Troubleshooting Digital Radiography Sensor issues.

Dental Intra Oral Radiography sensors are something we sell, repair, and do training for on a regular bases.

We see all kinds of dental digital radiography sensors here at Sodium Systems and see all types of issues. I am going to try to provide some information here to help you fix your sensor yourself before having to buy a new one or send it in to Sodium Systems for repair. If none of these tips work please visit our sensor repair submission page. You can also call us at 1-800-821-8962 for help.

The issues you might be facing that this can help you to resolve are:

1. Your digital radiography (X-Ray) sensor does not show up in your software giving errors like no sensor found or the software says no sensor ready.

2. Your dental sensor works some of the time and other times it does not work at all.

3. Your dental sensor mis fires or pre triggers giving you white images instead of xrays or gives you lots of static instead of an X-Ray

4. Your dental imaging software like Kodak Imaging, Dexis Imaging, Eaglesoft Image, Apteryx, Profsuni or other software crashes or gives errors when you try to acquire an image.

Digital X-Ray sensors with USB interface boxes are easy to recognize. It means that a USB cable comes out of your computer or a powered hub and plugs into another device (the interface box) and your sensor plugs into that. Many companies like Schick, Owandy, Dexis, Sirona, Camsight, Suni, Planmecca, Gendex and Trophy had this type of setup.

This guide will help with direct to usb digital radiography sensors and dental sensors with interface boxes.

When you have this type of setup there 4 possible areas of failure and some of them are very inexpensive to fix on your own.

The 4 components are:

1. The USB port on either your computer or powered hub

2. The USB cable that connects the computer to your interface box

3. The digital radiography (X-Ray) sensor interface box itself

4. The dental sensor that plugs into your sensor interface box

To troubleshoot these problems there is a lot of replace and pray as I like to call it. The components are so connected that almost any one of them can cause almost any issue. I will start this guide off with some simple trouble shooting steps that apply to all kinds of sensors.

ISSUES WITH YOUR USB PORT ON THE COMPUTER FIRST STEP

1. Your USB port on your computer or the USB hub it is plugged into may have failed. There is no guaranteed way to know this is the issue but it is very easy to diagnose.

Your USB port can fail but not be bad meaning it still shows up in the computer and sometimes will work for other devices but not your sensor. A dental sensor draws a lot of power and transfers information very quickly so a bad port can just cause random issues.

So your first step is to plug the USB cable going to your sensor or its interface box into a different port on the computer that is not right next to the port you are currently plugged into.

If your sensor is plugged into a USB hub, then unplug it from there and plug it directly into one of the USB ports on your computer. This may require you to reinstall the drivers if your computer doesn’t automatically do it. (If you are already stumped at this step you probably should give us a call)

If this resolves the issue then purchase a new powered USB hub ( meaning a USB hub that connects to your computer by a USB cable but also has a separate power cable you plug into a wall power outlet). This means your hub was bad and new ones should never cost more than 45$ in a store or 30$ online.

If your dental sensor or your interface box is plugged into a front USB port on your computer plug it into the back USB port on your computer and vis versa.

If this resolves your issue then purchase a powered USB hub as I mentioned above and plug it into the working port on your computer and plug your sensor into it. This will preserve the life of your good USB port.

ISSUES WITH YOUR USB CABLE GOING TO YOUR SENSOR INTERFACE BOX, SECOND STEP

1.Sometimes the problem is just with the USB cable connecting your interface box to the computer. This is the least expensive problem to fix.

To diagnose this issue go out and buy a new USB cable, 14FT or less in length that has the same connectors as your USB cable and try the brand new one. If it fixes the issue rejoice.

ISSUES WITH YOUR SENSOR INTERFACE BOX

Different names of interface box are as follows, this list is partial and doesn’t include all names.

Schick CDR Box, Schick USB, DEXUSB, Suni Inteface Box, Trophy Interface box

These issues can really only be diagnosed in one way in your office. Simply take a working interface box from another room and swap them out. If this solves the problem you can either talk to your dealer about buying a new box, look around on Ebay for used ones, or call us at Sodium Systems (1-800-821-8962) or drop us an email at sales@sodiumdental.com. We often have used or refurbished interface boxes for sale.

ISSUES WITH YOUR SENSOR OR ITS DRIVERS

Many issues are either directly with the sensor and at this point I suggest calling the manufacturer if it is under warranty or even if it is not and see what they will do for you. Get a quote and weigh your options, often if it is out of warranty they will take this opportunity to try to get you to trade the sensor in and buy a new one. Also, you can call us here at Sodium Systems where we repair dental digital radiography sensors and see what we can do for you. We only charge for repaired sensors so I believe it is always worth trying to get a broken sensor repaired. We have saved customers thousands of dollars over new systems and often the trade in value you will get for your sensor is far less than you would get if you simply had it repaired and sold it to another doctor who doesn’t want to buy a new system.

If the issues are with your drivers this can be tricky. I would highly suggest first talking to the tech support of whoever sold you the sensor but not to give up there. We have seen instances where a doctor had a perfectly working sensor but was told it was broken. I think this is because installing a sensor properly when there is a driver issue takes both IT knowledge and specific knowledge of both your digital imaging software and your sensor drivers. I would highly suggest giving our tech support a try on this we charge 60$ for a half hour of remote support and that is a small price to pay over a whole new sensor or system.

