Hu-Friedy, Chicago, recently unveiled the GreenLight Dental Compliance Center™—an online portal that contains resources to help dental practices develop and maintain a compliant infection prevention program.
As a press release from the company puts it, “Dental practices are currently challenged with understanding and implementing up-to-date infection prevention standards, which at times can be an ambiguous, complicated process. Additionally, dental professionals lack a centralized resource to review guidelines and regulations from the CDC, OSHA, and individual state boards. As a result, many practices may be unaware they are not currently meeting the latest standards and best practices for such things as instrument reprocessing, auditing processes, and staff training.”
According to a third-party survey commissioned by Hu-Friedy, many practices have infection prevention programs that are not fully compliant. For example, 66% of dental practices are not compliant in their use of sterilization monitors, 36% transport contaminated instruments on loose trays, and 29% hand scrub instruments. However, in that same survey, 99% of respondents felt their infection prevention programs are effective. The company says this lack of knowledge on compliance puts patients, staff, and practices at risk.
“Too often we see headlines about dental practices inadvertently exposing patients and staff to the risk of infection. From a business perspective, non-compliance increases the likelihood a practice will have financial consequences. Worse, inadequate infection prevention policies cause practices to lose the trust of staff and patients. However, we know that it’s not easy to understand and follow every best practice and regulation,” said Jennifer Naylor, executive vice president at Hu-Friedy. “We fundamentally believe that GreenLight Dental Compliance Center solves a major problem facing the modern dental practice—for the first time, practices will have a central, trusted resource to help them assess, improve and maintain all their compliance obligations.”
After logging into the GreenLight portal, dental professionals will be able to set up personalized protocols by answering questions about their current procedures. For guidance, the portal provides comprehensive and up-to-date information on compliance, including state board regulations, product information and safety data sheets, training videos, insights on the infection prevention coordinator role, and other “hot topics” related to infection prevention compliance.
Additionally, dental practices will be able to self-assess their compliance through GreenLight’s self-audit system. The audit system provides immediate feedback, and practices can save their audits for future review.
According to a press release from the company, each new GreenLight member will also receive a free consultation with Hu-Friedy’s team of experts, who will answer any questions that may arise as practices create and implement their new infection control protocols.
GreenLight Dental Compliance Center is a members-only Hu-Friedy resource. Dental professionals who want to learn more about the program can call 800-483-7433, contact their Hu-Friedy representative, or visit greenlightcompliancecenter.com to learn more about the program.
