The Compliance Divas Podcast
Our podcast covers current topics such as infection prevention and control, OSHA and HIPAA compliance for dentistry. We discuss the latest regulatory information, answer frequently asked questions and give suggestions for dental practices to make compliance easy and sustainable. The Compliance Divas are a trusted source for consistent, accurate information based upon current guidelines, standards, science, and recommendations.
The Compliance Divas Podcast
#142 Compliance and Your Practice Management Software: A Conversation with Novonee's Dayna Johnson
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Join the Compliance Divas for a conversation with Dayna Johnson, Dentrix trainer extraordinaire and founder of Novonee. Dayna shares her expertise with practice management software utilization related to HIPAA and OSHA compliance and data integration.
- Dayna Johnson's website: https://novonee.com/
Welcome. I'm Leslie Kenneth. I'm Mary Gavoni.
SPEAKER_02I'm Linda Harvey. I'm Olivia Long, and together we are the Compliance Divas.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the Compliance Divas Podcast. I'm Mary Gavoni and I will be the moderator for today's episode. And we have a special guest with us today who I will introduce momentarily. The Compliance Divas brings clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating the regulatory world to keep you on course. You can subscribe to the Compliance Divas Podcast through your favorite podcast channel or on our website, thecompliancedivas.com. Any resources that we mentioned during this episode can be found on the ComplianceDivas website, thecompliancedivas.com, or on your podcast app. You can submit questions by email to support at thecompliancedevas.com. And we'd ask that at the end of the podcast, you scroll down in your podcast app to give us a review and or give us a rating on how we're doing. So today we want to welcome our very special friend Dana Johnson. Dana is the Dentrix expert extraordinaire. And I'm going to let Dana tell us a little bit about her background and her company and all the really cool things that she does to help Dentrix users.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Mary, and Linda and Olivia and Leslie, who is not with us today, but she is out. But I'm I've been in your shoes. You know, I've been in dentistry for over 30 years and worked in two dental practices. I became a certified dentrix trainer when, oh gosh, when was that? 2006, I became a certified dentrix trainer. And then I became full-time trainer, consultant, uh, trainer. And I now have my own um membership where we have an online library. We do group coaching calls, we have one-on-one coaching calls, and all for helping Dental practices optimize their systems and software. And now I just do that full-time 24-7. So that's that's what I do in the dental industry.
SPEAKER_03Tell us the name of your company, Dana, so that I don't mispronounce it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so my company is Navoni. And uh it was, it came about a lot of people ask me, well, how did you come up with that name, Nivoni? And uh if you go to my website, I actually created a video on how I created the name. But if you look at the first six letters of Navoni, it says November 1, uh, which is my daughter's birthday. So it actually came about from um my beautiful daughter's birthday. So you can go to my website, nivoni.com, and and watch my quick little video.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I love that story. So we know that you have this vast knowledge of dentrics and practice management software, but we want to sort of rein it in a bit and frame it in the context of HIPAA compliance. So, as a consultant working with many, many practices, what are some of the top violations that you see that practices are doing that could be a violation of either HIPAA privacy or security rules?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I see many of them. And I see them every day. I think probably some of the biggest that I see is, you know, I'm what I'm I help dental practices go paperless. And, you know, that's probably one of my one of my biggest expertises is helping offices optimize their software for going paperless. But a lot of them still use route slips or what's called a visit form where they use it as a communication tool. Um, but that's supposed to be an internal document. And what I see a lot of times is they end up in the trash. And they're, I know, Mary's shaking her head. And uh, so they end up in the trash and they have a lot of private information on them. They have your full name, address, sometimes even the social security number, phone numbers, um, insurance, subscriber IDs. And so I see a lot of times those route slips are not ending up in the shredder, but ending up in the trash bin. And that's probably one of the biggest things I see on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_03I see practices cutting them up and using them as scrap paper. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I see that too. Being thrifty, um, or they're putting them in the paper recycling bin. Yes, I remember, and you probably do too, Dana, back in the days when you couldn't modify the content of either the schedules or the route slips. And so every schedule would print out patients' social security number and everything. And I remember going to the the dentrix consultants um summits and and we were all screaming and yelling, you have to fix this. You we can't put that up on the wall with all that information. What about keeping a privacy view for those that display their schedules?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. You know, I I still see I see exactly what you're seeing. I still see a lot of printed schedules with all the protected information on them, phone numbers, you know, uh full names with, you know, sometimes even their mobile number. And so um definitely I'm seeing a lot of printed schedules still, even in this day and age of electronic and software views, but it is so simple to create HIPAA compliant views in the software, and it's it's one of the um least used things that I see offices do. You know, I do um one of the things that I always do when I work with practices is I do uh online assessments. So I'll remote into their software. Um, or if I go into an office, I've of course I'm always observing their workflow and everything, and I'll look around at all the computers in the office, offices, all the in the workstations, in the treatment rooms, and where their panel machine is, and and there is protected information always on the view. And so I just go around and create these HIPAA compliant views without even without even telling them. And I'm like, oh, by the way, I created, you know, compliant views throughout your entire practice while I was walking around because it's I just think they're just oblivious. You know, I don't think it's in it's not intentional or anything like that. It's just they're they're so oblivious that they could even do it.
