dental practice management

What a Trial Is Actually For

The email says your trial ends tomorrow. In a lot of practices nobody can say whether anyone used it, because nobody decided at the start that this was the thing to find out. A trial is not for confirming you like a product. It is for finding out whether your team will use it before the money is spent.

September 25, 2026 · 7 min read

How to Tell If It Worked

Last week's post said to start AI where you can see the result, then did not say how. This is how. The ADA's list of ten commonly tracked KPIs never measures the phone, but your phone system keeps a log and your practice management system knows who ended up on the schedule. Two lists, one afternoon, and a number that describes your practice and nobody else's.

September 11, 2026 · 7 min read

Before You Look at a Single Vendor

The demo came first, and the practice found out later what it actually needed. Before evaluating any vendor, a practice owes itself a short internal conversation: say the problem so someone could see it, name who owns it today, decide what doing nothing costs, and name whose day changes. The ADA's own business-planning guidance starts the same way.

September 9, 2026 · 7 min read

What the Front Desk Is Allowed to Answer

"Am I allowed to tell him that?" Most practices answer with "use your judgment," which is not an answer. The line between what the treatment coordinator can say and what goes back to the doctor already exists, drawn by the state practice act and the ADA's own consent guidance. Here is where it sits, and how to write it down in three lists.

September 7, 2026 · 7 min read

What Dentists Want AI to Do First

The ADA's Health Policy Institute asked 552 dentists in private practice which tasks they use AI for, and then asked the ones who plan to adopt when they intend to start. The two answers run close to opposite. Charting has nearly twice the intent behind it. The front desk is the thing people are moving on now. Here is why that is, and what it means if you are the one deciding.

September 4, 2026 · 7 min read

What Your Software Counts as Unscheduled

Four practices pull the same report on the same morning and get four numbers. None of them is comparable to the others, and none of them is wrong. The systems differ on whether they count people or procedures, which date the report hangs on, and whether the number is even current. Here is what each one actually counts.

September 2, 2026 · 7 min read

Who Answers When Two Vendors Point at Each Other

Every practice that runs more than one piece of software has had the hour where both vendors say the log looks fine on their side. It is not a support-culture problem. It is a contract problem, and the practice owns it by default.

August 28, 2026 · 7 min read

Explaining a Dental Benefit Plan Without Making It Sound Like an Excuse

The front desk is being asked to translate a benefit design they did not create, to a patient who did not read the plan document, in the middle of a moment when the patient is deciding whether to accept treatment. It is one of the harder small conversations in a dental office.

August 26, 2026 · 7 min read

What Happens to Your Data If You Leave

Most owners sign the business associate agreement and never read it again. Inside it is the only provision in federal regulation about what a vendor owes your practice when the relationship ends, and it says considerably less than you would expect.

August 21, 2026 · 8 min read

Who Is Your Security Official? A HIPAA Requirement You Have Probably Already Met

Ask who calls the IT company and you get an answer right away. Ask who the practice's security official is and the room goes quiet. The practice is not missing a role. It is missing a sentence.

August 17, 2026 · 6 min read

Your Images Do Not Travel: Why Sending a Radiograph Is Still Hard

Federal regulators came close to requiring that images be portable three separate times, and each time the requirement got weaker or went away. That history is the real reason a practice still burns a CD or hands the patient a folder and hopes it reaches the specialist.

August 14, 2026 · 7 min read

Integration Is Not One Thing: What "Works With Your PMS" Actually Means

Ask three vendors whether their product integrates with your practice management system and you will get three yeses that mean three different things. Reading is not writing, a copy is not live data, and one connected system is not all of them. The ADA has been telling federal regulators why dentistry ended up here, and the explanation gives buyers a much better set of questions to ask.

August 5, 2026 · 6 min read