Mac.
“Our systems can be upgraded to do OCR (using Textbridge from Xerox) and full text search (content searching),” he says. “We also have a very sophisticated workflow system. We just installed a million-dollar workflow system at the Washington Post (their ad department uses Macs and they process all their ads via our workflow system. Users can access our server databases from the Web. They can query the database, select from a hitlist, and our custom CGI’s do on-the-fly TIFF and JPEG decompress/scale to gray/recompress to GIF, as well as zoom and rotate, so our image databases can be retrieved and viewed with off-the-shelf generic browsers which need no special plug-ins.”
For more information, contact:
Blueridge Technologies Inc. Phone: 540-675-3015 Fax: 540-675-3130
Dental InfoManager
Dental InfoManager from Affinity Software Corp. is a complete practice management solution. It supports patient accounting, insurance processing, electronic claims, recall management, scheduling, word processing, treatment planning and a report generator. The software is modular so you can purchase only those modules you need. Full multi-user client/server operation is supported. Over 500 clients have been using this solution since 1987. System requirements are any Mac running Mac OS 7.5 or greater.
Dental Office Manager II
Dental Office Manager II from Applied Computer Concepts supports mixed networks so Macs and PCs can share the same data file. The company also does all it development in house on the Mac. Applied Computer Concepts’ Terri Kofski says they offer quality software at a reasonable price, with features designed for everyone from the beginner to the most advanced user.
The Dental Office Manager II is a three-tiered product line, in which the user can be upgraded from one tier to the next by a simple data key code obtained by phone. There is no time spent installing upgrades or converting existing data.
Dental Works
A program called Dental Works is available from Bitesoft.
Among its benefits, it touts “unsurpassed networking” that includes:
Joey
Dr. Virgil Mylan, an Edina dentist and self-taught computer programmer, developed a dental office management system that he’s been selling across the United States and Canada since 1988 under the business title of Joey Software Inc.
Mylan sells his Joey software as a “simple, reliable, well-supported program written by someone who understands how a dental office operates. For more information, call 800-688-5639.
PracticeMaker
PracticeMaker is a fully functional FileMaker Pro database solution that organizes billing, patient information, and money management. It has been in use for seven years in many different medical practices, including dentistry.
PracticeMaker’s Patient’s Module stores patient records (around 652,000) and links each patient to an office provider, group, medical doctor and consulting doctor. You can store updated diagnoses per patient.
The Patient Module has instant ledger capabilities with active patient and family balances. Each patient can have unlimited insurances. There’s real-time managed care edits to monitor co-payments, referrals and more. The built-in word processing creates instant referral letters (a medical dictionary can be customized as you type).
Appointments and recall are an active part of PracticeMaker, with a completely user definable recall system. You can create completely customizable patients lists, searching across a wide variety of patient demographic and customized fields. You can print the patient’s balances, diagnoses, expected co-payments, referring doctor’s name and more. Using a modem, PracticeMaker can dial any phone in any of its databases
The Comprehensive Billing Section allows unlimited charges, payments, adjustments and multiple fee schedules per invoice. Insurances can be linked to a specific fee schedule as can each provider. PracticeMaker has active error checking at each stage of data entry.
The program’s automated billing functions include: the Quick Invoice system for creating templates of grouped procedures; automatic assignment of a claim to the next available insurance; an automatic insurance claim reprocessing; automatic calculation of expected payment for multiple surgical procedures; automatic finance charge assignment; active prompting of the user for reassignment of a claim when a balance remains; allowing both patient and insurances charges on the same claim with only insurance charges appearing of printed or electronic claims.
PracticeMaker calculates sales tax as needed and prints a report on the collection of sales tax using user defined time periods. It can also calculate discounts. Discounts are assigned on a patient-by-patient, invoice-by-invoice and/or procedure-by-procedure basis.
QuickCeph
For the digital imaging of patient records there’s a program called QuickCeph. It’s a Mac-only product and, we’re told, the best of its type in the world.
QCIP produces many predefined and customized analyses in just minutes. It interactively generates growth forecasts and treatment simulations on tracings and real images of patients.
Eight different superimpositions and the sophisticated CO-CR conversion are included. The unique digital image enhancement function increases the quality of stored x-ray images. QCIP applies Bezier curves rather than multiple small straight lines for drawing, manipulation and the storage of soft tissue structures and bones.
Designed for orthodontists and maxillo-facial surgeons, this integrated system diagnoses cases, takes and stores images and effectively presents and emphasizes the specialized knowledge of the practitioner to patients and referring dentists.
ToothPics Dental Patient Management System
ToothPics Dental Patient Management System from the ToothPics Company has been serving dentists for over 10 years. ToothPics was the first program to focus on Dentistry and to utilize the easy-to-use features of the Macintosh and an odontogram for onscreen charting. Mac expert Guy Kawasaki acknowledged ToothPics as an example of how a Mac program should look and feel. Features include: electronic claims, financial reports, billing, treatment planning and walkout statements, data export for mailing lists, labels, recall and analysis.
The ToothPics Company says it’s ideal for the small rural practice or the multi-user networked office. The company provides phone and modem-based technical support.
System requirements for the Mac-only product are Mac OS 7.1 or better; a 68020 Mac or better, and a color monitor. For more information, contact:
ToothPics Company Main Phone: 602-488-2427 E-mail: toothpic@amug.org