SPEAKER_03I agree, and thankfully they have you to help them with that. Um, Olivia, you had a question for Dana.
SPEAKER_02Dana, I was wondering if you could share with us and our listeners any ideas about storing important documents such as OSHA policies, HIPAA policies, maybe the employer's handbook or templates and things that they use. Where can we put information, especially with compliance, so that it's accessible to the entire team?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a great question. And gosh, that's actually the first time I've ever had that question before. So that's something that um I would like to offer to all the listeners is probably one of the best places would, if you want to store it in the software, would be in the document center. Uh one thing that you that your listeners um might not even know is that not only does every patient have their own document center, because we're all scanning, you know, we're scanning treatment plans or we're we're saving things, you know, referral letters in the document center for each patient. But not only does every patient have their own document center, but every provider has their own document center. So, you know, what the practice could do is they could scan or save into the practice owner, or you know, if they have a provider for the practice, they can open up that provider ID's document center and keep all their documents in there. And that way then they can keep all their archives, they can keep all their past manuals in there, all their past documents. So they have like a running list of all the history of all their documents as well.
SPEAKER_02I love that idea, Dana, because I've had dental offices cited, especially with OSHA, when they've asked an employee where, for example, the work exposure control plan is located. And when they answer, I don't know, or I can't find it, the the owner, the dentist is is cited for that. So that's a great idea to put it in a place that they could find it and make sure they're they're trained to know that location. So that's a great tip. Thank you, Dana.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's such a great question because I see manuals collecting dust on office shelves, you know, all day long, you know, their their employee handbook or their um all kinds of manuals um storing dust. So I think putting it in the software and then having a team meeting that says this is where we keep all of our important documents and our important manuals are in the document center, and then they're accessible to everybody.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, and that's one of the requirements, not only for HIPAA and for OSHA, that that information has to be accessible, it also, especially in the case of HIPAA, needs to be backed up so that that information. So in the document center is brilliant, and thank you for that really great question, Olivia, because then it becomes part of the backup.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a really great point. And so for anybody that is listening, uh, if you go to the office manager, if you just open the document center from the office manager, then it's gonna ask you which provider. And so then you could just open up the document center for the provider where you're gonna be storing all the documents, and then you'll get to it from there.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01Linda, what kind of questions do you have for Dana? Mary, first I'd like to go back and comment on the story for you, Dana, that you and Mary were talking about with the schedules being everywhere. I'll never forget a story. This has been before COVID, so it's probably close to 10 years ago, at least now, that there was a Delhygienist that posted a copy of the day's schedule on social media. And she was either complaining or bragging, I'm not don't recall now, over how crazy busy the day was. All the information, Dana, that you and Mary just described was on social media. The patient's full name, the patient's uh phone number, the patient's treatment. So anybody in social media that happened to have seen that could have called the patients, could have alerted the patients, you know, something crazy could have happened because you know the doctor probably didn't know that happened.
SPEAKER_00So oh my gosh, she got lucky.
