Step Up to the Cloud & Admire the View
Dentrix Ascend, Henry Schein One’s fastest-growing platform, is a cloud-based practice management system for group practices and DSOs
Some steps are bigger than others. But if you ask many dental service organizations (DSOs) about taking the step to cloud-based dental software, they will
tell you it was one of the biggest and best steps they ever took to integrate their offices. Just ask Teresa Williams, chief operations officer for Dental Express, a DSO with 6 locations in the San Diego, CA, area.
"We found that our patients believed our locations were connected,” Williams explained. “After all, this is the 21st century and patients expect us to have information at our fingertips, no matter which offices they went to previously, and they couldn’t understand why it took us so long to gather information. We couldn’t access data from our other locations with our previous practice management system—we just did not have that capability.”
Designed for Group Practices and DSOs
After months of research, Williams led her dentists and team members to take the big step to cloud-based software, and Dental Express turned to Dentrix Ascend, by Henry Schein One. Dentrix Ascend can centralize data from multiple practice locations across a variety of devices, a significant advantage during these post-pandemic times when many practices are not yet at full in-person operations. The system allows users with appropriate permissions 24/7 access to all practice and patient data from any location, and it eliminates time spent arranging for patient records and images to be transferred from office to office.
"You can chart the conditions and the appropriate treatment plan with it, and it gives you the whole picture.”
- Dr. Rachel Ryu, Dental Express
“I met people from Dentrix Ascend some years ago, and they were really interested in our needs and pain points,” Williams said. “They really wanted to know who we were as people. Especially impressive was that never once did they talk to me about buying their software. Instead, they just wanted to know what we needed.”
Reaching New Patients
In southern California, Williams estimated that more than half of all dental patients qualify for Medi-Cal, which is the state-run Medicaid program. As far as she could tell, there were no cloud-based systems that could help practices serve those patients—and that was a major obstacle. “The only company that wanted to have the conversation with me about integrating the Medi-Cal patients was Henry Schein One—no one else was interested,” she explained. So, Williams and the team at Dental Express took the very big step to Dentrix Ascend.
"The online booking is something that our community really wanted and needed. It has given them another reason to choose Dental Express.”
- Teresa Williams, Dental Express
Stress-Free Software Conversion
A veteran of several software conversions, Williams knew a large-scale change can be daunting. Clinicians and team members need systems to work well, and they need to be able to use the software quickly and efficiently with patients—there’s zero time for learning curves.
“I told my team, ‘We’re moving to a new country and in our new country we’re going to speak English—but a little differently—and we're taking all our data. And when we unpack it all, some of it we'll use and some will no longer serve us well, so we're not going to use it. It's going to make our life better when we unpack,’” Williams added.
Committed to Success
Once training began, Dental Express team members felt the Dentrix Ascend team was sincerely interested in a stress-free, successful outcome. “They weren’t here just to sell software and walk out the door,” she said. "Dentrix Ascend was very well prepared to support us and they realized that I have an entire workforce that doesn't want to ever fail, so they made sure we were successful."
Now fully up and running, Williams said the online booking capability, included with the Dentrix Ascend subscription, is extremely popular with patients because it allows them to secure appointments at their convenience and complete paperwork prior to an office visit. "The online booking is something that our community really wanted and needed. It has given them another reason to choose Dental Express," she added.
Convenient Interface
The convenience of an easy-to-use interface, organized charting, and the ability to view perio x-rays are some of the highlights for Dr. Rachel Ryu, a general dentist at Dental Express. “My favorite part about Dentrix Ascend is the progress notes and the chart. It's easy for me to scroll down, filter out, and quickly see what's been done by whom. The charting is nice because you can chart the conditions, the appropriate treatment plan with it, and it gives you the whole picture. On the bottom, you can have the history and x-rays up if you like, so that's a quick window for me to go back to," said Dr. Ryu. "Also, the images in Dentrix Ascend are easy to work with and manipulate, and I can increase the contrast or look for specific things in endo and perio."
Another advantage that Dr. Ryu pointed out is that, since the system is cloud-based, they no longer have to worry about the system crashing, which has been a big help in their daily workflow.
With a more efficient workflow, there’s more time for patient care. “We’re not spending time texting photos of schedules, notes, or x-rays from one office to another, since our patients visit multiple locations—we can all see everything in real time and it’s all secure,” Williams added. “It’s really a beautiful thing and it’s much needed.”
