What is Dental Consent Cloud and how was it conceptualized?
Dental Consent Cloud is created by a collaboration of professionals based in Seattle WA. The team includes dentists with productive dental offices, a specialized HIPAA attorney and a web designer. These professionals created a new and innovative way to document informed consent before dental procedures and to share post treatment instructions with the patient.
Our founder dentist worked as a Commissioner on the State Board. While reviewing complaints, they saw on a bigger scale how the failure to produce an informed consent from a patient can be a big problem for a practitioner in the event of a legal situation. Hence the need for a sophisticated software was realized. If patients know what to expect before they do any dental procedure and they have clear post op instructions, a lot of problems could be avoided.
Most dental offices are digital now. However, dentists obtain paper consent forms for major procedures such as tooth extractions and implants and then count on the staff to scan the forms, attach it to the patients’ chart etc. In this process, there is a lot of room for things not being followed through. The paper can get lost, the staff member may not scan it and so on.
Currently, there is no process where the consent can be done digitally and where the information can be stored and downloaded later. We saw that happening in other industries and wanted to create a similar platform for dentists.
Same thing with post op instructions. Patients mostly receive verbal post op instructions which are easy to forget. Or they get a printed paper which they can lose or simply forget that they even received it. They then may start googling random things and may end up being more nervous.
The way, Dental Consent Cloud is designed, not only does the patient get an email of their post op instructions, they are also prompted to “acknowledge” that they actually received it.
Do you have to be tech savvy to use Dental Consent Cloud?
No! That is the best part!...Every member of my team is able to easily and quickly learn how to use the software…training time is minimal and it can be put into practice in a matter of hours. Since us as dentists are mostly not the most tech savvy people, and we know that most healthcare professionals like simplicity, we have paid special attention to make this as easy as possible.
How have practices described their experience using Dental Consent Cloud?
Practices using Dental Consent Cloud have given overwhelmingly positive feedback. The simplicity of use and the ability to generate and save PDFs has been instrumental. Staff have loved it and noticed that they were spending less time on tracking documents and more time interacting with patients. Patients have also been curious, excited and appreciative of it.
It makes it easier for staff to handle patient documents…saving time and money the practice owner…Plus, this is a time when staffing is an issue…so anything that helps streamline the process would be instrumental.
Not only are the patients better cared for…but your practice is better protected because each document is dated, signed and date stamped…ensuring that you never worry about consent again.
What about the data you store? Is it secure?
Our site’s passwords are encrypted and all form transactions are exclusively transmitted via 2048-bit SSL. The documents are captured at the moment of sending in non-fungible format, meaning that you can only see what was sent to the specific user and the time at which it was sent, and it is not possible to retroactively change what was signed/acknowledged. The signatures are captured and stored with randomly generated, non-duplicatable, alphanumeric names which make it impossible to claim a signature when no signature was given. All files are stored securely in the cloud and backed up daily, including the PDFs and the signatures themselves.
Can I use the Consent Forms and Post-Op Forms I am already using for my office?
Yes you can! It is easy to create your own documents. We would actually encourage that because you already have the documents and you and your staff are used to them.
If you use the documents we have on there, you can personalize them with tooth numbers. Implant information, medical history notes or anything unique to that patient. PLUS…you can see every form that the patient has received in our system making tracking patients easier than ever.