SPEAKER_01She got lucky. This was quite a while ago. Nowadays, I think since especially since COVID, everybody's much more in tune to their privacy and what's being posted. So, in addition, in addition to the ways you've talked about, what other ways can the practice management system support HIPAA compliance do that you see?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great question, Linda. Um, there, you know, in what we've talked about today, creating HIPAA compliant views in the treatment rooms is probably one of the most important things that the office can do. And the nice thing about the dentric software is when you do create a view, um, it's attached to the F keys on the keyboard. So what I usually recommend that the office do is create like a set template for all their workstations so that all the workstations are set up the same way. So like F1 is full schedule, F2 is like no uh names or no phone numbers, and then maybe F3 is okay, just the hygiene schedule. So you can create these F keys that control your view in the treatment room. So it makes it really easy that so if you see looking at your schedule and you're like, oh my gosh, there's a phone number there, you can just quickly hit your F2 key or something like that, so that you can flip back and forth between the two the different views. So it's really easy to do. Um and uh that's probably one of the one of the top things that offices could do. Um the other the other thing that the software can do to help make the practice more compliant is be is use passwords. I see so many team members complaining about having to enter in passwords whenever they're logging into the software. Um, but we know that passwords do help protect our software, help protect our patient data. And so also with passwords, it's also very easy. You can also create like templated password rights so that it does it's not time consuming. Um, and you know, so you can create password templates so it's easier when you have a new employee to create those password security rights. And then um the other thing uh that I think offices don't do and that the software can help you do is help you document like who you can and cannot talk to. And I know you guys see that a lot um in what you do, uh, because we were talking about that before we came on the show was you know how how often we see violations or patient complaints if we have discussed treatment or appointments information with a spouse that maybe have haven't hasn't given you the authorization to talk to another family member. And so documenting that in your software so it's easily, readily accessible and available to your practice team members is is I think their soft the way the software can help you become more compliant as well.
SPEAKER_01So Dana, on that same note then, what what do you suggest or what does Dentrix allow them to do when it comes to documenting those individuals? So is there like a quick button, like if say I'm on the phone and I know I'm in the patient record because they've come up on my software program when they call me? Um, where do I go check real quick for that? So I so I know where to look in a if it's just quickly done without scouring through different pages?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that I have seen offices use the patient note uh because then it's right there in the patient record and it's very easy to find. And you can see that you can see that from the family file, you can also see that from the appointment book. So it's pretty easily accessible if you put that in the patient note. Um, you can also um tag your family file account that if there is privacy restrictions. So if there's privacy restrictions, then you get like this red kind of notification on their account that they have restrictions, which then gives you a little bit of a red flag that, oh, I need to dig a little bit deeper. What is the what's the restriction here? So that could also be something that the office could do.
SPEAKER_01Um I love that visualization because when you see that flag or whatever symbol or the red bar, then that's in a visual cue to take a look a little bit further and see what actually is there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. In my own practice, um, we actually had a patient that was in the witness protection program, and she was a um a witness in a you know attempted murder case. And so she had a lot of restrictions on her account. So we not only put the red flag, the privacy restrictions, but we also created a patient alert, like a pop-up that would alert us anywhere we opened up dentrics. So if it is something that's more severe like that, or maybe you have a nasty divorce situation, or maybe you have a uh a child protective services case or something like that where it's a little bit heavier, you might want to do like a patient alert. So then it pops up at you and gives you a little bit more of a notification.
SPEAKER_01And these days, considering active shooters, that's not a bad thing to put in there. Thank you, Dana. That was great. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Mary, back to you.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Linda. Um, oh Dana, you are such a wealth of information. And Linda, when you told your story about the social media posting of the schedule, it made me think of an instance that happened again a few years ago with a practice that was using route slips, and it was the end of the day, and they were printing a walkout statement for a patient, and it got mixed in with the route slips that were being printed for the next day. And so one patient went home with a route slip from another patient instead of their walkout statement. So that was interesting to try to get cleaned up. Fortunately, the patient who got it called the doctor immediately, called the doctor at home because it was after he was the last patient of the day, it was after hours, and they got it all worked out. The patient returned it, didn't utilize the information, and oh, it just could have had disaster written all over it.
SPEAKER_00But I mean, for yeah, for the most part, we're we're really good human beings, you know. We're we're good humans, and for the most part, we're not gonna we're not gonna use that information for for bad things. But you know, if you throw it into the trash, there's there are people out there that that rummage through things, you know, so you just have to be really careful.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And as you mentioned earlier, Dana Leslie was not able to be with us today, but her question for you is how important is it for all of the users, not just Dentrix, but all practice management software users, to make sure that they are on the most current version and why are the updates so important?
