If you work with dental implants OR abutments, current AHPRA and ADA regulations (MCNZ and NZDA regulations for New Zealand practices) stipulate that patient records need to be accurately recorded and stored for a minimum of 7 years (10 years and 1 day for New Zealand practices). To have accurate records (to enable identification of dental implants and abutments), practices should be recording implant or abutment Lot/Batch and Reference numbers. If this was associated with a customised prosthesis (CAD/CAM) details of this should also be included in patient records. Furthermore, these details must be provided to the patient at their request at any time in the future. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner indicates that patients should receive their information within 30 days. For those that also work with high risk dental implants (such as zygomatic implants and osseoframes), it is a mandatory requirement that these patients require a Patient Implant Card (PIC). This is a physical/digital card that must be filled in by your practice and given to the patient. By recording your patients details on the DIR, you meet all your regulatory requirements listed above, by Securely storing your patients implant records for their lifetime Recording all relevant implant/abutment component information Giving patients instant access to their own records All records are a digital version of the PIC

While most practices keep good patient records, in the DIR’s experience, the majority of practices have experienced some form of delay when attempting to obtain or share a patients’ implant/abutment records. The DIR makes this process instantaneous, reducing the burden to your administrative team and helps provide a better patient outcome. DIR registered information is accessible within minutes for your practice. This means that there is minimal administrative burden on your practice and you can treat a patient significantly faster meaning the patient problems can be addressed and treated more efficiently. Alternatively, if you are having a request for patient information, you can forward the DIR registration quickly and easily, again reducing your administrative burden. The DIR registrations also improve communication between dental professionals and laboratories by ensuring labs know the exact components they need to utilise in the manufacture of the prostheses. This reduces the amount of revision of laboratory work that labs often need to do, saving money and time for all parties. One of the biggest issues face is the accurate identification of implants that they are restoring. Implant manufacturer representatives provide positive feedback on how the DIR registrations make the laboratory work more efficient and more accurate when they are assisting their dental professionals.

Most practices have had a case of a patient presenting with an unknown implant (for some this is even a frequent occurrence). This is a significant issue for a number of reasons: It prolongs the treatment (and pain) of the patient Staff time is wasted contacting previous clinician/practice Increase the risk of complications In the cases where the old records are no longer available (lost/destroyed), dental professionals are then forced to essentially guess what components were utilised. This can sometimes be costly and time consuming, and still not give accurate results. By registering your patients dental implant/abutment components on the DIR, you are part of the solution to this problem. All records will be securely stored for the patients lifetime, and accessible (privacy laws apply) by their future treating dental professionals. This helps to eliminate this issue for all future treatment.

To have accurate records (to enable identification of dental implants and abutments), practices should be recording implant or abutment Lot/Batch and Reference numbers. If this was associated with a customised prosthesis (CAD/CAM) details of this should also be included in patient records. Without this information, future treatment cannot be undertaken safely. For example: If you can't identify the exact component that was installed, you won’t know which equipment (e.g. driver) to use to repair or maintain the implant/crown reconstruction If you use the wrong tools and damage the componentry, you may have to replace the damaged components (potentially at a cost to your practice) By registering your patients implant components on the DIR, you are ensuring the information recorded is not only accurate, but also relevant and accessible for future treating dental professionals. The DIR helps you record all this in one simple process via our online application, with registrations only taking 1-2 minutes. The registration then creates an easy-to-read PDF that can be accessed by the patient or their future dental professionals, ensuring the best long term care!

The DIR is regularly contacted by patients who are looking for dental professionals they can trust that offer high quality treatment and componentry. As part of the benefits the DIR provides to our users, we direct these patients towards DIR Registered Practices near them. All practices that register on the DIR are added to our Find a DIR Dentist search function, which is also accessible by patients.

Did you know, many of your patients who require bone grafts are also blood donors. If your patient is a blood donor this can affect their ability to donate blood, either temporarily or even permanently! ​ Whether your patient is a blood donor should be a question every dental professional asks their patients prior to implant surgery (if bone grafting is required). This ensures you know the needs of your patient and do not affect their donation status. Failure to do so could result in legal issues. ​ Did you know the DIR also records bone grafting details with our implant registrations? This helps to assist your practice and patients by: ​ Providing a simple downloadable PDF that patients can present at any blood bank to help determine their eligibility Ensuring the identity of the grafting material is retained securely, to cater for any changes that may be made to blood donation requirements in the future ​ Ensure you are discussing with your patients, that require bone grafts, prior to implant surgery about their blood donation status, and ensure this data is accessible by third parties (with patient approval), such as the blood bank, by registering these details on the DIR today!

While your practice may currently keep accurate records, those records are only kept in-house. The point of difference of the DIR is that it is a secure centralised database accessible by patients and treating clinicians (patient must approve access for treating clinicians to access their data). By utilising the DIR clinicians ensure: Legacy of patient data beyond the mandatory 7 years (for the lifetime of the patient) Minimise legal risk if records are lost or destroyed Rapid access for patients to their records (if your patients move in the future, surveys show more than 90% of patients change dentist at least once in their lifetime, and many patients have moved location/state post the covid pandemic) Eliminate future administrative issues surrounding requests for patient information

As per AHPRA/TGA regulations (MCNZ/Medsafe for New Zealand practices), the same rules apply to both dental implant components and dental abutment components. If you only place abutments, you are still legally required to record the component details and store them for a minimum of 7 years (10 years and 1 day for New Zealand practices) and have them accessible upon patient request. From the DIR’s findings, a number of practices who only place abutments were not aware of these regulations, and as such weren’t accurately recording their patients abutment component details. If you aren’t documenting this information, you are not meeting your current mandatory regulations which could lead to legal ramifications.

We offer 2 easy to use ways of incorporating the DIR into your current record management workflows: Users can choose to enter data directly onto the DIR application instead of manually recording this as a clinical note within their Practice Management Software. Registrations done via the DIR are quick, accurate and easy to do with our built in drop down and pre-populated implant catalogues (registrations take 2-3 mins to enter) Practices can keep their current record management workflows and send these records through to a DIR consultant who will do the data entry on their behalf (this adds about 10 seconds of work to your current workflows) (Both options see practices eligible for the DIR rebate system) Contact our team today if you would like more information about how best to incorporate the DIR in your practice

The DIR provides your practice with the necessary assets that can in turn be provided to patients prior to their treatment, informing them of the benefits of having their records on the DIR.

A 15 minute training session for your staff to attend (via Zoom) is all that is required to start implementing the DIR in your practice. Our team will also send you any assets needed and we will provide admin support during working hours.

All practice data is securely stored and inaccessible by anyone outside of your practice profile. Patient data is also securely stored and only accessible via their treating clinicians. If a new dental professional requires access to a patients DIR registrations, they will need to ask permission (via the application) which can be approved/declined by the patient. Please read next FAQ for more information.

The DIR is a Not-for-Profit and proceeds from the patient costings are used to fund our operations and research activities. The DIR uses a web app that is licenced to us by software company “Implant Registries” who own and store the data safely and securely on Australian servers. To date, all funds from patient registrations have gone towards operations and research and the Implant Registries has donated the use of the web app to the DIR. DIR data is used towards registry science, as a way to improve the outcomes for all patients in the future. All patient and practice data is anonymised for any research. As per our Terms and Conditions, we do not sell data to any third parties.