Oasis approaches 1000 site milestone

Oasis Software is expecting to celebrate a rare milestone by year end with the installation of their practice management software in the 1000th dental practice in Australia and New Zealand.

"We're definitely planning something special for site number 1000," said Noel Morley, managing director of Oasis Software. "In a market the size of Australia and New Zealand, it will be quite an achievement to have our software installed in so many practices.

"It also means that we have a critical mass of users that allows us to go beyond the provision of management software alone to how that software and the powerful information it contains about the practice can be put to work.

"We're essentially evolving our role of simply providing accounting and clinical records management functions to using the Oasis database to grow a practice by allowing the principals to make better management and marketing decisions. We see this as a clear direction for the future."

Oasis Software is headquartered in Melbourne in new premises located in suburban Ringwood. The 240 square metre facility houses sales, software development and support together with a dedicated training centre.

"Educating our users has been a key factor in the success of our software to date," Mr Morley said, "and will continue to be in the future. A key requisite for the new premises we moved into a year ago was sufficient space to incorporate an onsite training centre.

"We run courses once or twice a week for new users to learn both basic and advanced features of the software and this has been core to the evolution of Oasis as the number one product.

"We're also now running monthly practice development courses open to anyone where we look at marketing, recalls, phone answering and other issues unrelated to the software. We have an experienced practice management trainer and consultant on staff who delivers the programmes and is also available to visit practices on site to help implement a range of practice building protocols."

Mr Morley estimates that between 60 and 70% of practices in Australia and New Zealand now have some form of computerised practice management software.

"Key to our future will be our ability to continue to be the innovator in software design. We were the first software developer to provide a direct link to the HICAPS health fund claims processing system, for example. Earlier this year, we launched a telephony feature that links Oasis to your phone system so that when a patient calls the practice, Oasis searches the database using the Caller ID and automatically displays the patient's record on screen even before you answer the phone.

"And this month, we have launched Presentation Manager software that allows our clients to produce highly professional treatment plans incorporating x-rays, images and more for patients on the spot, significantly increasing case acceptance.

"We similarly have a range of other initiatives in the design and development phase that will continue to ensure Oasis is the market leader."