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh, I get this question a lot. So I'm really glad that that you brought it up. Um, because I I do get a lot of uh people reach out to me and they're like, you know, we we had such a bad experience with an update, so we're not gonna update, you know, for a long time now. And I really feel strongly that it's so important to keep your software regularly updated. And, you know, it because this is where the software gets those security updates because we know that there are a lot of hackers out in the world. You know, we get regular updates on our mobile phones to keep our mobile phones updated. Those are just mini computers in our hands and they get regular updates. So, you know, it's important that we keep our software updated for bug fixes, for um security updates, for um, you know, because it affects our Microsoft Windows software, it affects other things like Adobe and any other any other third-party softwares that Dentrix is using, or any other, any practice management software for that matter, um, it's always needing to stay up to date so we so we can keep our our software protected. Now, one thing I do want to um uh add on to that is now Dentrix used to do really big updates. Like they used to do massive updates about every 12 to 18 months. Now they're doing updates about every four to six weeks. So I don't know if you've noticed that as well. But what that means is that we're getting little micro software updates so that it's not such a big it's not such a big deal. It just has, you know, maybe a couple little feature enhancements. Um, well, they could be big feature enhancements, but they're smaller updates so that when you do update, it doesn't take down the software for a long period of time. You won't see these big major feature updates and and they don't they don't cause as many disruptions in the practice. So I've really been happy with the updates. This last over the last couple of years, um, the development team's done a really good job of of condensing the updates down into smaller pieces.
SPEAKER_03Fabulous. Um one question along the lines of Windows is Dentrix compatible with Windows 11?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_03Okay. And the reason I say that is I was just researching today what's the end of life, as Microsoft calls it, for Windows 10, and that is in 2025. So time yet for people to do their upgrades. And it doesn't mean that the Windows 10 won't work, as you well know. It just means they won't get security updates or support on their software.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, for sure. Definitely.
SPEAKER_03Well, Dana, oh my goodness, you could talk all day about that you have. Um Linda or Olivia, do you have any other? Thoughts, questions, anything you want to share?
SPEAKER_01Linda? I just would advise our listeners and invite our listeners, I should say, to listen to this podcast more than once. Even though they may not use dentrics, there's some tips. Definitely, Dana's information is a wealth, your wealth of knowledge is going to be practical information for any dental office. And these are the low-hanging fruits that can be addressed quickly. But as we all know, and Dana, the divas have discussed before, and we've also discussed this with Kevin Henry, is that give him a shout out to it. Yeah, it was just all the changes and challenges that our dental offices are seeing with staffing. And so as we have turnovers, there's likely to be a loss of what I'm calling compliance memory these days. So as such, not everybody coming on board will know these tips. So it's just important that to be able to share this information. So I encourage our listeners to come back and listen to it again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And look I know, thank you. I agree. And looking at my notes, um, I just want to make sure that we catch everything that we were talking about earlier. There's there's one thing that um I may have failed to mention. And that is one thing um that I think is really important that we add into this podcast is um making sure that our 18-year-olds, like when our when our kids turn 18, they now have to sign their own HIPAA form. And, you know, because a lot of times what I see in practices is they're keeping the family unit together in the family file because our our kids are allowed to stay on our insurance until they're about 25, 26 years old. So a lot of times I see these 25-year-olds in the family file, and they're like, well, they're still on their parents' insurance, but they haven't signed their own HIPAA form. So I really wanted to make sure I got through all the notes that we were going through. And that was one thing that we didn't bring up yet, or that I hadn't brought up yet, is making sure that your 18-year-olds are signing their own HIPAA form. And you can do that through the Dentrix um online electronic forms. You could you can send it right to their mobile phone, they can read through it, they can sign with their finger. You know, it makes it super easy for our Gen Z and our millennial kids that they can use their mobile phone to do their own HIPAA form. But that's that's really, really critical.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, Dana, for keeping us on track. Olivia.
SPEAKER_02I just wanted to share with our listeners that Dana's website has a lot of good free information, blogs, resources. So hope that they will take the time to look at your website and glean some of this great valuable information that you're sharing. So thank you again, Dana.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for looking that up. Um, yeah, I do just like all of you, um, have the um Compliance Divas podcast. I have a podcast of my own um called the High Performing Dental Team. And um, I can't wait for all of you to listen in. It's got some really great information.
SPEAKER_03Oh, I'm sure it does. Thank you so much, Dana, for taking the time to join us today. And for our listeners, you're in for a real treat with this um episode. And I agree wholeheartedly with Linda's suggestion that you listen to it more than once to really glean all the information that you can. The compliance divas bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating the regulatory world to keep you on course. If you have questions, you may submit them by email to support at the compliancedivas.com. Dana's contact information will be in the resources section on the compliance divas website and on the show notes for the podcast on your favorite podcast app. And again, we ask you if you're done listening to the podcast, if you'll scroll down to the bottom of the page and write a review or give us a rating, we would appreciate that. And we hope to see you on a future episode.