Most dental practices run on one piece of software. Appointments, patient notes, charting, treatment plans, payments and health fund claims all sit in the practice management system, and imaging is usually linked to it. When it stops working, the front desk cannot see who is booked in and the dentists cannot see the patient’s history.
Outages are rarely a disaster, but they are stressful when the waiting room is full. Having a simple plan agreed in advance makes the difference between a slow morning and a lost day. This guide explains what to do, in order, and how to set your practice up so it happens less often.
First, work out what has actually stopped
The fix depends on where the problem is, so the first job is to narrow it down. A few quick checks tell you a lot:
- Is it one computer or every computer? If only one surgery or the reception computer is affected, the problem is probably that computer, and the rest of the practice can keep working.
- Is the internet working? If your software is cloud-based, such as D4W Cloud, Praktika or Core Practice, or you use cloud backups and online health fund claiming, an internet outage will look like a software outage.
- Can anyone reach the server? If your software runs on a server in the practice, as many Dental4Windows and EXACT practices do, and nobody can open it, the server or the network is the likely cause.
- Is it only imaging? X-ray and scanner software often has its own service or database, so imaging can fail while appointments still work.
- Did anything change overnight? An update, a power outage or a new device on the network is a useful clue for whoever fixes it.
Write down what you see, including any error messages. A photo of the screen on your phone is often the quickest way to capture it.
Who to call, and in what order
Practices lose time when the IT provider and the software vendor each think the problem belongs to the other. Agree ahead of time who calls whom.
- Call your IT provider first. They can check the server, network, internet and computers, and work out whether the fault sits with your equipment or with the software.
- Let your IT provider contact the software vendor if needed. When the problem is on the vendor’s side, your IT provider can give them the technical details directly, so your practice manager is not stuck relaying messages.
- Call your internet provider if the connection is down. Your IT provider can confirm this for you and tell you what to report.
Keep these numbers somewhere that does not depend on the practice computers, such as a printed sheet at reception and in the practice manager’s phone.
Keep the practice running in the meantime
Many practices can keep seeing patients for a few hours with some simple preparation:
- Print tomorrow’s appointment list each evening, or export it somewhere you can reach from a phone, so reception knows who is coming in.
- Keep paper notes and consent forms on hand, so clinical notes can be written up and entered into the system once it is back.
- Know how to take payments without the software, such as a standalone EFTPOS terminal, and record each payment so it can be matched later.
- Decide in advance when to reschedule. If the system is not back by a set time, call patients booked for complex treatment rather than keeping them waiting.
Getting your patient records back
If the server has failed or the database is damaged, the question becomes how quickly your data can be restored and how much of it is missing. That depends entirely on your backups.
A good backup setup for a dental practice copies the practice database and imaging files regularly, keeps a copy offsite, and is tested by actually restoring the data, not just by checking that the backup job ran. If the practice was hit by ransomware, the offsite copy matters most, because ransomware often encrypts backups stored on the same network. Our backup and disaster recovery page explains how this works.
If patient information may have been accessed by someone outside the practice, such as in a ransomware attack, you may also need to assess whether it is a notifiable data breach. Dental practices are covered by the Privacy Act regardless of turnover, and a breach likely to cause serious harm must be reported to the affected patients and the OAIC. Your IT provider can help you work out what was affected.
How to make outages less likely
- Replace ageing servers before they fail. A server that is out of warranty and running out of space is a common cause of a bad morning.
- Schedule updates outside clinic hours, so software and Windows updates do not restart computers mid-appointment.
- Protect the server with a UPS, a battery unit that keeps it running through short power cuts and shuts it down safely during longer ones.
- Monitor the server and backups, so warnings like a failing disk or a missed backup are picked up before they turn into an outage.
- Write a one-page outage plan covering who to call, where the printed list is kept and when to reschedule patients.
How Digitek helps
Digitek IT looks after the servers, computers, network and backups that dental practices rely on, including the surgery computers connected to your imaging. When a problem sits with your practice software, we work with the software provider so your team can get back to patients. A problem that stops your practice working is treated as critical, with a response within one hour during business hours.
Find out more about our IT support for dentists, or call 02 4504 8643 to talk about setting up a plan for your practice.
