With 2024 coming to an end, and the new year is right around the corner, we wanted to take the opportunity to review a few of the new features that our team added to ABELDent this past year and let you know about an exciting upcoming feature that will be available in the coming weeks.
New Features
Improved Password Protection
This year, we implemented improved password protections to prompt your whole team to have stronger passwords in order to safeguard your ABELDent data. Strong passwords are one of the first lines of defense, along with regular online safety training to ensure your team members do not click any suspicious links or open any unexpected files that could harm your practice’s computers or network. ABELDent’s improved password protection helps prevent unauthorized access to your practice management software, and by extension, prevents potential data breaches.
To learn more about ABELDent’s Improved Password Protections, read our blog covering the new password requirements and how to set up requirements in the Authorization Manager here.
Increased Protection for Clinical Notes
While Clinical Notes in ABELDent Local Plus and Cloud offer great tracking of changes and full retention of note history, we added in some new elements to improve the security and legitimacy of your practice’s clinical notes.
- Provider’s names are associated with the Clinical Note
- Clinical Notes have three distinct states:
- Editable – Any user can edit the note
- View Only – Only the author of the note and the responsible provider can make “View Only” notes become editable again. For example, a Dentist, who was the responsible provider for a patient’s treatment, can have their dental assistant enter a note and set it as “View Only” or “Editable” so the dentist can review it and make changes as needed before signing it off.
- Signed Off – The note is permanently locked.
- There are unlimited characters for Clinical Notes
These Clinical Notes features are available for ABELDent Cloud and ABELDent Local Plus users.
Customizable Online Forms
ABELDent allows you to create customizable online forms, including Health History forms, Dental History forms, Consent forms, and more. ABELDent’s secure online forms allow patients to complete the form on their own device and safely submit it into their ABELDent record. These forms are convenient for both your team and your patients for the following reasons:
- Since online forms can be completed from anywhere, on your patients’ device, patients do not have to remember to complete and bring a physical form or spend time in the waiting room filling out forms.
- Reduce resources spent (time, paper, etc.) by making the whole process digital. Your team no longer needs to scan printed documents into patient charts.
- When a patient submits a form, it is embedded in the patient’s record to minimize the time spent inputting data and eliminate transcription errors.
- Your office can create and use various templates, add, remove, or change questions as needed, and create nearly any type of question and response for your online forms (e.g. single-answer or multi-answer multiple choice questions, free-fill answer boxes, etc.) Your office can also copy templates and save new versions as needed.
In addition to convenience, customizable online forms ensure your patient’s data (PHI) is secure by utilizing encryption processes that minimize information being transmitted via email. Completed patient forms are submitted directly to their existing patient file in ABELDent.
Broadcast Messaging
ABELDent’s Broadcast Messaging Feature is available with ABELDent Patient Communication System (PCS), which is included with ABELDent Cloud and available with ABELDent Local Plus. Broadcast Messaging allows your practice to send announcements and share information with your entire patient base quickly and easily. This is particularly useful for sending important notices to patients, such as a change in office hours due to inclement weather, an emergency that requires office closure, etc. Additionally, Broadcast Messaging can be used for less urgent messages, such as holiday greetings, announcing your office’s holiday hours, introducing a new staff member, or letting your patients know that someone from your office is retiring. There are various ways your practice can utilize Broadcast Messaging. If you are interested in using Broadcast Messaging, which is included in ABELDent PCS, please contact our team here and we can help you get started.
Support for Attachments to Electronic Claims
ABELDent supports for CDAnet Attachments to Electronic Claims for our Canadian customers.CDAnet. This feature ensures your administrative team does not need to spend time separately sending supporting documents (e.g. radiographs) to insurance companies and organizations, but rather can attach them electronically to predeterminations and claims.
This feature is available to ABELDent Local Plus and ABELDent Cloud users, and to ABELDent LS version 14.8.2 users with a current software maintenance agreement.
Coming Soon
Keep an eye out for announcements from the ABELDent Team about the following upcoming feature.
Short Notice Messaging
ABELDent’s Short Notice Messaging feature is designed to allow practices to fill any last-minute openings quickly by sending messages to patients that are likely to accept those appointment (e.g. patients on a short-notice waitlist, or patients who have requested to be contacted in the case of any last-minute openings). This feature will be available for ABELDent Local Plus and Cloud users first.
We are looking forward to continuing to refine our comprehensive dental software in 2025. Thank you to everyone who took the time to send us valuable feedback on your experience with ABELDent, whether honest feedback on our software or sharing an experience with our team. We are excited to continue working with you by listening to your suggestions and improving our all-in-one practice management software.
