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Group practices face unique challenges and need product solutions that address issues including cost savings, efficiency, standardization, compliance, safety, value, employee retention and more.
Instrument Management System (IMS) is a simple and effective solution that addresses those needs. The system supports implementation of proper infection prevention protocols that comply with the recommendations of the Center of Disease Control (CDC). By standardizing procedural setups, IMS allows clinicians to move instruments from cleaning through chairside in a consistent process delivering increasing safety, enhanced efficiencies, time savings and other cost-saving benefits.
Many practices still carry instruments on a tray, hand scrub and bundle them together for cleaning and sterilization. This leads to sharps injuries and impairs the dental office workflow. IMS minimizes the time consuming and dangerous handling of instruments by pre-sorting and organizing the instruments by procedure type. Once configured, the instrument set up remains complete through transportation, cleaning, packaging, sterilization and storage, reducing the chance of sharps injuries. Instrument cassettes are placed directly into ultrasonic washers, dental instrument washers and sterilizers, eliminating the need to hand scrub, which protects staff.
Because instruments are always kept together in the cassettes, offices incur less risk of damage, loss and misplacement of instruments, saving money and making inventory and procedure preparation much easier. Offices can save an average of five to ten minutes per procedure, thanks to the organization and efficiency of IMS.
Think of IMS as an extra assistant: the system standardizes procedural set-ups and creates a process that is less people-dependent. All of the practices in the group will be following the same protocols, using the same process. IMS makes it easy for consistent training in all practice locations. With the time savings gained, offices have additional time to see more patients and spend on more value-added activities in the dental practice. Patients will also be able to see the professional chairside presentation of sterile packages that have been prepared for them, likely enhancing practice referrals.
IMS offers an enhanced level of efficiency and safety that can be gained in every dental sterilization process. To gain a better understanding of how an IMS works, see a short side-by-side video comparison or to understand the potential ROI of implementing into your practice, visit https://www.hu-friedy.com/ims.
Editor’s note: Sponsored by Hu-Friedy.
