Dental IT support in Melbourne.
When a chair stops, the day stops.
Practice management, imaging and claiming terminals kept working together — and someone who answers when it breaks at 6pm, not on Monday.
The short answer: dental IT support means keeping four things agreeing with each other — your practice management database, the imaging bridge, the sensor drivers and the claiming terminal. When one stops agreeing, the surgery stops. We cover that specifically, either alongside your current IT provider or instead of them, from $390 a month.
A dental practice is not a generic office with teeth. An accounting firm losing a file server has a bad afternoon; a practice losing its database at 8am has a waiting room, a full book and no way to see who is arriving. The software is more interconnected, the downtime is more expensive by the hour, and the records are covered by law regardless of how small the practice is.
Which practice software do you support?
All the common ones — but the brand matters less than where the software actually runs. A server in your back room, a hosted desktop and a browser-based system fail in completely different ways, and the first useful question on any call is which of those three you have.
If your practice software won’t open right now, the checks to run before you ring anyone are written up in full, free, with no form in front of them.
The five faults we see most
| What breaks | What it stops | Usually caused by |
|---|---|---|
| Practice management won't open | Every chair, reception, the day's book | The database service stopped, the server ran out of disk, or a workstation lost its path to the server after an update |
| Imaging opens but the sensor won't capture | X-rays only, and usually on one surgery's machine | The bridge between the practice software and the imaging software, or a sensor driver replaced by a Windows update |
| HICAPS or Tyro won't claim | Checkout — patients wait at reception | The terminal lost its network path, or the integration between the terminal and the practice software dropped |
| One workstation is slow, the rest are fine | One surgery, all day | A failing drive, a full profile, or antivirus scanning the imaging folder it should be excluding |
| Nothing works, everywhere, at once | The practice | The server, the switch, or the internet connection — in that order of likelihood, and each is checked differently |
None of these are exotic. What costs practices money is the first half hour of a call spent explaining how the place is put together — which is the part that disappears when whoever answers has seen your setup before.
What the Privacy Act expects of a practice
Most small businesses under $3 million in annual turnover are exempt from the Privacy Act. Health service providers are not. A practice holding health information carries the same obligations as a large organisation, regardless of how many chairs it has.
In practice that means taking reasonable steps to protect patient records — and if a breach is likely to result in serious harm, assessing it within 30 calendar days at the outside and notifying affected patients and the Information Commissioner as soon as practicable. “We had a backup” only helps if that backup can actually be restored, which is why we test restores rather than trusting a green tick.
We are IT people, not lawyers — this is the practical reading, and the OAIC publishes the detail.
What dental IT support costs here
Published, because comparing two providers should not take two sales calls.
What the monthly fee includes
- Unlimited after-hours phone and remote triage — as many calls as you need, never metered
- One hour of hands-on after-hours work each month, or three hours on Standard cover
- Saturday cover and the Sunday emergency line
- No callout fee, on remote or on-site work, for as long as you are on a cover plan
- Someone who already knows your practice, so no evening starts with explaining it
What is charged on top
- Hands-on work beyond the included hour — $180/hr, or $160/hr on Standard cover
- Hardware and licences — equipment, Microsoft 365 seats, software subscriptions, at cost
- Project work — migrations, fit-outs, server replacements — quoted before it starts
- Business hours, which stay with your existing provider. Ring us anyway if you are stuck and we will help if we can, at the hourly rate
- Fees charged by other vendors, such as your practice software supplier, passed through as they are
The monthly fee buys availability: that someone answers, already knows your practice, and starts work immediately. The included hour covers most evenings outright. When a job runs longer you pay for the extra time — at a rate well below the $250 to $400 an hour a break-fix provider charges after hours, and without their $200 to $350 callout fee on top. One evening call-out bought that way lands somewhere between about $450 and $1,150.
Cover works out cheaper once that happens a few times a year. Below that, paying per job is cheaper on paper, and what you are really buying is that someone answers at all. The full cost breakdown shows the arithmetic either way.
Keep your current provider if you want to
Most practices start with after-hours cover only. Your existing provider keeps the nine-to-five and nothing about that arrangement changes. We pick up weekday evenings until 9pm, Saturdays 8am to 4pm, and a Sunday emergency line — the hours when a Saturday clinic or a late surgery has nobody to ring.
If you would rather hand over the lot, full management is available too. Either way, the first step is the same: a free IT health check that tells you plainly where your setup stands, or the nine-question risk check if you would rather not talk to anyone yet.
Dental IT questions we get most
How much does dental IT support cost in Melbourne?
After-hours cover is $390 a month for practices up to 10 staff, or $690 a month for 10 to 30 staff, and sits alongside your existing provider. Without a retainer it is $280 an hour, with a $150 on-site callout. Full management, where we look after everything, starts at $490 a month for a small team.
Do you support Dental4Windows, Exact and Praktika?
Yes — along with Oasis, Core Practice and the cloud-hosted systems. What matters more than the brand is where the software actually runs. A server in your back room, a hosted desktop and a browser-based system each fail differently and are fixed differently, and knowing which you have is usually the first question worth asking.
Can you cover only after hours, alongside our current IT provider?
Yes, and that is how most practices start with us. Your existing provider keeps the nine-to-five. We cover weekday evenings until 9pm, Saturdays 8am to 4pm, and a Sunday emergency line. Nothing needs to change about your current arrangement.
What does the Privacy Act require of a dental practice?
The small business exemption for turnover under $3 million does not apply to health service providers holding health information, so a two-chair practice carries the same obligations as a large one. That means taking reasonable steps to protect patient records, and if a breach is likely to cause serious harm, assessing it within 30 calendar days at the outside and notifying affected patients and the Information Commissioner as soon as practicable.
How quickly can you respond if a chair is down?
On Standard cover we call back within 30 minutes. Most practice management and imaging faults are resolved remotely, because the fix is usually a service, a driver or a permission rather than hardware. If it needs someone on site, after-hours visits carry no callout fee on cover plans.
Chair down, or planning ahead?
Call 03 7057 1878 if something is broken now. If it can wait, the free IT health check is the easiest place to start — no obligation, no pressure.