If you don’t want to do any of this yourself, call our office and let us know you have a broken sensor. If we get it in and it works in a preliminary testing our next step is always to ship the sensor back and use remote or on site support to diagnose the problems with your system.

You can also email our support at support@sodiumdental.com, if for whatever reason you do not get a response please remember that email can easily be mistyped and never arrive at its destination. I assure you we read all emails that come in and respond but if they never were received we will never know to respond so please follow up with a phone call to 1-800-821-8962 so we can help. Our office is open 9Am to 5PM eastern time and if our staff is away on holiday our administrative staff is always sure to respond to voice mail.

So HIPAA like ISO and almost all other forms of rather complicated, confusing and just plain obtuse regulation has been stirring up a lot of my customers.

No one seems to know exactly what is required of them for HIPAA, there is government licensed or approved companies to give training or accreditation for HIPAA. So we are not positive what to do for HIPAA short of reading every HIPAA document and trying to guess what “If reasonable to do so” or “addressable” means,(http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/faq/securityrule/2020.html) since for many of the security requirements this is the case.

So with this confusion there is going to be a lot of gimmicks, fear tactics and “consultants” convincing you that if you don’t do X you “could” face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines or heck they may even go ahead and imply that your whole practice will be ruined. After all no one shops at Target anymore after their security breach.

So, one of the big new Gimmicks is that people are pushing their new subscription service, off site, online, “encrypted”  backup solution. First, I haven’t seen a line that specifies you have to encrypt your backup, and moreover in the world of security we have rules as to what actually is TRUE encryption and it has to do with original key security and availability. But, for the sake of this post I won’t stray.

So if you have a backup solution where you backup all your data to an external hard drive and you take it home with you, I have a solution for having this be encrypted and secured without having to change your backup solution, buy expensive software, or figure out how to properly use bitlocker or truecrypt, which if you have an automated backup could be difficult.

So check these out.

Aegis Padlock – USB 2.0

Encrypted Hard Drive with PIN Access

You can buy these on amazon or newegg, or heck a bunch of places. The cool thing about these that security professionals like is that the drive will not even mount to the system without you typing in your pin first. With software encryption, if I have your encrypted data I can eventually un encrypt it. How long that takes is a question of access rates and  processor speeds. Where as with this device you can only type in the wrong code so many times until it makes the data permanently irretrievable.

So very secure, very cool, and it won’t result in your IT guy having to beat his head against the wall encrypting all of your Data.

As for the unencrypted data on your server hard drive. The solution to this is to keep your server in a locked office. If you ever retire a server pull the hard drives and (shoot them with a gun, hit them with a hammer a bunch of times, drill holes in them, melt them down, or use a multi level hard drive formatting program that actually writes zeros to all of the data sectors making data recovery nearly impossible)

Plaza Palooza started off with a big bang on October 2nd, 2011

This event is a great way to get kids and families out to play lots of family friendly games and events.

The event is held every Sunday in front of the York Revolutions stadium from 11am to 3pm. Admission is 4$ and season or family tickets can be purchased.

The purchase price goes to fund both the event itself and the new Penn Park build project going forward in 2012.

York Plaza Palooza Event Page

Sodium Systems strongly believes in supporting the local community and is happy to have the opportunity to volunteer at these events. I had a great time helping out and watching all of the families enjoy the great activities.

I have included some pictures and I hope to see more people there next Sunday

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This Fix applies to Dentrix G2 and above

This fix should alleviate issues with the appointment book not refreshing at workstations and issues with errors showing up on screens that say your file is locked open at a different location.

1. Shut down all workstations except for your server.
2. Shut down all Dentrix software on the server, including any Dentrix related apps running in your task manager
3. Run a complete backup of your Dentrix folder and make sure if your Dentrix Data folder isn’t in your Dentrix folder, make sure this Data folder is fully backed up as well.
4. In The Dentrix Folder on your server run _abconv.exe press OKAY to the popup message.
5. Click Convert to Appointment Book and then click OK
6. Now Run _Maint.exe and choose the option clear Machine IDs
7. Now Reboot your server and turn on your workstations and open appointment book one at a time
8. To be fully sure this has worked Turn off opportunistic locking on all machines including the serverThe location of the client registry entry for opportunistic locking has changed from the location in Microsoft Windows NT. In later versions of Windows, you can disable opportunistic locking by setting the following registry entry to 1:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetServicesMRXSmbParameters
   OplocksDisabled REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 0 (not disabled)

   Note The OplocksDisabled entry configures Windows clients to request or not to request opportunistic locks on a remote file.

   You can also deny the granting of opportunistic locks by setting the following registry entry to 0:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesLanmanServerParameters
   EnableOplocks REG_DWORD 0 or 1
   Default: 1 (enabled)

If these Keys don’t exist you will need to make them.

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I just wanted to put some example images out of the MyRay Zen Sensor up.

The Zen sensors have cut corners, a two fold filtering system to give crisp high detailed image boasting 25 lp/mm.

The sensors also have an inexpensive option to extend their 2 year warranty to 5 years for under 900$ a sensor at time of purchase.

