Clinics fear adding new technology because they've heard the process is difficult, costly and time consuming. "With good planning, that doesn't have to be the case," says Manny Molina, Director of IT for the Safety Net Solutions team. "In fact, the growing availability of public and private financial support for Health Information Technology (HIT) systems makes this a good time for safety net dental clinics to consider one for their practice."

Safety Net Solutions is preparing community safety net practices for the decisions and challenges of IT selection and implementation. SNS guides the dental program through this process with:

• A needs assessment and inventory of the current IT infrastructure
• Evaluation of information sharing between dental and medical facilities
• Education on the right questions to ask vendors
• Guidance through the product and vendor selection process to find the best fit for the dental program
• Planning for product integration into the dental practice
• Designing a data collection process that delivers the right reporting for the practice
• Alignment and integration of technology into practice workflow processes

Manny Molina, Director of IT for Safety Net Solutions, recently guided the Lynn Community Health Center (Lynn, Massachusetts) in a transition to a state of the art fully integrated dental system. This safety net dental clinic was reaching the point where the steady growth in dental patients was taking a toll on the infrastructure supporting patient care. The clinic's goal was to select the best system for their needs and to make sure that the new solution was seamlessly integrated into normal work processes. A key success measure was that both administrative and professional staff embraced the new solution and used it.

"Dental practices investigating health information technology must first understand themselves – from internal work processes and systems to how providers and patients use information," said Molina. "This is where we started in Lynn. That self-knowledge prepared the clinic to ask the ‘right' questions of vendors all through the process – from selection, to implementation, and finally during testing."

In addition to the work in Lynn, Safety Net Solutions is advising safety net dental programs across the country assess, select, prepare for and implement dental information technology that supports the unique mission to provide access to affordable high quality care for all.