UPDATE: Dentrix System

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On December 21st, 2018, our union met with the California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS) to discuss the implementation of the Electronic Dental Health Records System known as Dentrix within all 35 CDCR facilities in the state.

The Dentrix system will be used for clinical documentation and treatment planning. Dentrix will interface with the Cerner system, MiPACS, and will replace the current dental scheduling application. Dentrix will generally replace many current paper-based treatment documentation processes.

Some of the major details from the negotiations include the following:

  • The Dentrix system has been phased into all 35 CDCR facilities over a period of months including, training provided by the manufacturer, training of super users, and re-visits from the manufacturer which will include elbow-to-elbow support in dental clinics.
  • The workflows which explain how each impacted classification interacts with the new system was created by a team of employees from each impacted classification.
  • Employees are encouraged to report issues or glitches with the new system to their supervisors and/or use the CDCR/CCHCS solutions ticket process available on the CDCR/CCHCS intranet.
  • Statewide Dental Director expressed a shifting in some job duties and functions as a result of the Dentrix implementation may be necessary, however, expressed there are no plans or foreseeable needs to change the staffing levels as a result of this system implementation.
  • Our bargaining team strongly expressed a need to engage rank and file employees when surveying and discussing the Dentrix system, any problems, and its overall effectiveness during follow-up visits and discussions.