The other advantage that has made me very happy with the zen sensor is the ability to purchase a device called an XPOD with it. This device is smaller than an IPAD and contains its own imaging software, with a touch screen and the ability to plug the ZEN sensors directly into it so that you can take your in office sensors anywhere you might want to go and capture X-Rays. This especially helpful if you are a specialist and you travel to multiple offices or if you enjoy traveling to other countries and volunteering your services on mission trips. All in all the MyRay sensor solution is very elegant.

The post MyRay Zen Digital X-Ray Sensor Images and Review appeared first on Dental X-ray Sensor Repair | Sodium Dental.

Does the Dexis Comfort Difference Exist and Is It Worth The Cost?

Today I was taking the time to put an E2V sensor next to a Dexis sensor for a client of ours so he could compare the size Dexis comfort difference and see how much of a change he would be looking at to get out of Dexis.

This doctor has 4 Dexis sensors, 2 of them do not work and 2 do. He has spent over $48,000 with Dexis.  Four $10,000 sensors and the $8,000 he paid for Dexis.  Now 5 years down the road Dexis wants him to invest another 24K$ to get 2 new Dexis sensors and that is when he came to us.

I showed him side by side images of Dexis sensor images and E2V sensor images.
I showed him side by side images of the actual sensors next to each other.
I showed him Dexis vs Apteryx Xray Vision (The imaging software I would suggest for any dentist no matter what sensor they have)

What we came to conclude was that the biggest difference between the Dexis platinum and the Direct to USB E2V sensor was the price.
E2V size 2 4995$
Dexis Platinum 12K$

Just think of what Schein and Dexis have cost the doctor in his practice. He is 48K$ in the whole on purchases and over those 5 years he has carried the warranty on 2 of his sensors adding on an additional 3K$ per year minus the first year when the sensors included the warranty. That is another 12K$ so the doctor is 60K$ invested. Lets just think about where the doctor would have been if his rep had actually done what was best for him and told him about some of these much less expensive sensors.

4 E2V sensors – All 4 with 5 year warranties – $23,980
Apteryx Xray Vision with 10 seat licenses – $2595

That means on sensors alone the doctor could have saved $33,425

$33K could cover the doctors computer network, big screen tvs in the patient rooms, intra oral cameras and other pieces of technology that would boost case presentation and staff productivity. But instead that 33K$ just went to Schein making more money.

Dexis VS E2V in Dexis Imaging

E2V VS Dexis

E2V VS Dexis in XrayVision Imaging

This astronomical cost difference is caused by Dexis wanting to get rich off of a sensor they paid another company to design and produce, then they middle man it to Henry Schein who wants to get rich off of the already middle manned product.

The post Dexis vs “Other Sensors”: Is there really a Dexis comfort difference that makes it worth the price appeared first on Dental X-ray Sensor Repair | Sodium Dental.

A Simple Guide For the Dos and Don’t of going digital in your dental practice

Step 1 Getting quotes from the Big 3 isn’t like getting 3 separate quotes, they all tend to only sell the high priced options of things so when they offer quotes to you it appears like all options are roughly the same price, but there are 5 times as many options as most of them will ever mention to you.

Step 2 Determine your practice management software choice. If you already have a practice management it may be easiest to continue to use it. If you are starting from scratch I would suggest considering a software like Open Dental. There is a big advantage to going with a Practice Management software solution that is not tied to one of the Big 3 supply companies. You do not want a software package that comes from a company that will use that software as leverage to influence your purchasing decisions.

Step 3 Going digital in your dental practice has a lot to do with your digital imaging software choice.Using a software like Xray Vision from Apteryx does not require you pay a yearly support fee to get software updates. Using Xray Vision is our choice because it is not tied to any other company as far as hardware. The company does their best to work with every sensor device and every practice management option. Having options is always the best way to insure you get the best service and price. If a company can lock you into their software, their hardware, and so on then they have a way to force you to keep paying the prices they want.

If you pick the right practice management and the right image management you have already solved 90% of the issues of going digital. If you pick Dentrix or Eaglesoft then you can look forward to Schein and Patterson making many of your purchasing decisions for you.

Step 4 – Computer Systems

Determine your number of systems in your practice to determine your server needs. If you have 12 or less than your server should cost under 3000$ and should not be a Server Operating system. Instead I suggest you use a Workgroup Server that also serves double duty as the doctors personal computer in the office or a back office system. Essentially a system that can be used lightly and isn’t easily accessible to the public.

If you have more than 12 computers then you should use a server operating system and domain setup. The system should not cost more than 5500$

For More information on how to pick your server see my Pick Your Server Guide

As for the workstation and operatory computers we do not build them. If an IT professional offers to build you computers for your office then you most likely have the wrong IT professional. No system builder builds enough machines to work out the bugs in their parts choices as well as the big system builders can. Also, no system builder can supply a 3 year or 5 year warranty like Dell can with a next business day guarantee.

The trick to buying Dell is to not purchase the cheaper home user versions like the Vostro series. We always use the business lines like the Optiplex series and we always use at least the middle of the processor options. Many people end up with bad Dell computers because their IT guy picked the least amount of RAM, the lowest grade processor and the onboard video card so they could have more markup on their sale.

When it comes to monitors in operatories the important thing is to avoid track mounts or expensive ceiling mounts for getting small screens closer to the patient. Instead, mount a 32” lcd to the wall and to the ceiling and a 12 oclock behind the patient and tie these all into one computer. These 3 monitors will cost less than the traditional track mounted monitor with medical grade monitor.

