Dental Office IT Guide: Computers, Network, Backups & HIPAA

A dental office runs on more technology than most small businesses its size. The schedule, the charts, the X-rays, insurance claims, patient texts, card payments and the phones all depend on computers and a network working together. When one piece fails, it's not an IT inconvenience; it's a hygienist with a patient in the chair and no way to take a bitewing, or a front desk that can't check anyone in.

This guide walks through every part of a dental office's technology in plain English: where your practice management software should live, what computers to put in the operatories, how imaging fits in, phones, internet failover, backups, HIPAA security, Wi-Fi, vendor coordination, what it costs, and a step-by-step checklist for opening a new office or remodeling an existing one.

We're Beefed Up IT, a managed IT provider in Ormond Beach, Florida, and dental and medical practices are most of what we do. Everything here is what we'd tell a practice owner or office manager sitting across the table from us, including the mistakes we see most often.

What technology does a dental office actually need?

A dental office needs seven core systems: practice management software, imaging, workstations, a network, phones, internet with a backup line, and backups, all wrapped in HIPAA security. Every other decision comes back to how these pieces connect.

Here's the whole picture on one page. Use it as a map for the rest of the guide.

Practice management software is the program that runs the business side and most of the clinical record: scheduling, patient demographics, charting, treatment planning, insurance claims and statements. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Curve, Denticon and others all live in this category, and each has its own system requirements and support model.

Imaging software captures and stores radiographs from intraoral sensors, phosphor plates, panoramic and cone beam CT (CBCT) units, plus intraoral camera photos. Sometimes it's built into the PM software; more often it's a separate program from the imaging hardware vendor that "bridges" to your PM so clicking a patient opens their images. Imaging is demanding enough that we wrote a separate deep dive: the dental imaging network and computer guide.

Should your practice management software be on a server or in the cloud?

Either can be the right answer. Cloud software removes the server you have to buy, patch and back up, but stops working without internet. A local server keeps working when the internet drops but makes you responsible for hardware, backups and security. The deciding factors are your internet reliability, your imaging setup, and how much hardware you want to own.

What "server" and "cloud" really mean

• Local server (on-premises): A dedicated computer in your office runs the PM database. Every workstation connects to it over your office network. Open Dental, for example, states that it recommends "having a dedicated server to protect data," and its published server specs scale from a modest dual-core machine for 1–10 workstations up to quad-core hardware for larger offices (Open Dental computer requirements).
• Vendor cloud (software as a service): The vendor runs the database in its data center. You sign in through a browser or a small app. You don't own a server, but every click travels over your internet connection.
• Hosted: A third party runs your traditional, server-based software on their servers and you connect remotely. It's a middle ground and quality varies widely.
• Hybrid: Common in dentistry. Practice management runs in the cloud, but imaging stays local because X-ray and CBCT files are large and sensors plug into local PCs.

A decision table

What cloud software asks of your internet

Cloud vendors publish connection requirements, and they're per workstation, not per office. Open Dental's cloud version, for example, lists "20 mbps download. 10 mbps upload" for workstations and requires a small Windows helper app (ODCloudClient) to bridge to imaging and card processing software (Open Dental Cloud requirements). That's typical: cloud practice management doesn't remove local computers, it changes what they do.

Because the whole office stops without internet, a cloud move and an internet failover project are the same project. Don't do one without the other. We cover failover in detail below and in our EHR downtime and internet failover plan.

What a local server asks of you

If you keep a server, it needs to be treated like the most important machine in the building, because it is:

1. Business-class hardware with mirrored drives (RAID), so a single drive failure doesn't stop the office.
2. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), a battery unit that keeps the server running through brief power blips and lets it shut down cleanly in a long outage. Open Dental calls a UPS "optional but recommended"; in Florida thunderstorm season we treat it as required.
3. Patching and monitoring. Windows Server updates applied on a schedule, drive health and backup jobs watched, and alerts going to someone who acts on them.
4. Backups that leave the building, tested by actually restoring them.
5. Physical security. A locked closet or rack, not under the front desk where a patient's child can reach the power button.
6. A replacement plan. Servers typically get replaced every five to six years, before they fail, and before their operating system stops getting security updates.

