Dental facilities of all sizes need to make safety, consistency, and efficiency a top priority. It’s critical to delivering the best patient experience and most stable business model. For one dental facility, success came from a strategic change to cassettes for instrument management.

This dental facility paid close attention to the safety of their clinical team. Proper safety etiquette and compliance is at the forefront of each of their offices – even one sharps injury is considered one too many.

Sharps injuries put staff at risk of being exposed to infections such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. These injuries also carry a significant cost. Between the time off, medical testing, and insurance, post-exposure management costs a practice up to $3,000 per incident.¹ Finding a way to minimize the risk of sharps injuries is a top priority for this organization.

Sharps Injuries Eliminated

After switching to cassettes, there were zero incidents of sharps injuries.

Cleaning instruments by hand increases the risk of sharps injury, as approximately 31% occur during cleaning.² With cassettes, instruments are contained throughout the sterilization process, which dramatically lowers the risk of occupational exposure. The only time staff has direct contact with any instrument is in the operatory with patients.

Greater Efficiency

Because instruments are not scrubbed, sorted and pouched manually, instruments were reprocessed eight minutes faster with instrument cassettes.

The extra cassettes give the team members throughout the day adds up. They can spend more one-on-one time with patients, building relationships, explaining treatment plans, and ensuring they are 100% comfortable.

Protects Instruments

Cassettes keep instruments organized and in proper cleaning positions, which helps the offices protect their investment in instruments.

Without cassettes, instruments are more frequently damaged during reprocessing or lost, which means offices buy new instruments more often. With cassettes, the instruments are held securely in place throughout reprocessing. This means the staff spends less time looking for lost instruments and replacing damaged ones.

Faster Onboarding

The streamlined setup of the instrument cassettes makes training new assistants significantly faster.

Every instrument has a specific spot within the cassettes, and the color-coded system allows procedural setups to be easily identified. When new assistants come into the dental office, they can quickly locate what is needed and feel confident it has all the necessary instruments.

“The patients are always the first priority for anything that we do,” said the purchasing manager. “If it helps doctors build relationships with patients while also helping the leads at the same time, that’s a win-win for everyone.”

Instrument Management Cycle

The cassettes keep instruments organized and protected throughout the facility. This allows clinicians to move instruments from chairside to cleaning to sterilization to storage without touching the instruments. This helps to improve efficiency, safety, compliance, organization, standardization, and instrument protection.