Network is your next concern. Always run category 6 network cables from the network closet all the way to the computer operatories, front desk PCs and network printers. Many IT companies get lazy and daisy chain switches so they can run one long network run and branch off multiple PCs. This always leads to network slow downs and problems in the future. Absolutely do not use wireless as a network options.

Digital X-Ray sensors are the next most important decision to make. Dexis 12K$ per sensor plus 8K$ for Dexis Image includes a 1 year warranty and additional years warranties are 1500$ per year per sensor. We do not suggest the big names in sensors, Schick, Dexis, Gendex and Kodak are all greatly over priced and in our experience of repairing sensors the only big difference we have found is price not quality. The QuickRay sensor which is the same sensor as the XDR is a direct to USB sensor, modeled after the Dexis Platinum is $4,997 for a size 2 and $4,597 for a size 1. These sensors take great images, are comfortable and are priced well. The imaging software (Xray vision) is around 3500$ with 10 licenses.

If you would like us to quote out the job based on these specs please tell us how many operatories, front desk stations, and private offices the practice has. Also, please tell us the max number of Hygienists and doctors working at any one time.

So the Do’s simplified
-Do get business grade computer systems made by a major brand with a manufacturers warranty longer than 3 years
-Do get quotes from more than supply companies
-Do use a WIRED network with Category 6 Cable In Your Office Punched down into a punchdown panel and keystone wall jacks
-Do get Gigabit Network Switches
-Do shop your digital xray sensor options by PRICE and WARRANTY from more than the supply companies
-Do get a FIRM QUOTE with exact labor charges
-Do get a Color Network Laser printer (Fast and Affordable Printing – Inkjets are cheaper upfront Pricier long term)

So the Don’ts simplified
-Don’t let sales people use words like cheap, unknown, untested to make you FEEL like you don’t have the right to consider different options
-Don’t let fear make your purchase decisions
-Don’t forget to see the bottom line and add up all the costs
-Don’t forget to know the value of your own time vs trying to be your own IT guy
-Don’t forget that the weakest link of the chain determines the strength of the whole chain, don’t sacrifice quality on computers to spend money on other technology
-Don’t believe that because a lot of people make a bad decision that it is a good decision, otherwise that would mean that McDonalds has the best burgers in the world

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Broken Xray Sensors – Why They Break

This post about broken xray sensors is a response to a Dr’s question about why sensors break, whether or not new sensor cables on Schicks will be more durable and whether or not sensors in general are affordable.

Broken Xray Sensors Wire Break

To understand broken xray sensors we have to think about how xray sensors are made.  It makes you realize that broken xray sensors aren’t that surprising.  The thing is that the new cable will have all the problems that the old broken xray sensor cable has. The problem is pretty simple: the broken xray sensor has copper wires that are of a very small gauge.  It is necessary for a xray sensor to have small guage wires so that they can make the cable thin and flexible. To compare for you, a network cable has 24GA wires in it or .511 mm diameter wires, most xray sensors use 34GA wires or .16mm diameter wires. These are very thin wires and they are fairly long with significant flex points. As the wire flexes about 12,000 times a year the individual copper strands in the cable break down and sometimes disconnect all together, causing a broken xray sensor. The connections between the broken xray sensor and the wire are also very tiny and the solder points themselves sometimes fail.

The problem broken xray sensors have is that although copper is flexible, when it gets that thin and gets moved that much it will inherently fail.

So why not do wireless? Well, Schick wireless xray sensors have several problems, one stuffing the wireless circuitry and a battery onto the back of the sensor. Not a lot of space there and transmission makes heat. The battery has to be very durable if you want it to last all day, durable and compact equals expensive. The whole rig has to be waterproof as well, which isn’t hard, but it certainly adds to the size.  Size is a huge issue, especially with your staff already complaining about the size of the sensors and placement vs film xrays.

Why not do a thicker cable? We use a replacement cable with 30GA wires, it adds 25% thickness to the overall xray sensor wire which still keeps it very flexible but thicker than most modern xray sensor wires, about the same thickness as old Trophy sensor cables(which lasted forever).

Why not make the broken xray sensor cable replaceable. Schick did this as well trying to deal with the cable issue, but it has several problems. The connector they had to design to make the cable replaceable is pretty cool but also incredibly prone to failure and corrosion. They should have used Gold connectors, sadly they didn’t.  Corrosion, even if not visible to the naked eye, can really screw up a low voltage signal. Their second problem was how that connector locks to the xray sensor. They used a metal housing with very tiny screws to accomplish this, but this combined with the special contacts makes it a very expensive cable, not to mention it is just expensive to have custom cable manufacturing done when you need a connector that is used only for their purposes. Because when you are building blow mold and stamping systems on a small scale, (Schick is a small scale compared to for instance how many USB plugs 3M makes and sells a year. 10,000 compared to millions)

So their replaceable cable is more likely to fail because of how it has to be connected and because it still has the same failure points as their regular cable.