Questions to ask before you switch to cloud

• What internet speed do you require per workstation, and per office?
• What happens on our end when the internet is down? Is there any offline or read-only mode?
• How does imaging bridge to your cloud? Which imaging systems are supported?
• Will you sign a business associate agreement (BAA)? (Any cloud vendor that stores patient data must. HHS's guidance on HIPAA and cloud computing makes this explicit.)
• How do we get a full export of our data if we leave?
• What backups do you keep, for how long, and can we keep our own?
• Is multi-factor sign-in supported, and can we require it for everyone?

What computers do dental operatories need?

Each operatory needs a reliable, business-grade Windows 11 Pro computer, wired to the network, with enough rear USB ports for the sensor and intraoral camera, and a monitor the patient can see. Buy to your imaging vendor's specs, not the cheapest box that runs the PM software.

Why "business-grade" matters

Consumer PCs from a big-box store are built for price. Business lines from the major manufacturers offer longer model availability (so replacements match), three-year on-site warranties, firmware that's managed centrally, and fewer pre-installed extras. In a dental office the "dead PC on a Tuesday morning" problem is expensive: a chair sits empty. A next-business-day on-site warranty is worth the extra cost.

Every new PC should meet Windows 11's requirements, including TPM 2.0 (a security chip that protects encryption keys) and UEFI Secure Boot (Microsoft Windows 11 specifications). If any of your operatory PCs are still on Windows 10, read our Windows 10 end-of-support guide; imaging PCs are the ones most often left behind.

Suggested specs by role

These are starting points we use for planning. Your PM and imaging vendors' published requirements always win if they ask for more.

Open Dental, as one example, suggests new workstations have a quad-core CPU, Windows 11, 8 GB of memory and a 1000 Mbps network connection, with 100 Mbps as "the absolute minimum" for the network (Open Dental computer requirements). We go higher on memory because imaging software, a browser full of insurance portals and Microsoft 365 all run at the same time.

Operatory-specific details people forget

• Mounting. Small-form-factor or "tiny" PCs mounted under the counter or behind the monitor arm keep cables off the floor. Make sure the mount still lets you reach the USB ports.
• Cleanable keyboards and mice. Sealed, wipeable keyboards survive disinfectant. Standard keyboards don't, and sticky keys generate support calls.
• Patient-facing monitor. Showing a patient their own radiograph or intraoral photo helps with case acceptance. Plan the monitor arm and cable path when cabinets are built, not after.
• Foot pedals and sensor holders. Some imaging setups use a foot switch or USB remote. Count every USB device per room.
• Screen lock. Operatory screens face patients. Set screens to lock after a short idle time and make unlocking fast (Windows Hello for Business with a PIN or fingerprint is much faster than a long password).
• One login per person. Shared "Op3" logins make HIPAA audit trails meaningless. Use individual sign-ins with fast switching.

How often should you replace them?

Plan on four to five years for workstations and five to six for a server. Spreading replacements over time, a few per year, keeps the budget flat and avoids the whole office aging out at once. Our computer replacement planner builds that schedule for you.

How should the front desk be set up?

The front desk is the single most important area for uptime: if it stops, the whole office stops. Give it the most reliable hardware, a direct line to the backup internet, and every peripheral tested before the first patient arrives.

