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What are the Essential Compliance Factors When Reopen Your Dental Practice?

During the past few weeks, we were going through a big crisis. Dental services have been limited to emergency services. Now it’s the time to overcome this challenge and move on. Almost all businesses, including dental care, are ready to reopen. Now it is the right time to resume routine patient care. As a part of the reopening, it is good to consider the Dental Compliance Factors. Prepare your dental equipment ready for use. What are the steps you took when closing your practice? Now just reverse those orders. It’s time to reopen your practice.

Check Out Dental Compliance Factors

When reviewing your practice compliance, let’s start with equipment. Let’s see what the best ways to prepare them use again are. Let the preparation start from the sterilization center. Water in the sink and other water lines have not been turned after lockdown. So you need to run out the water in the sink and other waterlines. If required, perform periodic maintenance as per manufacturer’s instruction.

Consider the ultrasonic unit, instrument washer, and sterilizer. If everything was drained and cleaned before closure, follow these steps to use them. If not, start preparing this unit by draining and cleaning. In the dental unit, replace the disposable trap in the operatories. It is also good to run a vacuum line cleaner through the suction lines. Do not ignore to clean dental unit waterlines (DUWL). Water quality is very important for patient safety. For the cleaning procedure, you can check with the manufacturer of your DUWL products. You need to do water testing within the office to determine the colony-forming unit is in the acceptable range (CFU).

CFU acceptable is below 500CFU/ml. If not, it is recommended to shock the DUWL. The product used for cleaning /shock depends on the size of your practice. It may take up to three days to complete a cleaning/shocking protocol.

In the clinical compliance, equipment room is also needed to consider. Turn off the amalgam separator pump and check the collection canisters is full or not. If it is filled with hazardous waste as it is not being used for a long time, it is good to change it. Do the filters need to be changed in the vacuum and air compressor systems? Do not forget to check it. It is also important to check the levels on the nitrous and oxygen tank.

Maintaining HIPAA Compliance

As your practice was closed for days, you might not have given much importance to maintaining compliance. But it is very critical to consider regulatory compliance before you reopen. If regulatory compliance not maintained properly, it may result in a penalty. If network security was not maintained properly, your practice may be vulnerable to the cyber-attack. You can get the assistance of your IT service provider to review your network security. It is also wise to conduct HIPAA training before the practice gets busy again. Keep your staff well informed and give proper training on HIPAA Compliance. At the same time analyze when was the last time you completed security risk analysis?

After a long break during the lockdown, we are coming out of our isolation. As your practice begins to get busy again, use these to maintain a safe practice.