—————————————-

With the advent of CMOS sensors direct to USB like Dexis, E2V(XDR, QuickRay, Dentimax), Gendex and others there are now less wires in the cable heading to the sensor and theoretically the cable should be more durable, but there is a whole new downside. There is a lot of data processing that is now taking place right on the back of the sensor as well as the information that needs to be processed by the sensor to interface with the computer. All of this packed into the sensor housing and all very susceptible to voltage and amperage. AKA these babies are easy to burn out from minor voltage irregularities in a USB port. Personally I think every USB sensor especially Dexis sensor should only be plugged into power regulated USB ports. Meaning not only should the USB port be on a powered hub separate from the computer, but that powered hub shouldn’t be plugged into wall AC. Here is why. You wall AC can come out anywhere within 10% of 110Volts AC and still be acceptable to the power company so your computer could be getting 100-120 VAC which gets translated to your USB ports as 4.5VDC to 5.5VDC. This can damage fine circuitry. Most devices can deal with minor power fluctuations without damage but if the circuitry is small enough and there is no gate to let off extra voltage because there isn’t space for one then maybe it burns out the part of the sensor that talks to the computer.

We see a lot of Dexis Platinum’s that have this issue where they no longer tell the computer a sensor serial number. Dexis Platinum’s have to have the correct calibration files installed for the sensor you are using otherwise you get an error that says no calibration file is installed, but even with the utility that is supposed to fix this I saw 19 Dexis Platinum’s last year that were under 3 years old that had this issue and I cannot find a solution for it.

The biggest problem with Dental technology across the board is that dental companies and manufactures that sell the technology want to do their best to control every angle of it. Building in roadblocks to repairing and servicing their technology. I believe the goal of Schein, Benco, and Patterson is for there to be no aftermarket for this type of equipment. They don’t want service centers for sensors, cerecs, and expensive lasers. If they can prevent the equipment from being able to be repaired or serviced it is a huge advantage for them , because unlike the auto industry they will never have to worry about fighting a significant used dental technology market. People will pay a good price for a used car because it can be certified and it can be repaired, but buying a used cerec isn’t like that. If you buy a used Cerec and it fails there is no one who can fix it for you and Cerec will punish you for buying a used Cerec by telling you have to pay thousands of dollars in back support fees and an ownership change over before they will even provide you an estimate for servicing the unit.

If you control the servicing of the units (broken xray sensors included) you can control the whole after market for them.

So my advice is simple. Buy a sensor that is reasonable if it fails in 4 years. (What exactly is reasonable, well let’s just say the cost of processing film) I’m going to calculate it out over 3 Life Cycles aka 12 Years and I’m not doing this to sell you, but maybe just to make what you have invested come into a less painful light.

So let’s put you on a 4 year life cycle
4 years of 2 Hygiene rooms and 3 Ops and you throw away broken xray sensors and computers every 4 years (Which isn’t far fetched, 5 year old computers are usually terrible and slow with all kinds of problems)

Two size #2′s plus one size #1 for a total of 3 sensors which we discount 10% if you buy 3 at a time. So $12,586.50 in sensors
Apteryx and 10 licenses – Lifetime no re purchase and free updates.  $3,370 (Apteryx software you can upgrade for free forever with no service contract so it’s like a film processor, buy it once and it will last a good long time. Dexis and other softwares are not like this, they require support contracts.)

Xray sensors and software = $15,956 (QuickRay Sensors Paired with Apteryx XrayVision)

You’ll need a computer and Monitor in Each Op and someone to install it.  (Not counting front desk computers because let’s face it, you need those with or without digital XRay
5 computer and 5 22″ LCDs with installation = $6,000

Not including the server either because you need that for your front desk as well, but let’s say you did we charge 1995$ for a server and 22″ LCD with installation included in that price.

So let’s say over 3 cycles Meaning 3 cycles of computers and 3 cycles of sensors (12 Years) You would spend
Computers(12 Years-3 sets of computers and servers all installed professionally) =$23,985

3 Cycles of sensors (6 size 2s and 3 size 1s) = $37,759.50

One Time Purchase of Apteryx = $3,370
Total 12 Year cost of computers, servers, sensors getting tossed every 4 years = $65,114
That is a big old hunk of change but let’s just look at film in that time and I’ll be generous

1 Film Processor – $4,800 (you got a great deal on a PA only processor let’s say, Like a new Peri Pro)
2 Hygiene Rooms Worth of Bitewings (2 Rooms X 8 Patients/day X 4BWs/Patient X 4 Days/Week X 46 Weeks Per Year X 12 Years) = 141,312 BWs

I’ll throw in your water, processing fluid and all the PAs you take in your Doctors OP for free to match up with the cost of barrier shields for your sensors and holders, plus IT services. Heck I’ll even throw in the 35000 Bitewing holders you would have used in that time at least $.50 a piece.

So just the BWs you would take in Hygiene and just the cost of the film processor ignoring all the other costs is $61,324

So going digital on a 4 year turnaround is 4K$ more expensive over 12 years. And I think if you consider the costs of processing fluids, and those plastic BW holders you use to keep the x-rays organized into the chart you could see another 20K$ in possible costs on the film side which would give you $140 a month to put towards IT expenses which would be very low if none of your equipment is older than 4 years.

So on this plan you probably are not saving a dime over using film, but you get digital X-Ray, you get the space back that your film processor was stealing from you, you get to not have jugs of chemicals, you also could be paperless at this price reclaiming you a lot of space being used on storing charts.

I guess what I am saying is that the right sensor and computer system can be very comparable compared to film.

