Dental Compliance – let’s begin!
Here are my five essential dental compliance tips:
- Codes: know which codes and guidance documents are relevant. I highly recommend that you have hard copies available, which your dental team can readily access.
- Evidence: have documentary evidence which verifies that your clinical operating procedures are being adhere to. You should have a policy/statement of practice compliance, written standard operating protocols, and a set of short check-lists/simple audit tools available to demonstrate consistent adherence to key protocols.
- Awareness: have documentary evidence which clearly demonstrates that staff are fully aware of the clinical operating procedures and the practice governance structure (who’s responsible for what).
- Training: have documentary evidence that team members receive regular in-house refreshers on standard operating procedures. Keep this simple, it does not need to be time consuming. A 10-minute stand up meeting can do the trick.
- Location: have a designated location, known to dental team members, where practice policies, procedures, training records, checklists/audit records are filed ready for inspection. Then if an inspector arrives unannounced, your practice will provide an excellent first impression of your dental compliance.
Being dental compliant is having a systematic set of procedures which are consistently followed in your practice to ensure that your statutory obligations are being met.
Why not get in touch via the Contact page if you require a customised compliance solution for your dental practice?
Next time: we’ll consider the different regulators and what they regulate.
