With increased demand for virtual visits for dental services, it's important for practice leaders to be aware of the legal and business implications of teledentistry.
During an Oct. 19 session at Becker's Dental + DSO Review Virtual Event, a panel of experts discussed the fundamentals of teledentistry. Participants were:
- Michael Acierno, DDS, CEO of Schaumburg, Ill.-based DecisionOne Dental Partners
- Michael Fleischer, DDS, senior vice president of clinical affairs with New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Dental365
- Emily Vanney, DDS, chief clinical officer at United Dental Partners in Chicago
Here is an excerpt from the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity. To view the full session on demand, click here.
Question: The prevalence of virtual visits has skyrocketed recently. What are some documentation concerns that accompany such consultations?
Dr. Michael Fleischer: It's very necessary and important to be HIPAA compliant and to comply with all the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine protocols. I think that it will become easier for us to do that in the future when dental software developers integrate teledentistry into solutions — that way it becomes more of a seamless process. Right now, a lot of the information needs to be transferred manually. If you have a synchronous visit, meaning the patient contacts you and you're face-to-face with them immediately, there is not currently a mechanism for having that video conference recorded in the patient's record. But I don't think that capability is far away.
Dr. Emily Vanney: It would be tremendously helpful if it was all in one system. What our doctors and staff have to do is send patient photos over email to be uploaded into the patient's chart. While that works, there's a lot of steps along the way for error to creep in. Certainly, you don't want anyone else getting that information, but even when you send it to all the right people, they still need to upload it to the correct chart and label it correctly. So, there are a lot of ways in which you could have a mishap or just lost information.
Dr. Michael Acierno: In the beginning, at least for us, virtual care was rudimentary. We were doing video calls just to get in front of a patient. And then the legal aspects and the HIPAA stuff came to the forefront. We then integrated a cloud-based dental system through a third party. Then we didn't have to worry about the HIPAA issues and legal aspects.