A typical dental front desk handles check-in, insurance verification, scheduling, payments, phones and checkout, often for two or three people at once. That means:

• Two monitors per station. One for the schedule, one for the chart, insurance portal or ledger.
• ID and insurance card scanner. Make sure the driver is supported on Windows 11 and works with your PM software's "import" feature.
• Signature pad or tablet for consent forms and HIPAA acknowledgments, if your PM supports electronic signatures.
• Payment terminal. Card terminals should come from your payment processor and connect either over cellular or on their own network segment. Keep card data out of your PM system unless the processor's integration is designed for it.
• Printers. A reliable laser printer for walkouts and statements; a label printer if you use one. Network printers need their default passwords changed and firmware updated, like any other device.
• Phones with headsets. Wireless headsets free front-desk staff to move. Make sure they're compatible with the phone system you pick.
• Patient forms. Many practices now send intake forms by text or email before the visit. If patients fill them in on an office tablet instead, that tablet must be locked down (kiosk mode) and managed like any other device.

The test: On a slow afternoon, unplug the main internet connection and see what still works at the front desk. That five-minute test tells you more about your setup than any document.

How does dental imaging fit into the IT plan?

Imaging is the most demanding part of a dental office's IT. Sensors and cameras plug into operatory PCs by USB, panoramic and CBCT units need their own acquisition computer, and all images have to be stored centrally, backed up, and opened quickly from every room. Plan imaging first, then design the network and computers around it.

The short version:

1. Store images in one place. A central imaging server or network share, not on individual operatory PCs. When an operatory PC dies, no images should die with it.
2. Wire the network for gigabit. CBCT volumes can be hundreds of megabytes to over a gigabyte each. Over Wi-Fi or an old 100 Mbps switch, opening one becomes a coffee break.
3. Don't let Windows Update surprise you. Sensor drivers can break after an update. Manage updates centrally, test on one PC first, then roll out.
4. Back up images and the imaging database together, so a restore gives you images that are still linked to the right patients.
5. Sensors go directly into the PC's USB port where possible. Hubs and front-panel ports cause many "sensor not found" calls.

All of that, including storage sizing math, network design and a troubleshooting checklist, is in our dental imaging network and computer guide.

What phone system should a dental office use?

Most dental offices are best served by a cloud phone system (VoIP) that integrates with the practice management software, supports call queues and texting, and complies with federal 911 rules. Treat the phone system as part of your patient-data environment, because voicemails and texts often contain patient information.

VoIP (voice over internet protocol) means calls travel over the internet rather than old copper phone lines. The phone "system" lives in the provider's data center; your office just has handsets plugged into the network.

What to look for:

• PM integration (screen pop). When a patient calls, their record and next appointment pop up on the front-desk screen. This saves real time every day. Confirm your PM is supported.
• Call queues and ring groups so calls roll from the front desk to the treatment coordinator to the office manager instead of going to voicemail.
• Texting from the main office number for confirmations and two-way conversations. If messages contain patient information, the vendor should sign a BAA.
• Call recording, if you use it for training, is patient information too. Know where recordings are stored and for how long.
• Failover. If your office internet goes down, calls should automatically ring to cell phones or another location. Set this up on day one; it's free in most systems and forgotten in most offices.
• 911 compliance. The FCC's rules implementing Kari's Law require that a multi-line phone system let anyone dial 911 directly, without a prefix like "9," and notify a central location when 911 is called. Rules under RAY BAUM'S Act require sending a "dispatchable location" (street address, floor, suite) with the call to the extent technically feasible (FCC, 2025). Make sure your provider has your correct suite number.

Plan the phones and network together. Desk phones are usually powered by the network switch through PoE (power over ethernet), which sends power down the network cable. If that switch isn't on a UPS, every phone dies in a power blip. We cover phone and network design for small offices in our network, Wi-Fi and phone guide.

How do you keep a dental office running when the internet goes down?

Add a second, independent internet connection, usually a cellular (LTE/5G) line, to a firewall that switches over automatically. With cloud software, this is the difference between a five-second blip and closing the front desk for the afternoon.

This isn't theoretical for us. One of our dental clients had scheduling, imaging, insurance claims and patient records all depending on the internet. When the connection dropped, the front desk stopped: staff couldn't pull up records, submit claims or finish the day's work. We added automatic cellular failover that switches over with no one touching anything, moved their patient data to encrypted cloud storage, and put every device under management. The result: zero downtime during internet outages, with front-desk work continuing uninterrupted. You can read the full story in our dental practice case study.

