If you own or are planning to start a small dental practice, you have to make sure that it follows the strict standards of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This act requires small- and large-scale dental clinics to take precautionary measures to ensure the safety and security of their patients' protected health information (PHI).

The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the governing body that enforces HIPAA, can impose a fine of $50,000 per patient record that was stolen or compromised, and a maximum fine of $1.5 million per year depending on the type of violation.

If you’re planning to start a dental office, or if your dental practice is starting to grow, you will need to decide whether to purchase new IT equipment or lease them from a managed IT services provider (MSP). If buying or adding new equipment and software will adversely affect your clinic’s cash flow, you should consider leasing instead.

Handpieces are some of the most important tools in a dentist’s employ and though designed to last, they can deteriorate prematurely when not maintained properly. Faulty handpieces can reduce your efficiency and make treatment an unpleasant experience for patients.

Thanks to technology, dental practices have vastly improved the quality of care that they give patients. In dentistry, innovations are embraced to enhance dental care and provide patients with the best experience possible.

Here are five of the most promising technology trends in dentistry:

#1. 3D printing
There's so much that dentists can do with a powerful and time- and cost-saving technology like 3D printing.

Technology has become an important part of every modern business, including dental practices. Using the right software, you can increase employee productivity, boost operational efficiency, and regain control over costs. Today, many business applications are cloud-based, which means they are accessible from any device with an internet connection.

In your dental practice, you need to care for your patients, address the needs of your staff, and meet compliance requirements, all at the same time. Thankfully, there are powerful technologies and solutions designed to help you achieve these goals. These tools can even help you overcome many everyday challenges that can disrupt your workflow and hurt the efficiency of your practice.

IT solutions and their wide array of tools and applications that now populate the market promise new and effective ways around three of the top challenges faced by today’s dental practices. As an owner of a dental practice, you may be struggling with these issues yourself.

As a dentist, you'll do everything you can to ensure your practice succeeds. A brilliant way to guarantee this happens is to have experts on your side. Managed services providers (MSPs) have the most knowledgeable IT people on their team. When you entrust your IT system to an MSP, your dental practice benefits in the following ways:

#1 A first-class IT system
Your practice has much to gain from an exceptional IT system.

You could say an IT system isn’t nearly as fundamental to dentists as a dental chair is. And yet without a functional IT infrastructure, your dental practice’s ability to serve your patients becomes severely impaired. Lacking an IT system not only limits your staff’s productivity, but it also compromises the security of your patients’ data.

Much like any other organization, dental practices have become heavily reliant on technology to deliver better service to patients, improve profitability, and overcome the challenges of the back office. However, few dental practices have dedicated IT departments of their own.