Waterline Compliance: Decrease Risk Through Increased Visibility

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Imagine you are tasked with mitigating risk while battling high staff turnover rates, a variety of office-to-office technology, systems, and SOPs, and state-by-state infection control regulations, which are often unclear, especially dental unit waterline compliance. You have little to no visibility into an office’s water quality while managing multiple offices, so how are you supposed to know where to focus your time and energy to mitigate risk? This is the reality for most DSO compliance managers. Success seems insurmountably difficult in lieu of current compliance solutions to help drive good behaviors at the office level. With little visibility into what is happening in each office, infections and violations seem inevitable.

What You Cannot See, You Cannot Address

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a public health alert through the Health Alert Network (HAN) on October 31, 2022, concerning a nontuberculous Mycobacteria outbreak in Georgia impacting multiple children due to contaminated dental unit waterlines.[1] Poor water quality was also mentioned as the primary source of contamination in other notable outbreaks like Atlanta in 2015[2] and Anaheim in 2016[3].

Countless other stories required ProEdge Dental Water Labs’ involvement over the years, many resulting in forced closures or fines (of up to $10,000 daily) until proper remediation of the waterline(s) was successful. In many cases these offices are part of a group or DSO, underscoring the importance of having visibility in an office’s waterline maintenance processes and compliance.

Kellie Thimmes, BS, DISIPC and OSHA consultant for some of the largest DSOs says it best, “Compliance managers can’t fix what they can’t see. Waterline compliance requires more than just routine checks; it demands consistent awareness. Increasing visibility is the first step toward mitigating risks and ensuring a safe practice.”

ProEdge would estimate that merely 16% of dental offices are achieving quarterly waterline compliance, resulting in significant possibility for infections or violations to occur. The issue of visibility is central to the success of mitigating water quality risk.

Successful Waterline Compliance is Possible for Multi-Practice Organizations

ProEdge has worked alongside leaders from top DSOs to develop a dashboard to help drive successful waterline compliance. The ProEdge Dashboard gives you visibility into every office’s compliance, at a glance, so you know which offices need your support to reduce risk. The ProEdge Dashboard also drives compliance by reminding your offices when to test, what to do if they failed a test, and which step is needed for each office to achieve success.

In fact, 79.6% of dental professionals using the ProEdge Dashboard have seen improvement in their waterline compliance. What’s more, one of the nation’s leading DSOs has experienced a 15% increase in their overall pass rates since their network-wide rollout utilizing the ProEdge Dashboard.

With new features launching monthly, the ProEdge waterline compliance dashboard is continuously releasing new tools to help you pinpoint risk and increase passing water tests across your organization.

If you have been looking for a solution that gives you the visibility you need to be effective at managing your offices’ waterline compliance. Reach out to the ProEdge DSO team for a demo of the dashboard and how it can support you in managing waterline compliance.

Call 888.843.3343 or email salessupport@proedgedental.com

 

Sources:

[1] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Outbreaks of Nontuberculous Mycobacteria Infections Highlight Importance of Maintaining and Monitoring Dental Waterlines,” Health Alert Network (HAN) Health Advisory, October 31, 2022, https://emergency.cdc.gov/han/2022/han00478.asp.

[2] G. Peralta et al., “Notes from the Field: Mycobacterium abscessus Infections Among Patients of a Pediatric Dentistry Practice — Georgia, 2015,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 65, no. 13 (2016): 355–356.

[3] Jasjit Singh et al., “Outbreak of Invasive Nontuberculous Mycobacterium (NTM) Infections Associated With a Pediatric Dental Practice,” Open Forum Infectious Diseases 5, no. suppl_1 (November 2018): S29.

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