How it works:

1. Primary line: business fiber or cable.
2. Backup line: a cellular router or modem from a different carrier with a business data plan, or a second wired provider if one is available on a different path into the building.
3. A firewall that supports two internet connections (dual WAN). It constantly checks the primary line and moves traffic to the backup within seconds when it fails, then moves back when it recovers.
4. Alerts to your IT provider when you're running on backup, so the primary outage gets reported to the internet provider promptly.
5. Everything critical on a UPS: the modem, firewall, network switch and cellular router. A failover line doesn't help if the box it plugs into loses power.

Want to know what an outage actually costs your practice? Our downtime cost calculator estimates lost production per hour. Most practices find a backup line pays for itself in the first outage. For the full planning process, including paper workflows, phones and testing, see the EHR downtime and internet failover plan.

How should a dental office back up its data?

Back up the practice management database, the imaging database and image files, and documents at least daily, keep one copy offsite or in the cloud and one copy that ransomware can't alter, and test restores on a schedule. A backup you've never restored is a hope, not a backup.

HIPAA makes this a requirement, not a nice-to-have. The Security Rule's contingency plan standard requires a data backup plan ("retrievable exact copies of electronic protected health information"), a disaster recovery plan, and an emergency mode operation plan (45 CFR 164.308(a)(7)).

The 3-2-1 rule, applied to a dental office

The 3-2-1 backup rule means three copies of your data, on two different types of storage, with one copy offsite. In practice:

1. Copy 1: the live data on your server (or in your cloud vendor's system).
2. Copy 2: a local backup device in the office for fast restores, such as a network storage appliance.
3. Copy 3: an offsite or cloud backup, ideally immutable, meaning it can't be changed or deleted for a set period, even by someone with admin passwords. That's what saves you from ransomware, which deliberately goes after backups.

What to back up

• Practice management database (use the vendor's supported backup method so the database is consistent, not a raw file copy while it's in use).
• Imaging database and image folders, backed up together.
• Scanned documents, signed forms and correspondence.
• Microsoft 365 email, OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft keeps the service running, but recovering from accidental deletion or a compromised account beyond its built-in retention is your responsibility.
• Configuration: firewall settings, phone system settings, a list of every installed program and license key.

If your practice management is in the cloud

Ask your vendor exactly what they back up, how often, how long they keep it, and whether you can get your own copy on a schedule. Some practices keep a periodic export as their own safety net; that export is patient data, so it must be encrypted and access-controlled.

How long to keep it

In Florida, Board of Dentistry rule 64B5-17.002 requires keeping dental records at least four years from the patient's last examination or treatment, and appointment book or log entries at least four years from each entry (Fla. Admin. Code R. 64B5-17.002). HIPAA separately requires keeping your security policies, risk assessments and related documentation for six years (45 CFR 164.316). Malpractice considerations often push practices to keep records longer, so confirm your policy with your attorney or malpractice carrier.

Test it

Once a quarter, restore something real: a patient's chart and images from last month, onto a test machine. Write down how long it took. That number is your real RTO (recovery time objective), the time it takes to get running again. Our backup storage calculator helps estimate how much backup space you need, and the backup and disaster recovery guide goes deeper.

What does HIPAA require of a dental office's IT?

HIPAA's Security Rule requires you to analyze the risks to electronic patient data, put reasonable safeguards in place, control who can access what, protect data in transit and at rest, have a contingency plan, and sign business associate agreements with vendors that handle patient data. For a small practice, that translates into a specific, achievable list.

ePHI (electronic protected health information) is any patient-identifiable health information stored or sent electronically: charts, X-rays, appointment details, insurance data, even a voicemail saying "this is Jane calling about her crown."

