HCD & EVG Headlines 12-21-2022

Rachael
Dec 21, 2022
6 min read

Hello, EVG and HCD! We're closing in on the last few days of the year. It's been super busy with phone calls to appointments to illnesses. Thank you all for hanging tough and helping us finish off successfully at both clinics!

We've had a lot of issues with IT at HCD recently and I've spoken with Blake about things we can do to avoid the issues that continue to arise. These headlines include a lot of tips and tricks from our discussion. Please implement them into your daily routines and feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

JANUARY SCHEDULE

Since this is the last headline for the year, I'm including our schedule for January. Please review and let me know if you have any questions.

HOURS FOR 2022

There have been some changes to the schedule for HCD for the rest of December. Here is the schedule for for the rest of the year:

12/22: OPEN, DKM out

12/23: OPEN, DKM out

12/27: OPEN, DKM here

12/28: OPEN

12/29: OPEN, DKM here, DAW out

12/30: OPEN, HYG only

For EVG, we also have some updates:

12/22: OPEN

12/23: OPEN - emergency only

12/27-28: OPEN

12/29: CLOSED

12/30: OPEN - emergency only

TRACKING IT PROBLEMS

As a reminder for HCD, please let me know ASAP about any IT problems in the clinic. Sometimes it is a slow train to get the problems resolved, but the sooner I know about the issue and the frequency of its occurrences, the easier it is to resolve. For any IT problem that you have, please place on a sticky note and put on this clipboard in my office. For urgent or emergency issues, please make sure I know face to face, too.

Regarding the purple sensor, it has been taken out of circulation and will hopefully return soon after a visit to the x-ray doctor.

NEW PRODUCTS

We purchased the Crest Whitening Emulsions Kit after learning more about them with Mark from Oral-B. They are for sale to our team at $65; they sell to patients at $85. There is a product code for them in the system with these prices attached: CRESTKIT. Learn more about them HERE.

If you ordered anything from the group purchase to Oral-B, your purchases were placed on your ledger and you can pay for them at the front desk.

VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY

We were contacted by Dawn More with Mountain View Lions Club. She is recruiting for an upcoming free clinic in April 2023. If you'd like to participate, they are looking for volunteers at every level and in every kind of position. This include helping setup the day before and everything from welcoming to admin support to chairside care. You can contact her directly for more information. I will remind everyone as the date gets closer. Sounds like it'll be a great service event and I hope a lot of us will be able to attend.

Dawn Morse, Recruiting for Care

907.444.2847

dawn.akfreeclinic@gmail.com

Free Remote Area Medical® Clinics — Alaska 2023, Presented By Mountain View Lions Club

STUDY: Dental clinical activities not linked to higher COVID-19 risk

A great news to be found in a little light reading from Dr. Marchant to you from JAMA: Data from a surveillance program at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine found dental clinical activities were not associated with an increased risk of COVID-19 when practitioners used standard personal protective equipment and participated in comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 surveillance testing, according to the Harvard Gazette. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, was conducted between August 2020 and February 2022. "Our study found that the overall asymptomatic test positivity rate remained low at 0.27 percent," said Sung Choi, Ph.D., an instructor in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology and an author of the study. "Being involved in [dental] clinical activities did not increase the risk of COVID-19; while individuals involved in clinical activities performed a higher number of tests per week on average, test positivity rate remained lower than non-clinical individuals, ensuring safety of both patients and practitioners at clinical settings." Read more HERE.

HOW TO USE THE PANO MONITOR

You may have noticed the pano monitor is now mounted to the wall thanks to Blake. In order to ensure a long life of the monitor, please only move the monitor by pulling on the tabs that are circled in red or move the monitor from the center. DO NOT PULL ON THE EDGES. This will weaken the mount and eventually lead to the monitor disconnecting. ONLY ADJUST FROM THE MIDDLE OR THE TABS.

DO NOT PUT YOUR COMPUTER TO SLEEP

There have been several issues with the operatory computers losing connection to the server. One way to resolve this is to not adjust the settings for your computer's screen saver and sleep mode. All of the computers Blake looked at that were having this issue were setup to sleep after 20-30 minutes of no interaction. This led to multiple errors. He has corrected the settings for both the screen saver and sleep mode. Please DO NOT change these settings.

DENTRIX UPDATE

There have been updates made to Dentrix at HCD by Blake. These updates happen when we're not here. For both clinics, if you have a message that pops up on your screen telling you to update Dentrix, press IGNORE or CLOSE. NEVER update Dentrix on your own as this will cause a kerfuffle for the other computers and your team. Let me know if you see these bubbles and where you see them so I can inform Blake.

With the updates comes new bugs - ALWAYS. With that said, please keep track of these bugs and/or glitches and let me know what problems you are having. We will need to contact Dentrix directly for most of them to see if they can be corrected. For this reason, we never update Dentrix as soon as a new update comes out. We always wait awhile for them to find all the bugs and make patches for them so when we update, we can (hopefully) resolve all the issues.

TEAM TRAINING

I apologize for missing our last team meeting. One of the things I wanted to inform you was the restructuring of our leadership. Kolina is now the Assistant Manager. We are working to better define her role and her tasks, but she will continue to handle all tasks connected to the Insurance Coordinator. She will gradually help take over tasks that pertain to the daily shuffle at HCD.

Te continues to be our Clinical Manager with a few changes in focus. He will be our main lead on training our dental assistant team members to help them with chairside skills and our cultural expectations. I do ask that if you see Te working with one of the dental assistants, please allow him the time and space he needs to work with them one-on-one. This will ensure a detailed and complete training for our team members.

TOPICS FOR NEXT MEETING

As you know, we won't meet until next year, January 5th. At that time, we will review a few important topics. Please let me know if you have other items you'd like to review.

1) Locking your computer when stepping away from the operatory. For HIPAA purposes, we must get into this habit. We also need to log out of Dentrix whenever we leave a workstation.

2) Appointment Checklist: We removed HUDDLE PREP from the list. We will now date stamp with our initials in the appointment note once the huddle prep has been completed by both the admin team member and the clinical team member. We have a new block. Can you see the new one?

3) Using the Appointment Book like a planner and then like a journal on the day of. We will review scheduling the perfect appointment and how to chart audit properly. The journal side comes into play when the patient arrives, changing the status, changing the provider name as needed, etc.

4) Finalizing 2023 Goals - Please have your departmental goals ready to post/discuss with everyone. Please also plan on writing down 3 personal goals. These will be kept with me and reviewed by you at the end of 2023.

Finally, this is one of my favorite Christmas songs. Whatever you celebrate or enjoy doing this time of year, I sure hope you are able to enjoy a sense of peace and contentment amongst all the chaos of December. We're grateful for each one of you and grateful for the outstanding work you do for your patients and your team in your role at HCD and EVG.