But here is where the equation changes. If you are buying Schick for instance?
about 8K$ a sensor chucking them ever 4 years and 120$ a month just in software support fees so you can keep updated with your imaging software it gets our cost of digital up to $89,280 + the computer cost ($23,985) = $113,265

So you can see that your choice of sensor system and software can really change your cost analysis vs. film

So a recap on the 12 years
Film = $61,324
QuickRay+XrayVision =$65,114
Schick+ES Image =$113,265

I’m only talking numbers here. If you really like the Schick sensors, an extra $4,000 a year in cost may be completely reasonable for you and I would understand that as a business owner.

My point of this is not to say digital is inexpensive or that it is going to save you money over film. Maybe if you consider time of employees and such it just might. My point is that it is not that unreasonable what it costs if you pick the right system.

I also want to finish this post by saying Sirona (Schick) makes an excellent sensor and they are a good company. I think you will have the same excellent experience with QuickRay and Apteryx working with us.

I don’t know if this takes the sting out at all, but it might. Also you can see how the price can change if you can get that 5th year out of your systems. For instance sensors, don’t throw them out after 4 years but toss them when they fail. Computers on the other hand have a planned replacement because if you wait till they fail it could cut into your production being down a room, plus you tend to spend more over time if you are paying for added tech fees stretching the life out of computers or trying to get them overnighted in when you are down.

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So we are in the sensor repair business as well as being in new technology sales, service, training and installation.

On the sensor repair side we run into a pretty common issue…

We get sensors in for our repair service and have to call the doctor and tell them there is nothing wrong with the sensor. We are often met with pure confusion at this point. Of course we offer advice and any help to get there problems at their office solved and we charge nothing for sensors unless we complete a repair.

So here is something that might be happening to you if you are having problems with your sensor. It’s possible your USB port on your computer or on your USB port have failed or even more confusing is that they can fail intermittently and give you no hint that they are dropping the power to your devices.

Please watch the following video to see how my phone proved what my computer never told me about.

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Dexis Sensor Repair

Here at Sodium Dental we do our best to help customers with Dexis sensor repair. We perform Dexis Classic Sensor repair and Dexis Platinum Sensor Repair in house and we are not affiliated with Dexis or there parent company in any way. If you have a Dexis sensor you would like repaired. Just follow this link to Dexis Sensor Repair .

Dexis Sensor Repair

Dexis sensor repair can be difficult because the old classic sensor uses a special 19 pin round connector that requires a high degree of skill to solder to and can be difficult to find and purchase. We also have gone to great efforts to have our own custom cable manufactured that we believe will be both very good for signal transfer and durability. The key was to also insure the cable would be very thin and flexible. if you see other companies advertising that they do dental sensor repair or Dexis sensor repair, one big question to ask them is if they are performing a full cable replacement or simply cutting out bad sections and leaving you with your old cable. These inline splice repairs will result in a section of failure and a greater amount of noise in the signal because a break and re splice always causes signal degradation in a copper wire.

Also, many of the sites out there advertising Dexis sensor repair are not performing the repairs in house, they are receiving your sensor and then having a non employee do the repair. I would suggest getting it in writing that only employees of the company you are sending your very expensive sensor off to are going to have access to your sensor.

There are other aspects of Dexis sensor repair that are important. What type of facility is the repair being performed in? How many hours of experience does the repair technician have with repairing your sensor. Sodium Systems can show that its Dexis Sensor Repair technicians have over 2000 hours of Dexis Sensor Repair experience. That is a real number and to put it on this blog in print means it is true. Other companies may use phrases like “very experienced”, “lots of experience”, “most experience” which are all ways to avoid actually telling you how much experience they have because if they had to list in real hours they would most have 100 times less experience. There have been several companies with absolutely no experience that just know how the internet works that if they post up a page and make general claims real companies, with real technicians and real experience can not do anything about it because a general claim of “very experienced” is always defend able. They can say they did 1 sensor and feel that is “very experienced”.

So with Dexis sensor repair, Dexis Platinum Repair, and Dexis Classic repair I have some questions for you to ask any company who is offering you repair services (and get it in an email because people will say anything over the phone). This is very very important because if the repair is not performed correctly the technician could actually destroy what could have been a repairable sensor.

1. Will an employee of your company be providing the repair services?

2. How many hours of experience does your technician have repairing Dental Xray Sensors or get specific and ask them how much experience their technician has repairing Dexis Sensors?

3. How many Dexis Sensor Repairs has the employee performed?

4. Does the company do a full cable replacement or are they splicing your cable?

I believe that if you keep these things in mind you can get your Dexis sensor repair done right and save yourself thousands of dollars over purchasing a new sensor.

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Troubleshooting Digital Xray Sensor issues

Digital xray sensors are something we sell, repair, and do training for on a regular bases.

A digital xray sensor is also sometimes referred to as a Digital Radiography Sensor or a digital dental sensor.

Go Here To Get Your Sensor Fixed Today – We Always Provide A Quote For Repair Free Of Charge – No Commitment

We see all kinds of digital xray sensors here at Sodium Dental and with that we see all types of xray sensor issues. Here we try to provide some information to help you fix your sensor yourself before having to buy a new one or send it in to Sodium Dental for repair. If none of these tips work please visit our sensor repair submission page. You can also call us at 1-800-821-8962 for help.

