There is a need for an enormous amount of information storage in dentistry. As this piles up over time, it’s important for a dental practice to narrow down the necessities and avoid the build-up of ‘dirty data’.
The definition of dirty data changes dependent on where you look, but it commonly boils down to the collection of information that is in some way wrong or unnecessary. In the dental practice this could include patient clinical and financial records, which are kept despite containing incorrect or outdated information.
The damage of dirty data
To understand how data becomes ‘dirty’, we must know what contributes to data quality, and how it can be applied to a dental practice. Data quality has been defined as the degree to which the accuracy, completeness, consistency, and timeliness of the data satisfy the needs of a specific user.[i] A poor standard of information would do little to help an individual meet their intended outcomes and could adversely impact a workflow if it fails to excel in any of these areas.
If a patient’s medical history does not mention a recently diagnosed condition that could alter a clinician’s approach to treatment – diabetes for example – appropriate care may not be provided. This would fall under an incomplete quality of data that has not been updated in a timely manner.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, a dental practice may still be holding onto patient records that are no longer required, in physical or digital form. Clinical information that is more than 11 years old could fall into this category,[ii] and contribute to unnecessarily inflated patient files. An excess of information creates an inefficient medical record system, which dental professionals interact with every day.
Ensuring your practice has efficient and well-kept documentation is essential when looking to optimise your workflows. Poorly designed systems can grow the risk of dirty data, which increases the time searching patient records, as well as the chance of clinical errors and even clinician burnout. Individual dental professionals may see a decrease in job satisfaction and the quality of care they can provide as a result of poor record management.[iii]
Know your regulations
To avoid the unnecessary collection of outdated information, a practice should have processes in place to review patient records regularly and remove and destroy those that are no longer needed to be kept.
NHS England reduced the retention period of clinical dental care records from 15 years to the aforementioned 11 years in May 2023, where it may then be reviewed and destroyed if no longer needed.ii This includes FP17 and FP170 forms, and is applied to all dental care settings. For financially related records, this is reduced to just 2 years of retention before review.ii
For a child’s records, the retention period is more flexible, and instead extends to the specific individual’s 25th birthday (or their 26th if the patient was 17 at the end of treatment).ii
Reviews must be conducted before the destruction of a record because it may still meet the requirements of quality data, and not yet be considered dirty. For example, NHS England states a clinical care record could provide information on a serious incident that is still needed decades into the future, and therefore require it to be kept on file for up to 20 years.ii
Clinicians must also consider who the information may be valuable to, as this variable can change the importance of a record. Whilst clinical information from over a decade ago may not prove useful to every general dental practitioner, it may contain valuable insight for someone suffering from a rare condition or undergoing an innovative treatment,ii and the record may be of use to another medical professional in the future.
Inefficiency
The best time to assess your data management workflows is now. Practices are likely to already be working with a digital system, but ensuring it streamlines your workflows with complete ease of use is essential. A cloud-based system is ideal for the modern clinician, who can then keep their patient data accessible and organised across multiple practices, and even on the go.
With a solution like R4+, a Sensei product, from the practice and patient management brand of Carestream Dental, clinicians can easily navigate and record medical tracking, clinical treatments, and patient communication in a convenient patient record storage, all within a few clicks. With the support of Patient Bridge, also a Sensei product, patients can fill out and sign important forms digitally, including medical history, treatment plans, consent and FP17. Each document can be reviewed and amended where appropriate, to keep up with the record management demands placed on today’s practices. Run through the cloud, your practice saves space, whilst also making information accessible for clinicians from anywhere, at any time.
Dirty data can set back the everyday running of a dental practice when the information held is incorrect, outdated, and unnecessary. With an effective system in place, everyday workflows can run smoothly, and benefits will be felt in every aspect of clinical care.
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[i] Guo, M., Wang, Y., Yang, Q., Li, R., Zhao, Y., Li, C., … & Gao, R. (2023). Normal Workflow and Key Strategies for Data Cleaning Toward Real-World Data. Interactive Journal of Medical Research, 12(1), e44310.
[ii] NHS England, (2023). Records Management Code of Practice. (Online) Available at: https://transform.england.nhs.uk/media/documents/NHSE_Records_Management_CoP_2023_V5.pdf [Accessed January 2024]
[iii] Steinkamp, J., Kantrowitz, J., Sharma, A., & Bala, W. (2021). Beyond notes: why it is time to abandon an outdated documentation paradigm. Journal of medical Internet research, 23(4), e24179.
