Our practice management vendor wants us on their cloud version. Should we?

Every major dental practice management vendor is moving customers to a cloud or hosted version, and the pressure will increase whatever you decide this year. The push is genuine and so are the benefits, and the sales conversation tends to skip the parts you should actually weigh.

The real advantages, in our experience rather than in the brochure: the server in your closet stops being a single point of failure and stops needing replacement every five years, your data is somewhere better protected than most practices manage on site, remote access works properly, and updates stop being an event you have to schedule around.

Three questions to ask before you agree:

• What happens to imaging? This is the one that surprises people. Practice management moving to the cloud does not automatically move your imaging, and the integration between cloud practice management and on premise imaging is where the friction lives. Get a specific answer about your sensors, your radiography software and your CT, by name.
• What does it cost over five years, not one? Compare honestly against staying put, including the server replacement you would otherwise make and the support around it. Sometimes cloud is cheaper, often it is comparable, occasionally it is noticeably more. All three are fine answers. Being surprised in year three is not.
• How do I get my data out? Ask before you sign, in writing. The answer tells you a great deal about the vendor. A practice that may sell to a DSO, or switch software one day, needs to know this is possible and what it costs.

What does not change: you still need backup. A common misunderstanding is that cloud means the vendor has it covered. The vendor protects their infrastructure. That is not the same as you having a recoverable copy of your own data if something is deleted, corrupted or an account is compromised. Ask them exactly what they back up, how far back, and how you request a restore.

And your internet connection becomes critical rather than important. If the practice cannot work without it, it needs to be reliable and it needs a backup path. That is a real cost to include in the comparison.

We will sit in on the vendor call with you if that is useful. We are not trying to talk you out of it, we just want the questions asked while you still have leverage.