Issues that your digital xray sensor might be having:

1. Your digital xray sensor does not show up in your software giving errors like “no sensor found” or the software says “no sensor ready.”

2. Your digital xray sensor works some of the time and other times it does not work at all.

3. Your digital xray sensor mis fires or pre triggers giving you white images instead of xrays or gives you lots of static instead of an X-Ray

4. Your dental imaging software like Kodak Imaging, Dexis Imaging, Eaglesoft Image, Apteryx, Profsuni or other software crashes or gives errors when you try to acquire an image with your digital xray sensor.

Digital Xray Sensor Interface for Dexis

Digital xray sensors with USB interface boxes are easy to recognize. It means that a USB cable comes out of your computer or a powered hub and plugs into another device (the interface box) and your xray sensor plugs into that. Many companies like Schick, Owandy, Dexis, Sirona, Camsight, Suni, Planmecca, Gendex and Trophy had this type of setup.

This guide will help with direct to usb digital xray sensors and xray sensors with interface boxes.

When you have this type of setup there 4 possible areas of failure and some of them are very inexpensive to fix on your own.

The 4 components are:

1. The USB port on either your computer or powered hub

2. The USB cable that connects the computer to your interface box

3. The digital xray sensor interface box itself

4. The dental sensor that plugs into your sensor interface box

To troubleshoot these problems there is a lot of what I like to call “replace and pray.”  The components are so connected that almost any one of them can cause almost any issue. I will start this guide off with some simple trouble shooting steps that apply to all kinds of digital xray sensors.

ISSUES WITH YOUR USB PORT ON THE COMPUTER: FIRST STEP

Computer USB Port

1. Your USB port on your computer or the USB hub it is plugged into may have failed. There is no guaranteed way to know this is the issue but it is very easy to diagnose.

Your USB port can fail but not be bad meaning it still shows up in the computer and sometimes will work for other devices but not your sensor. A dental sensor draws a lot of power and transfers information very quickly so a bad port can just cause random issues.

So your first step is to plug the USB cable going to your sensor or its interface box into a different port on the computer that is not right next to the port you are currently plugged into.

If your sensor is plugged into a USB hub, then unplug it from there and plug it directly into one of the USB ports on your computer. This may require you to reinstall the drivers if your computer doesn’t automatically do it. (If you are already stumped at this step you probably should give us a call)

If this resolves the issue then purchase a new powered USB hub ( meaning a USB hub that connects to your computer by a USB cable but also has a separate power cable you plug into a wall power outlet). This means your hub was bad and new ones should never cost more than 45$ in a store or 30$ online.

If your dental sensor or your interface box is plugged into a front USB port on your computer plug it into the back USB port on your computer and vis versa.

If this resolves your issue then purchase a powered USB hub as I mentioned above and plug it into the working port on your computer and plug your sensor into it. This will preserve the life of your good USB port.

ISSUES WITH YOUR USB CABLE GOING TO YOUR SENSOR INTERFACE BOX: SECOND STEP

1.Sometimes the problem is just with the USB cable connecting your interface box to the computer. This is the least expensive problem to fix.

To diagnose this issue go out and buy a new USB cable, 14FT or less in length that has the same connectors as your USB cable and try the brand new one. If it fixes the issue rejoice.

ISSUES WITH YOUR SENSOR INTERFACE BOX: THIRD STEP

Different names of interface box are as follows, this list is partial and doesn’t include all names.

Schick CDR Box, Schick USB, DEXUSB, Suni Inteface Box, Trophy Interface box

These issues can really only be diagnosed in one way in your office. Simply take a working interface box from another room and swap them out. If this solves the problem you can either talk to your dealer about buying a new box, look around on Ebay for used ones, or call us at Sodium Dental (1-800-821-8962) or drop us an email at sales@sodiumdental.com. We often have used or refurbished interface boxes for sale.

ISSUES WITH YOUR SENSOR OR ITS DRIVERS: FOURTH STEP

Many issues are either directly with the sensor and at this point I suggest calling the manufacturer if it is under warranty or even if it is not and see what they will do for you. Get a quote and weigh your options, often if it is out of warranty they will take this opportunity to try to get you to trade the sensor in and buy a new one. Also, you can call us here at Sodium Dental where we repair digital xray sensors and see what we can do for you. We only charge when we are successful at repairing a digital xray sensor so I believe it is always worth trying to get a broken sensor repaired. We have saved customers thousands of dollars over new systems and often the trade in value you will get for your sensor is far less than you would get if you simply had it repaired and sold it to another doctor who doesn’t want to buy a new system.

If the issues are with your drivers this can be tricky. I would highly suggest first talking to the tech support of whoever sold you the sensor but not to give up there. We have seen instances where a doctor had a perfectly working sensor but was told it was broken. I think this is because installing a sensor properly when there is a driver issue takes both IT knowledge and specific knowledge of both your digital imaging software and your sensor drivers. I would highly suggest giving our tech support a try on this we charge 60$ for a half hour of remote support and that is a small price to pay over a whole new sensor or system.

If you don’t want to do any of this yourself, call our office and let us know you have a broken digital xray sensor. If we get it in and it works in a preliminary testing our next step is always to ship the sensor back and use remote or on site support to diagnose the problems with your system.

