Hu-Friedy unveils infection control compliance resource

Hu-Friedy announced the release of a breakthrough resource to help dental professionals stay on top of infection prevention standards to protect the safety of their patients and staff and avoid violations that can jeopardize their practices.

The GreenLight Dental Compliance Center™ by Hu-Friedy provides a single, convenient online portal that reportedly contains everything a dental practice needs to develop and maintain a compliant infection prevention program.

GreenLight is reportedly a first in the dental industry. Dental practices are currently challenged with understanding and implementing up-to-date infection prevention standards, which at times can be an ambiguous, complicated process. Additionally, dental professionals lack a centralized resource to review guidelines and regulations from the CDC, OSHA and individual state boards. As a result, many practices may be unaware that they're not currently meeting the latest standards and best practices for such things as instrument reprocessing, auditing processes and staff training.

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According to a third-party survey commissioned by Hu-Friedy, many practices have infection prevention programs that aren't fully compliant. For example, 66 percent of dental practices aren't compliant in their use of sterilization monitors, 36 percent transport contaminated instruments on loose trays and 29 percent hand scrub instruments. However, in that same survey, 99 percent of respondents felt their infection prevention programs are effective. This lack of knowledge on compliance puts patients, staff and practices at risk.

"Too often we see headlines about dental practices inadvertently exposing patients and staff to the risk of infection," says Jennifer Naylor, executive vice president at Hu-Friedy. "From a business perspective, non-compliance increases the likelihood a practice will have financial consequences. Worse, inadequate infection prevention policies cause practices to lose the trust of staff and patients. However, we know that it's not easy to understand and follow every best practice and regulation. We fundamentally believe that GreenLight Dental Compliance Center solves a major problem facing the modern dental practice - for the first time, practices will have a central, trusted resource to help them assess, improve and maintain all their compliance obligations."

After logging into the GreenLight portal, dental professionals will be able to set up personalized protocols by answering questions about their current procedures. For guidance, the portal is designed to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on compliance, including state board regulations, product information and safety data sheets, training videos, insights on the infection prevention coordinator role, and other "hot topics" related to infection prevention compliance.

Additionally, dental practices will reportedly be able to self-assess their compliance through GreenLight's easy-to-use self-audit system. The audit system provides immediate feedback and practices can save their audits for future review.

Each new GreenLight member will also receive a free consultation with Hu-Friedy's team of experts, who will answer any questions that may arise as practices create and implement their new infection control protocols.

GreenLight Dental Compliance Center is a members-only Hu-Friedy resource. Dental professionals who are ready to assess and improve their infection prevention protocols can call 1-800-Hu-Friedy (1-800-483-7433) or click here to contact their Hu-Friedy representative, or they can visit www.greenlightcompliancecenter.com to learn more about the program.