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Q Study Models: What are the Rules?

Please can you offer me some advice? We would like to know if we can give study models out to patients and if so, how long can the patient keep them for?

A
The current recommendation from the Dental Protection Society is that records could be kept for a minimum of eleven years post treatment (adults) and until the age of twenty-five or eleven years post treatment, whichever is the longer, for children.  This is for medic-legal reasons.  However, litigation solicitors will go back a lot further than eleven years and if there are no records available it is often difficult to defend the dentist's actions.  Thus Dental Protection suggests they are kept for life if possible! 

The suggestion made by one of the Dental Protection Dentao-legal advisors is that study models are disposed of after about five years (post treatment), assuming the treatment has been straightforward and without incident.  In this case it is most important to keep a record to demonstrate what the study models look like.  Most commonly this is done by photographing them in three plains with a measuring rule alongside to give a degree of scale.  These can either be kept in the patient’s records or on computer, or on disc.  This is what we do at Quality Orthodontics.  In the case of giving records to patients, I would suggest that the patient be offered a duplicate set, for which, obviously, there would be a charge.