You can also email our support at support@sodiumdental.com, if for whatever reason you do not get a response please follow up with a phone call to 1-800-821-8962 so we can help. Our office is open 9Am to 5PM eastern time and if our staff is away on holiday our administrative staff is always sure to respond to voice mail.

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HIPAA Backup Compliance & Your External Backup Drive

HIPAA backup compliance, like ISO and almost all other forms of rather complicated, confusing and just plain obtuse regulation has been stirring up a lot of my customers.

No one seems to know exactly what is required of them for HIPAA backup compliance.  There are no government licensed or approved companies to give training or accreditation for HIPAA backup compliance so we are not positive what to do for HIPAA short of reading every HIPAA document and trying to guess what “If reasonable to do so” or “addressable” means,(http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/faq/securityrule/2020.html) since for many of the security requirements this is the case.

So with this confusion there is going to be a lot of gimmicks, fear tactics and “consultants” convincing you that if you don’t do X you “could” face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines or heck they may even go ahead and imply that your whole practice will be ruined. After all no one shops at Target anymore after their security breach.

One of the new big gimmicks is that people are pushing their new subscription service, off site, online, “encrypted”  backup solutions. First, I haven’t seen a line that specifies you have to encrypt your backup to be HIPAA backup compliant, and moreover in the world of security we have rules as to what actually is TRUE encryption and it has to do with original key security and availability. But, for the sake of this post I won’t stray.

If you have a backup solution where you backup all your data to an external hard drive and you take it home with you, I have a solution for having this be encrypted and secured without having to change your backup solution, buy expensive software, or figure out how to properly use BitLocker or TrueCrypt, which if you have an automated backup could be difficult.

So check these out.

Aegis Padlock – USB 2.0

Encrypted Hard Drive with PIN Access

You can buy these on Amazon or NewEgg, or heck a bunch of places. The cool thing about these that security professionals like is that the drive will not even mount to the system without you typing in your pin first. With software encryption, if I have your encrypted data I can eventually un-encrypt it. How long that takes is a question of access rates and  processor speeds. Where as with this device you can only type in the wrong code so many times until it makes the data permanently irretrievable.

Very secure, very cool, and it won’t result in your IT guy having to beat his head against the wall encrypting all of your Data just to have a HIPAA compliant backup.

As for the unencrypted data on your server hard drive. The solution to this is to keep your server in a locked office. If you ever retire a server pull the hard drives and (shoot them with a gun, hit them with a hammer a bunch of times, drill holes in them, melt them down, or use a multi level hard drive formatting program that actually writes zeros to all of the data sectors making data recovery nearly impossible.)  There you have it, some suggestions on how to try and achieve HIPAA backup compliance.

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A Paperless Dental Office Can Be Less Expensive Than You Think

Film X Rays are only slightly cheaper then your whole paperless dental office.

I think the assumption that digital is more expensive than paper is inaccurate. I think a paperless dental office is the goal for any modern practice.

I’ll lay out the numbers for you and base everything on a 5 year replacement cycle because all the items are warranted for 5 years in this layout.

Paperless Dental Office Costs:

1. 5 Operatory Computer systems (Dell Optiplex with 22″ LCD Screens Fully networked and Installed) 5 Year Warranty – $1,632 Each ($8,160 Total)
2. 2 FD Computers 20 ” ALL IN ONE systems with 5 Year Warranty (Fully networked and Installed) $1,538 Each ($3,076)
3. 1 Server all with 22″ screen 5 year warranty, backup solution, at rest encryption for HIPAA and installation $3,800
4. Network Color Laser, Printer, Scanner and Fax-  Dual Tray 5 Year Warranty (Installed)- $988
5. Apteryx Xray Vision Image Management Software $3,005 (8 Licenses)
6. Open Dental (100$ a month support contract Free to own)
7. 2 Size #2 Quick Ray Digital X Ray Dental Sensors and 1 Size #1 Quick Ray Digital X Ray Sensor $14,000
8. Full IT SUPPORT CONTRACT  300$ a month , Not a requirement

So we are at:

Full Digital X-Ray Paperless Dental Office $33,029 For everything installed and ready to go. With staff training and everything.

Now lets look at film:

Cost of Film-

1. Film Processor over 10 Year 5K$ so over 5 years $2,500
2. Barrier Shields, you use 1 for each film vs 1 for each exam digital. 20 cents each so 2000 BW exams cost you $1,200 more in Barrier Shields (This gets even more expensive with FMX
3. 43 cents for Size 2 and 1 film(8000 Xrays a Year X 5 years = 40,000 X-Rays) Cost of Film over 5 Years = $17,200
4. 25 cents for a clear 4H bitewing mount (2000 Mounts a year X 5 Years = 10,000 Mounts) Cost of BW Mounts = $2,500
5. Processing Liquid $.10 per film (based on manufacturers specs AT2000 and current pricing of processing fluids) =$4,000

So Full Cost of Film = $27,400 over 5 years

So your whole network, computer systems, practice management, image management and digital X Ray sensors and all of the patient education possibilities only cost around $94 more a month then just your film is costing you in consumables.

Also, remember I didn’t take into account that when you go fully paperless you no longer have to have charts at all in your office. Think of the space savings, time savings and cost savings of no longer storing and accessing charts.

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