The practical HIPAA IT checklist for a dental office

1. Do a risk analysis and update it when anything significant changes. It's a required part of the Security Rule (45 CFR 164.308(a)(1)). Our HIPAA security risk assessment guide shows how.
2. Individual logins for everyone, no shared accounts, and access removed the day someone leaves.
3. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) on email, remote access, cloud PM and anything reachable from the internet. MFA means signing in requires a second proof, such as an app approval, on top of the password.
4. Encryption on every computer's drive (BitLocker, built into Windows Pro) and on backups, so a stolen laptop or drive isn't a reportable breach.
5. Endpoint protection with monitoring. EDR (endpoint detection and response) watches computers for suspicious behavior and can isolate an infected PC. Microsoft Defender for Business provides this for small organizations.
6. Patch management. Windows, browsers, PM and imaging software kept current, with a test-first process for imaging PCs.
7. Device management. Microsoft Intune lets your IT provider enforce encryption, screen locks, updates and security settings on every PC from one place, and wipe a lost device.
8. Business associate agreements (BAAs) with every vendor that stores, processes or can access patient data: PM vendor, imaging cloud, phone/texting vendor, backup provider, IT provider, email provider. Microsoft provides a HIPAA BAA for in-scope Microsoft 365 services through its standard terms (Microsoft Learn). See our BAA guide.
9. Email security, including protection against phishing and a way to send encrypted email. Phishing is how most small-office compromises start.
10. Staff training at hire and at least yearly, plus a written breach response plan.

Ransomware is a HIPAA event, not just an IT event

HHS's guidance is direct: when ransomware encrypts patient data, a breach is presumed to have occurred unless the practice can demonstrate a low probability that the information was compromised, based on the Breach Notification Rule's risk assessment factors (HHS Fact Sheet: Ransomware and HIPAA). That means ransomware prevention (MFA, EDR, patching, training) and recovery (immutable backups) protect you from both downtime and notification obligations. Our ransomware protection guide covers the full playbook.

What about the proposed HIPAA Security Rule changes?

In late December 2024, HHS's Office for Civil Rights proposed the first major update to the Security Rule since 2013, published in January 2025. The proposal would make several safeguards that are currently "addressable" mandatory, including encryption and multi-factor authentication, and add requirements like asset inventories and regular vulnerability scanning (HHS OCR announcement). As of this writing (October 2026), it is still a proposal, not a final rule. The federal regulatory agenda published in mid-2026 projected final action for July 2027 (McDermott, July 2026). Check HHS for the latest. Our take: MFA and encryption are worth doing now regardless, because they're what actually stop breaches. More in our proposed changes article.

The 405(d) program's free Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices (HICP) publication, produced by HHS and industry, includes a technical volume written specifically for small healthcare organizations and is a solid, practical reference (HHS 405(d)). Our free HIPAA security checklist turns this into a quick self-check.

How should Wi-Fi be set up for patients and staff?

Run separate wireless networks for staff, patients and devices, and make sure the patient network can reach the internet but nothing inside your office. Patient Wi-Fi is a courtesy; it must never be a doorway to your server.

The tool that makes this possible is a VLAN (virtual local area network), which splits one physical network into separate, walled-off networks. Your firewall decides what each one can reach.

Practical tips:

• Change the guest password periodically, and don't post the staff password anywhere patients can see it.
• Staff personal phones go on guest Wi-Fi, not staff Wi-Fi, unless they're enrolled in device management.
• Use business access points managed from one console, mounted on the ceiling, not a consumer router on a shelf. Plan coverage for operatories, the break room and the parking lot edge if you do curbside check-in.
• Limit guest bandwidth. A guest network capped at a modest share of your connection keeps the front desk fast.

Who do you call when something breaks? (Vendor coordination)

Write down who supports each system, how to reach them, and who in your office is allowed to call. Most dental IT problems involve two or three vendors pointing at each other, and a clear support map ends that.

