The Spacemark Dental System
Would you like :
- To improve the quality of care you already provide for your patients with periodontal disease and increase your fee income?
- Your patients to improve their interproximal plaque control?
- Ensure your patients remember to use the correct size brush for each space?
- To provide your patients with a computer generated and easy to follow chart to assist in their correct brush size usage for each space?
- To have a precise record of your prescription rather than relying on verbal advice?
- To charge your patients a small fee for providing such a chart
- To have a more precise method of monitoring patient compliance with your advice?
The answer is to use the personalised Spacemark Dental chart that shows precisely which brush size should be used in which space, and which spaces are too small for interdental brushes. It also provides proof that you have provided appropriate periodontal advice and may help to limit any litigation claims against you. It is low cost at £1.00 per patient chart.
How does it work? Sign in with your email address and obtain a randomly generated password, then change this to your own password. These two pieces of information will ensure that no one but you can access your database.
Make sure your colour printer is configured to print the background information, and read and follow the instructions first.
Check each space with different diameter brushes until the right size for the space is found. NB with experience it becomes easier to choose the right size first or second time. Click on the space, then the colour chosen, and the Spacemark Dental programme will put that into the space. Continue for the whole mouth then save for your records. However, as dental professionals we chart looking at the patient, so their right side is on the left side of the page. As it is necessary to create a mirror image for the patient to follow, the change view reverses the image for you to either print out for the patient to follow, or download onto their IPad together with the instruction sheet.
For private patients you may wish to make a small fee charge for the chart.
Give your patient for free the brushes you have just used as their starter, and make sure you have plenty of packets of brushes of your chosen make for immediate purchase at reception. If you can arrange for patients to purchase any replacement brushes through you, then there is another method to monitor brush use.
Advantages:
- You have created a unique prescription record for your patient.
- You have proof that you have prescribed appropriately for that patient.
- There is an instruction sheet available in several languages with a daily compliance record. Your patient can download more themselves from the website, but cannot access their own records.
- You can review the daily compliance record and compare that with any changes in pocket depths and/or bleeding on probing and review your advice.
Another good sign that patients have improved their plaque control is their reporting back at follow up appointments with the comment that ‘I could get a bigger brush there’. In these cases update the chart, save, change view and print off another patient record.
Spacemark Dental has been designed to ensure that your patients have the right tools for effective plaque control and you have placed the onus on them to make a lifestyle choice to prevent the long, slow decline of tooth loss from periodontal disease, and is a significant step forward in periodontal disease control and patient care.