By Andra Bryan Stefanoni

news@joplinglobe.com

PITTSBURG, Kan. — In what Robert Wood calls “the old days,” the team at Dr. Robin Wood Dentistry would sit around one computer in the conference room and print out the day’s schedule.

Someone would notice a change to be made and run up front to the office to make that change, then print out a new schedule for everyone to see.

The staff would evaluate the day’s patients by going through each one’s folder of medical records, all printed on pieces of paper. As things changed, new pieces of paper would be printed out and added.

That was then. This is now.

During “morning huddle,” the team still meets in the conference room, but its members are armed with medical-grade portable computers — they call them “tablets” — the size and shape of a clipboard. Team members use them to make decisions about that day’s patients “on the fly,” said Robert Wood, the dentist’s husband, who is the practice’s technology director.

Members of the team carry the digital tablets from treatment room to treatment room, using them with patients to call up medical histories, past digital images, notes about what to watch for in the future, and even forms for patients to sign right from the treatment chair.

This idea of a “paperless office” sparked the enthusiasm of the husband-and-wife team in 2000, just as Robin Wood was looking at setting up a dental practice. They saw the potential to improve office efficiency and productivity, enrich customer service, and reduce environmental impact.

“True office efficiency is in everything,” Robert Wood said. “Not just environmentally, not just with the patients, not just with the staff, but all of it.”

By fully integrating their new system, he said, the couple’s dream is to eliminate “file cabinet after file cabinet of documents, working toward being totally paperless.”

“We’re just waiting on software to catch up,” he said. “In the past, it has been inefficient. What paperless has meant is scanning and entering forms into the system, then shredding the hard copy.”

What it means in the Woods’ office:

n Signatures: “One of the best electronic document softwares is Adobe Acrobat, which allows a user to add an electronic signature,” Robert Wood said. “We have used that as a guide. With the new version, it automatically certifies the signature right when you sign it, and if any changes are made to the document after it’s signed, it lifts that certification.”

The tablets can be sterilized, are durable for a clinical environment, and use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard so they can be taken to another exam or treatment room.

“This helps the doctor move about the practice, doing a lot of different things and seeing a lot of different people,” Robert Wood said. “An assistant could meet her in the hallway and show her an X-ray on the tablet of the patient they’re treating in one room, get a consult on it, and the doctor could continue what she was involved with without interrupting the work flow while the assistant goes back to the patient and does what needs to be done.”

n Prescriptions: “It used to be we would diagnose a patient in the treatment room, then the staff would print out a prescription up front, track down the doctor for a signature, get it on the fax machine and send it out to the pharmacy,” Robert Wood said.

Now, using the tablets, Robin Wood can bring up a prescription, sign it electronically, send it directly to a pharmacy’s fax machine, then electronically attach it to the patient’s file. She receives an electronic confirmation via e-mail that the pharmacy received it.

“The system improves tracking and eliminates a patient needing to spend time taking a prescription into a pharmacy and waiting to get it filled,” Robert Wood said.

n Patient involvement: The tablets allow for electronic charting and pulling up X-rays on a viewing monitor so the patient can see them right from the treatment chair.

“With traditional film X-rays, using bitewings, it was hard to determine on a piece of film because it was so small you can’t as accurately diagnose, and the patient had no idea what they were supposed to be seeing,” Robert Wood said. “But using this system, we can enlarge it to see every little pixel, and they become involved in the treatment. Using intra-oral cameras, which are on a little wand, we can provide them electronic close-up shots of the inside of their mouth, a tour, that they would have never had access to before.”