The Future of the Dental PMS

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• While traditional PMS systems are the backbone of practice operations, many of them lack modern solutions to modern problems. This is especially true for DSOs, which require software that provide extensive and scalable solutions.

• The new wave of cloud-based PMS presents a growing opportunity, but still might fall short in certain areas of practice efficiency and overhead costs.

• A hybrid solution of cloud-based PMS and 3rd party tools is necessary to drive sustainable practice growth and success in a modern competitive environment.

‍

Dental practice management software (PMS) platforms have been at the heart of the dental industry for decades. They are the essential core and backbone of practice activities, and provide essential functions to keep practices working.

Though many of them are outdated and lack modern functionality and performance, the most popular PMS systems still offer a wide range of features that often are adequate for the “day-to-day”.

But adequate certainly doesn’t mean optimized.

For private practices that rely only on the capabilities of their PMS, there are missed opportunities for growth, efficiency, and modernization. And for larger dental organizations, any little inefficiency, process oversight, or half-measure can ultimately have negative repercussions at scale.

The modern DSOs operate on a level of sophistication akin to large healthcare organizations. They require best-in-breed RCM solutions that offer curated functionality and deep integrations.

In this Dentistry Huddle post, we explore how both traditional and new cloud-based PMS are positioned in the current industry landscape. We also provide a trajectory for the future of the industry that forward-thinking  practices and DSOs have already discovered to drive operational success.

‍

The Traditional Dental PMS

If you work at a dental practice, chances are you’re using some kind of PMS. They’re designed to cover the full scope of practice operations from clinic to front office, and have become the gold standard of management tools in the industry. The legacy PMS (Open Dental, Eaglesoft, and Dentrix) have thrived through the test of time (Dentrix was first released in 1989) and are ubiquitous in dentistry.

Due to their extensive track record, traditional PMS have firmly established themselves in private practices and dental support organizations (DSOs). They have also taken steps to keep up with the times through keen acquisitions and occasional software updates.
‍

What about cloud-based PMS?

With the advent of newer cloud-based PMS, practices are taking progressive steps towards more efficient and modern systems.

Cloud-based dental software, like Dentrix Ascend, Denticon, Oryx, Fuse, or Curve, offers practices the ability to manage their operations and patient data from anywhere, on any device. They also allow practices to be less reliant on IT professionals to maintain servers and monitor data security, which results in reduced operational costs. 

However, a clear downside is operational bottlenecks due to internet connection speeds. For practices with tons of patient data, certain cloud-based PMS might have frustratingly degraded performance.

But in general, with taking local servers out of the picture, this next-generation approach provides data accessibility and more flexible operations. We strongly encourage that practices and dental organizations take the leap toward cloud-based solutions–not just for their PMS, but for all their integral systems.

However, many of the same problems with traditional PMS will still exist for these systems.

‍

What Dental PMS May Lack in the Future

Depth, sophistication, and dedicated solutions. Many in the industry consider PMS functionality to be “a mile wide but an inch deep”. It’s like using the “screwdriver” from a pocket knife to assemble furniture. While, yes, you can get the job done, there are better tools available.

It’s the whole reason why the 3rd party dental software industry exists. There are obvious gaps in the functionality and effectiveness of legacy PMS. 3rd party solutions stay on the cutting edge to stay ahead of the competition and to compete with the status quo of legacy PMS systems.

The main downside here is that there are always costs associated with exploring and integrating new software tools; however, we argue that the return on investment into dedicated software solutions far outweighs the initial costs.

The Hybrid Solution: How to Integrate Dental Technologies

We spoke with Phil Toh, the co-founder of The Smilist DSO, on a webinar about how to implement RCM technology into a dental practice. A key takeaway from that conversation was that there aren’t any do-it-all unicorns when it comes to software platforms–in fact, it’s good that there aren’t.

Your practice or organization’s tech stack needs the right tool for the right job, and those tools should work together to create a highly optimized systems network designed to cover the scope of your practice’s needs.

‍

This dynamic gives your practice super powers because instead of relying on an antiquated PMS to make an update or introduce a new feature, you have several tools constantly innovating and creating new opportunities for practice efficiency. Again, if you’re worried about the added cost, don’t be–you’ll see the ROI quickly from this synergy.

All of the practices that we work with are using other parallel systems that complement the Pearly platform. Some use Weave for patient communication, Dental Intel for practice analytics, or Vyne for insurance verification. The competitive landscape of dental software encourages software solutions that play nicely with each other. 

All providers understand that their software needs to integrate seamlessly with all common PMS and cooperate with other dental periphery software. It’s this synergistic software ecosystem that the top-performing practices and dental organizations leverage to scale their growth, reduce staff headaches, and ultimately improve the patient experience.