A typical dental office has six to ten technology vendors. Here's a sample support map; fill in your own:

The rule we work by: the IT provider owns the problem until it's solved, even when the fix belongs to another vendor. We open the ticket, get on the call with the imaging vendor's technician, and make sure the fix doesn't break something else. That coordination is a big part of what a good managed IT service does for a dental office.

Keep a one-page "IT contacts" sheet at the front desk with each vendor's support number, account number, and the name of whoever's authorized to call. Store a copy offsite, because during an outage you may not be able to open the digital one.

How much does IT cost for a dental office?

Expect three buckets: one-time hardware and setup, monthly software subscriptions, and monthly support. A small practice typically spends the most up front on workstations and imaging computers, then a steady monthly amount on software and IT support. We don't publish fake averages; here are honest, typical ranges to plan with.

How to keep costs predictable:

• Replace on a schedule, not on failure. A few PCs a year beats an emergency purchase of ten.
• Standardize models so spare parts and setups match.
• Don't skimp on the network. A good switch and firewall last years and affect every single room.
• Price the cost of downtime alongside the cost of prevention. One afternoon of a closed front desk usually costs more than a year of a backup internet line. Our managed IT services cost guide explains how support pricing works and what should be included.

For help choosing Microsoft 365 plans, the Microsoft 365 plan picker walks through Basic, Standard and Premium for a practice.

What's the IT checklist for opening a new dental office?

Start IT planning at least 90 days before opening, because network cabling, internet service and equipment lead times are what delay openings. Here's the timeline we use with new and relocating practices.

90+ days before opening

1. Choose PM and imaging software and get each vendor's current system requirements in writing.
2. Order internet service for the new address. Business fiber or cable installs can take weeks, and some buildings need construction work for the line to reach your suite. Ask which providers actually serve the building.
3. Plan the backup line: test cellular signal strength in the suite with phones from different carriers.
4. Get the floor plan to your IT provider before walls close. Mark every operatory, the front desk, the doctor's office, sterilization, the lab, the pano/CBCT room and the network closet.
5. Design the cabling. For each operatory: at least two network drops (PC and phone) plus spares; for the pano/CBCT room: drops for the unit and the acquisition PC; ceiling drops for Wi-Fi access points; drops for TVs, cameras and printers. Use Cat6 cable to a central closet.
6. Plan the network closet: ventilation, a dedicated electrical circuit, a lockable door, and room for a rack, UPS, firewall, switches and the server if you keep one.

60 days before

7. Order hardware: PCs, monitors, mounts, firewall, switches, access points, UPS units, printers, scanners. Business PCs can take weeks to ship.
8. Sign up for services: phones (port your existing numbers early; porting can take weeks), Microsoft 365, payment processing.
9. Collect BAAs from every vendor that will touch patient data.
10. Plan the data conversion if you're switching PM software, and schedule it with the vendor.

30 days before

11. Cabling installed and tested; certify each drop.
12. Internet live; failover line installed and tested.
13. Network configured: VLANs for staff, phones, devices and guests; firewall rules; Wi-Fi coverage checked room by room.
14. Computers set up with a standard configuration: Windows 11 Pro, encryption, Defender, Intune management, PM and imaging software, printers and scanners.
15. Imaging installed and calibrated by the imaging vendor, with your IT provider present so drivers, storage paths and backups are set correctly.

Opening week

16. Test every operatory: sign in, open a chart, take a sensor image, view it from another room, print.
17. Test phones: inbound, outbound, transfers, voicemail, failover to cell phones, and a 911 test call coordinated with the local emergency communications center if your provider recommends it.
18. Test failover: unplug the primary internet and confirm cloud software, phones and card processing keep working.
19. Run the first backup and a test restore.
20. Train staff on sign-in, MFA, screen locking, phishing basics and what to do when something breaks.
21. Update your risk analysis and document the new environment.

Moving an existing practice

Everything above applies, plus: don't move the server and imaging data on a Friday night without a verified backup taken that day; keep the old internet service live for a week of overlap; and forward phone numbers before the movers arrive.

