DDS.com was created by Rich Hirschinger, DDS, MBA, and is designed to provide dentists with a professional identity and a professional presence on the Internet. Ponder this question: do dental schools award an AOL, MSN, or YAHOO degree or do they award a DDS or DMD degree?  Having answered that obvious question, now ask yourself if it more beneficial to have a website and an email address that match instead of using a email address @AOL, @Hotmail, @Comcast.net, etc.?  The benefit of using the same domain for your website and email has to do with branding, and with people's ability to remember your domain name.  If an email is received by a patient at a professional domain name such as @BerryvilleDental.com instead of from @Yahoo.com, they will be much more likely to remember your domain name.
 
DDS.com is an idea that came to Dr. Hirschinger during the summer of 2000 as a result of an assignment he had for an Executive MBA class at the USC Marshall School of Business. Dr. Hirschinger attended business school after he injured his hand and subsequently his back, which prevented him from continuing his private practice in Beverly Hills, California.
 
As the Internet really began to flourish, Dr. Hirschinger realized there were very few good domain names left, especially in the ".com" community, and although some dentists had websites, most were not representative of their practice and they were difficult to change. As the domain names became scarcer, he started to see colleagues resort to less than professional domain names and E-mail addresses. Dr. Hirschinger came across DDS.com and realized by sub-domaining, he could provide a professional E-mail and Internet address to every dentist with a degree. At the time, DMD.com was owned by another party but it was not being utilized. Through "luck management," DMD.com was purchased in May 2002.
 
The idea has grown, through the use of sophisticated programmers and some bright visionaries. Clients can control their own sites by adding content and images, changing styles, adding links, etc., by merely typing and clicking. Everything can be customized, even the buttons that visitors click on to navigate a site. No other service for dentists offers this level of customization. You can experience see some demos of the Web Wizard for dental websites by clicking here.
 
What also sets us apart is the fact we host our E-mail. Most other services "forward" your E-mail, which means messages sent to one address are replied to from a second address. Our E-mail is seamless; messages sent to your domain names are replied to from the same address.
 
Our service is fully HIPAA (US) and PIPEDA (Canada) compliant. Any form filled out by a patient or prospective patient that contains private information must be completed on a secure page in order to be in full HIPAA and PIPEDA compliance.  Please see our HIPAA Compliance page for a quick tour of how we secure our network.
 
The service also includes unlimited pages, unlimited storage, unlimited free telephone technical support, online user guides, and unlimited possibilities.
 
Yet another benefit of a membership is the patient education section. Each dentist can customize what images their patients will see by simply clicking a few buttons. The intent of this section is to leverage the doctor's time. By all means, the doctor should be available to answer questions that a patient has about his or her treatment. This is one of those means. The customizable patient education section enables the dentist to choose which services the patients of the practice will see. Over 25% of Internet traffic is used for healthcare research and this section gives the patients what they are searching for.
 
We trust you see the value of what we have created and we encourage you to sign up for our service. We welcome your comments and suggestions.
 
You can reach Rich at Rich@DDS.com with any questions.