Why Your Dental Practice Needs Managed IT Services

While the digital era has brought us many conveniences, making our lives easier and more efficient, technology also comes with added responsibility. For many dental practices, that responsibility can be challenging when it requires ongoing work to keep IT infrastructure up to date and secure. 

Your priority is patient care, which means IT often takes the back burner while you handle more pressing needs. Unless you have a dedicated IT expert on your team, your computers and network might not get required attention until it’s too late. Whether it’s a repair or needed upgrade, a slowdown or–worse–a data leak or loss, failing to prioritize your IT needs can be devastating. That’s where a managed IT service provider, or MSP, can help.

Quick Links

• What Are Managed IT Services?
• Benefits of Managed IT Services
• Understanding the IT Needs of Dental Practices
• Why Your Dental Practice Needs Managed IT Services

What Are Managed IT Services?

Managed IT services allow you to outsource the work of supporting and maintaining your office  IT, without hiring an onsite IT expert of your own. Managed IT service teams proactively monitor and maintain your IT infrastructure, including hardware and software. They also typically provide IT help desk support, security services, and, more than that, provide peace of mind when it comes to ensuring the reliability and accessibility of your computer network and practice data. 

Benefits of Managed IT Services

It’s easy to say managed IT services bring you “peace of mind,” but what exactly does that mean? It’s actually much more than just IT help desk support.

1. Improved Reliability

The MSP team constantly works behind the scenes to ensure your network and computers are available when you and your clients need them. In fact, many boast cloud network infrastructures with uptimes of 100% and provide proactive system monitoring.

The reliability isn’t just about fixing technology quickly when something goes wrong. It’s about knowing you have a team working to eliminate IT surprises before they happen. And if you ever have a question, you have dedicated support at the ready.

Managed IT services focus on proactive, rather than reactive, support for your dental practice. That means they are proactively monitoring your hardware and software for maintenance and upgrades to prevent a problem before it impacts your business.With managed IT services, you get state-of-the-art equipment and support without the stress on your team. And, in the unlikely event of something going wrong, your downtime is dramatically minimized with automatic cloud backup of all your practice data.

Let’s face it: keeping your network security up-to-date can be a full-time job. Monitoring for threats and ensuring firewalls and virus software are current is a vital part of your security stance. Similarly, staying compliant with HIPAA regulations is essential. Both require time, effort, and investment. That’s time, effort, and investment your dental practice  could otherwise focus on patient care. There are managed IT services providers who not only proactively maintain your security to the highest level, but are also keyed into HIPAA requirements to make sure your dental practice is compliant.

4. Improved flexibility

Your goal is growth. That means you need your infrastructure to support the size of your dental practice or organization. If you’re procuring new equipment and spending time managing on-premise servers and more, that growth is limited by deployment speed and space. Your growth should’t be limited by infrastructure and a managed IT provider can scale as you need it.

5. Save time, effort, and money 

From computer repairs and installing updates to ensuring you’ve got up-to-date equipment, taking care of your computer network and equipment takes time, money, and effort. Whereas purchasing new equipment and managing updates on your own can be an unpredictable expense. Managed IT services, on the other hand, provide a predictable operating expense you can budget for. Further, you don’t need to hire your own IT team or lose your staff when they try to handle IT issues they’re not trained to resolve.

6. Focus on building your practice

Many practices have limited staff and need their teams to focus on patient-centered care. From administrative tasks to patient care, building your practice requires that focus. With managed IT services, you and your team can devote yourself to your patients and not your computers.

Understanding the IT Needs of Dental Practices

While managed IT service providers offer IT support and services to all sorts of businesses, understanding the needs of your dental practice should be at the heart of the package your MSP is offering. Different industries have different needs and for your dental practice, you’ll want to consider these unique IT needs:

• Server management
• Security and HIPAA compliance
• Security monitoring
• Backup and Disaster Recovery
• Endpoint/terminal management and security
• Helpdesk and support services
• Connectivity and networking
• Hardware and software support
• Staff security training
• Data governance support

Why Your Dental Practice Needs Managed IT Services

The simple and short answer is that you and your team are trained in dentistry, not IT and, as tech savvy as some of your team members may be, IT is a full-time job, especially when it comes to security. Still, more than expertise, there are some pretty significant benefits to having a managed IT services provider as an extension of your team..

1. Cost savings

IT components, maintenance, and IT team members can be costly. With an MSP, you gain the advantage of IT experts as well as some of the most up-to-date and state of the art IT hardware without shouldering the costs. Further, you can rest easy knowing that someone is protecting your data assets and their value as well.

2. Proactive and responsive IT support

With a “fix it before it breaks” mentality, your MSP is monitoring your hardware and network to ensure potential issues are addressed before they become problems. Additionally, when you need support, they’re on hand to help, 24/7 and 365 days of the year. Without this proactive managed IT services team, that kind of support is unheard of or far too costly for most dental practices.

3. HIPAA Compliance and enhanced security

The risks of not taking cybersecurity seriously are significant. Not only are there very real financial and legal repercussions but the cost to your reputation and the potential impact on your patients is long lasting. For that reason, both data security and HIPAA compliance should be at the forefront of your IT concerns. An MSP will help guarantee that someone is monitoring security concerns as well as ensuring that the protections you need and have in place are up-to-date and prepared to handle emerging threats.

Overall, it’s really about savings. Saving time, stress, effort, and money and allowing your team to focus on their core responsibilities: patient care and patient outcomes. There’s little doubt that your practice has a lot to handle without adding IT management and security services on top of the normal workload.

If you’re interested in exploring how managed IT services can help your dental practice grow, get in touch with the iCoreConnect team. Not only do we have the experience and expertise to understand the unique challenges and needs of a dental practice or dental service organization, but we’ve got the strong IT foundation to provide the support you need.