What mistakes do we see most in dental office IT?

The most common problems aren't exotic. They're the same handful of gaps, over and over.

1. The "server" is a front-desk PC. Everything runs fine until that receptionist's computer gets restarted mid-morning or catches malware from a browsing session. Use a dedicated server or move to cloud.
2. Images stored on the operatory PC. When that PC dies, so do the images that never made it to central storage.
3. Cloud software with no backup internet. The software vendor promised 99.9% uptime; the cable company didn't.
4. Backups that have never been restored. Or backups that only copy the image folder but not the database that links images to patients.
5. Automatic Windows updates on imaging PCs with no test step, followed by a morning of "sensor not detected."
6. Shared logins like "frontdesk" or "op2," which make access control and audit trails impossible.
7. Patient Wi-Fi on the same network as the server. A guest network has to be a separate network, not just a separate password.
8. No BAA with the phone or texting vendor, even though appointment texts and voicemails contain patient information.
9. Ex-employees still have access, especially to email and cloud PM, weeks after leaving.
10. No one owns IT. The office manager, the dentist's nephew and three vendors each think someone else is handling it.

What does this look like in a real practice? Two example scenarios

These are illustrative examples based on common situations, not specific clients.

Example 1: A new four-operatory startup in Port Orange

A dentist opening a first practice chooses cloud practice management to avoid buying a server. The plan: business fiber as the primary line, a cellular backup router on a different carrier, a dual-WAN firewall with automatic failover, and UPS units on the network gear. Each operatory gets a small business PC mounted under the counter, a patient-facing monitor, and two network drops. Intraoral sensors plug into rear USB ports. Because pano images still come from a local acquisition PC, a small network storage device holds images locally and replicates them to encrypted cloud backup every night. Microsoft 365 Business Premium provides email, MFA, Intune and Defender. On opening week, the team unplugs the fiber during a mock appointment: the schedule, charts and phones keep working on cellular.

Example 2: An established eight-operatory practice with an aging server

An established office has a seven-year-old server running PM and imaging, a CBCT unit, and Windows 10 on two imaging PCs. Choices: replace the server or move PM to the cloud. Because the CBCT archive is large and the CBCT vendor's viewing software expects local storage, the practice keeps a new, smaller on-site server for imaging and moves practice management to the cloud. The two Windows 10 imaging PCs are replaced after the imaging vendor confirms Windows 11 support for the sensor drivers. Backups are rebuilt around 3-2-1 with an immutable cloud copy, and a quarterly restore test goes on the calendar.

Questions to ask your IT provider (or any IT provider you're considering)

• Have you supported dental practices with our PM and imaging software before?
• Will you coordinate directly with our PM, imaging and phone vendors, or will we be in the middle?
• How do you handle Windows updates on imaging PCs?
• How do you back up the PM and imaging data, and how often do you test restores?
• Will you sign a BAA?
• What's monitored around the clock, and what happens when an alert fires at night? (Ask whether that means staffed 24/7 support or automated monitoring with alerts; they're different things, and honest providers will tell you which they offer.)
• How do you handle new hires and departures?
• What will you document for our HIPAA risk analysis?

Our guide to choosing a managed IT provider has a longer list.

The bottom line

Good dental office IT isn't about buying the most expensive gear. It's about a few decisions made deliberately: where your PM software lives, how imaging is stored and backed up, a network built for gigabit imaging and separated for guests, a backup internet line that kicks in automatically, tested backups, and the HIPAA basics (MFA, encryption, managed devices, BAAs) done consistently.

Get those right and technology fades into the background, which is exactly where it belongs while you're treating patients.

If you'd like a second set of eyes on your current setup, a plan for a new office, or help deciding between server and cloud, book a free 20-minute call with us. We work with dental practices across Ormond Beach, Daytona Beach, Port Orange, Palm Coast and DeLand, and remotely anywhere in the US.