About Us

Three Star Dental Systems was founded by Jeffrey Tiefer DDS in 1985. He is a 1978 graduate of the Temple University School of Dentistry in Philadelphia. After associating in a large dental practice for 4 years, he opened his own office in Alta Loma, California in 1982. Starting from scratch, he had one assistant and two chairs and began to build the practice.

Since the assistant was busy and often could not complete all the insurance claims during the day, Dr. Tiefer would take home the overflow and fill them out himself (by hand). After a week of manually completing insurance forms (after work), it dawned on him that there must be a better way. Why not let a computer do this repetitive labor? So he eagerly began to investigate computer software for dentistry. There wasn't much available but he contacted all the companies he could find and received their information. After scanning through the brochures he became very disillusioned.

The available dental software programs were "pitiable", and that is being too kind. He could tell that they probably weren't dental programs at all but modified medical programs that were twisted into something like a dental program. His main concern, the insurance claim printing modules, were very weak. Tooth numbers and surfaces did not print on the form. In fact, none of the special items seen on a dental insurance claim form printed. This was 1982.

Now what? Dr. Tiefer had always been resourceful. While in dental school he set up his own dental lab in a spare bedroom where he did wax-ups and casted crowns and inlays, and filled Typodont teeth using an amalgam triturator he cobbled together from a power jigsaw and some kitchen equipment. This saved him many late-night subway rides through beautiful downtown Philadelphia.

He decided to write his own dental software program. He knew what he wanted. All he had to do was to learn how to do computer programming. How hard could that be? Actually, it was hard, but Dr. Tiefer began to develop a passion for programming and this passion increased the more he did it. He would program after work, on weekends, and in between patients. Any dentist knows that cancellations are frustrating, but on the other hand, that gave Dr. Tiefer a free hour to work on his program. He was a man on a mission.

The program was functional after 6 months and it printed insurance forms perfectly. It filled out every box and the alignment was exact. He decided that filling out the bank deposit slip was rather a chore and proceeded to create a module  for that. Then billing. Then recall. Then reports. And on it went.

By 1985 he felt the dental program he had created was really quite something. In fact, he believed it was much better than any other program that was available. It occurred to him that he could actually make a living selling this program to other dentists. What a concept. He would quit dentistry, which would free him up to program full-time, and start a dental software company. He decided to run the idea past his wife.

Despite what his wife said, he did it anyway. He sold his dental practice and started Three Star Dental Systems. A few years later StarDental (the makers of the Titan handpiece) objected to the "Star Dental" in the name Three Star Dental Systems. After comparing the size of his legal department with their legal department, Dr. Tiefer changed the company name to Three Star Office Systems. In 2006 Dr. Tiefer changed the company name again to Diamond Dental Software. Having the words "Dental Software" in the name is a nice boost to internet visibility, and did you notice the company initials are now "D.D.S".

Now, all these years later, Diamond Dental Software is going stronger than ever with over 2000 users nationwide. Dr. Tiefer still does some of the programming and continues to be the primary technical support giver. After nearly a quarter century of service to the dental community, we see a bright future for Daimond Dental Software and our loyal users.