Becoming a paperless office means so much more than simply reducing your paper consumption. This post covers a few of the benefits, not only to your practice but to the environment and future generations, along with some options for making the switch.
Benefits to your practice
Reduces expenses and saves time
Going completely paperless means no more spending on paper and paper products. This may not sound like a lot of money, but statistics suggest that a conventional dental office uses an average of 10,000 sheets of paper every year just to populate paper charts. In dollar terms, your office could be saving close to $9,000 a year. But this is not only about money. Going paperless saves you and your team time, freeing you to give patients a better overall experience. Instead of pulling charts, deciphering doctor and hygienist notes or hunting for misfiled x-rays, your team could be providing patient education or discussing treatment plans and financial options.
Simplifies organisation
Going paperless means everything is right where you and your team need it. With one click you can find and retrieve information faster and more easily, and misfiling becomes far less of an issue.
Better security
The last thing you need is a flood or a fire damaging irreplaceable records. Going paperless protects those documents, and cloud backup goes further still: even if your computer is attacked, your patient records are safe and your practice can be back up and running in under a day.
Better patient communication
A clean, uncluttered office with no papers lying around and no clipboards waiting on the desk tells patients they are in a twenty-first-century practice. Going digital also puts your patients at your fingertips: you can email or text confirmations and recall reminders without using a single sheet of paper.
Benefits to the environment
Protects trees
Trees are carbon sinks. They lock carbon dioxide away in wood, roots and leaves, storing it rather than leaving it in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. Trees are imperative to our survival as a species, so it is worth protecting them wherever we can.
Reduces paper waste
Paper waste produces pollution that is toxic to air, water and soil. Paper is produced using chlorine-based bleaches, so when it rots in landfill it releases methane, a gas worse than carbon dioxide. Going paperless significantly reduces that waste and the gases it produces.
Saves water
It takes roughly 10 litres of water to produce a single sheet of paper. The less paper we need in our offices, the less water is used to make it.
How to go paperless
One simple starting point is a PDF writer, which converts documents from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other programs into PDF format so they can be shared by email or digital fax instead of printed. Ask your IT provider to install and configure one for you, and to set it as the default printer on the workstations that need it. Decline any bundled add-on software offered during installation.
Remember that every action counts toward sustainability, no matter how small. Have you gone paperless? We would love to hear how it went.