2023: The Year of Operational Efficiency. Patient Prism Studio Presents a Dozen Interviews from the 10th Annual Dykema DSO Conference
The ADA’s Priorities in 2023
What are the ADA’s priorities? Dr. Raymond Cohlmia, CEO of the American Dental Association, reports that among them are:
- Focusing on goals, not just processes, for nimble governance.
- Collegiality and synergy with and among groups, including academic, professional, and trade organizations.
- Using today’s tools and technology today to improve the efficiency of dentistry for dental professionals and patients.
- Expanding the ADA Seal program to dental materials.
- National credentialling for licensure portability, and more…
“What’s the most important thing in the dental office?” asks Dr. Cohlmia. “Is it the dentist the dentist the assistants front office staff back-office staff? Is it the patient? Is it the dental industry? Is it the supplier?” He answers, “Yes, they’re all critically important. One can’t survive without the other.”
In this 14-minute video, you will gain deep insight into the whys, movements, and momentum of the ADA’s leadership in dentistry today.
Hendrik Lai’s Advice
Co-founder and principal consultant at Sage Consulting, Hendrik Lai, discusses his best advice for DSOs in 2023: “2023 is the year of operational efficiency but before efficiency, you must think about effectiveness, and that goes back to looking at your general strategy.” Job 1 is understanding what your strategy is. Is it Is it cost leadership? Is it focus? Is it differentiation? Or is it a hybrid strategy?
In 2023, dental organizations need to pay attention to input costs says Lai. “We can grow top-line revenue to a degree but we also have to be efficient and lean. Being lean means not wasting time and resources redoing work. It means improving the patient retention rate. He advises his clients to implement a quality management system and consistently maintain a high-level patient experience.
SupportDDS & Patient Prism Partner to Unleash the Human X-Factor
While dental team turnover is occurring at a higher-than-normal rate in the U.S., DSOs that engage SupportDDS’s human resources have experienced a very low turnover.
In this video, J.W. Oliver, the managing partner of SupportEDS, testifies to why existing staff are happy when SupportDDS outsourcing occurs. “All those back-end things that they don’t want to do are taken away. Now they can focus on their patients.”
SupportDDS is partnering with Patient Prism to provide AI-enabled hybrid teams to assist DSOs in making follow-up calls in response to AI alerts.
“Our goal is for the AI to identify where the ball gets dropped and use the human x-factor to build the bond and the connection to get patients back in the chair,” says Amol Nirgudkar, CEO of Patient Prism.
Nirgudkar explains, “AI doesn’t replace people. It alerts them to the need for certain types of responses. When you miss a call, for example, to connect and reactivate someone’s care. That’s the power of this, and we’re launching this across the entire DSO industry. For SupportDDS clients, we’ll be offering a free 2-month trial.”
SupportDDS Announces New End-to-End RCM Solutions
The new chief growth officer for RCM solutions at SupportDDS, Victoria Johnson, describes SupportDDS’s mission to offer an end-to-end RCM solution for mid-size and large DSOs that utilizes all of the AI-generated solutions plus people to fill in the gaps. “The solutions may give you 70 to 80% of what you’re looking for but what we can do at SupportDDS is fill in the gap with our support people,” she says.
Support DDS will help DSOs select the right vendors to partner with and also provide human resources offsite, so onsite team members can focus on caring for patients.
Ora Dental Makes Debut
Patient Prism is pleased to partner with Ora Dental, a new approach to enterprise practice management software for large DSOs and multi-site dental practices. In this interview, April Lowry, Ora Dental’s Director of Product Management describes the efficiencies Ora Dental provides. All are efficiencies that multi-site dental practices have asked for on a single Cloud-based platform. Ora Dental:
- Seamlessly fills appointment schedules with automated 24/7 intelligent scheduling.
- Streamlines personalized patient communications, claims processing, and payment workflow.
- Simplifies lab management.
- Provides centralized real-time data, including all patient records from all enterprise locations.
- Is easily integrated with other platforms like Patient Prism for real-time data transfer.
- Is infinitely scalable.
Full-Arch Patient Acquisition Made Easier
Full-arch dentistry is in high demand but converting leads into booked patients can be challenging. In this video, Amol Nirgudkar (CEO of Patient Prism) and Greg Essenmacher (CEO of GnA Consult, Dental Practice Growth Consultants) discuss how each is having a positive impact on patients accessing the care they need by increasing full-arch case appointments and reducing no-shows.
“It’s a lot different to answer the phone for a new patient who wants to book a hygiene appointment and become a patient of a general practice than it is to answer the phone for a new patient who is dentally exhausted or fearful and wants full-arch treatment,” says Greg Essenmacher.
SourceClub Dental Supply Purchasing
SourceClub helps DSOs, multi-office dental groups, and individual dental offices purchase dental supplies at lower costs and greater efficiency so they can focus on providing the best care for their patients. Jeremy Moeller, VP of Sales and Marketing, says that a dental organization, currently spending 6% of its revenue on supplies can typically decrease the cost of the supplies to 4% of revenue.
Watch the video to learn about SourceClub’s reimagined:
- Dental supply consulting service
- Procurement strategies
- Dental group purchasing
New DSO Vendor Network
Eileen Day announces the launch of the DSO Vendor Insights Network and its website—DSOvin.com. The network is designed to reshape the dynamics between Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) and vendor partners by creating a collaborative environment where open communication between DSOs and vendor partners fosters growth and advancements in the dental industry. Watch this 4.5-minute video to learn how it works and what’s ahead.
Henry Shein’s Enterprise-Level API Strategy
“We really want to be able to help our DSO partners do their jobs and run their organizations in a way that is easy to coordinate with us, easy to collaborate with us, and use our systems,” says Pam Reece, VP of Strategic Accounts at Henry Shein.
Henry Shein now has the Dentrix Developer Program, an open API Web portal that enables product developers to speed up the development of connected products. Without going out of Dentrix, Dentrix Ascend, or Dentrix Enterprise, users and their patients can see images and data from outside products.
Vyne Dental Plans Powered by Subscribili
Patient Prism’s Amol Nirgudkar congratulates Subscribili’s co-founder, Joseph Brown on the launch of the Vyne Dental® Plans powered by Subscribili that will make Subscribili’s subscription management technology available to over 50,000 dental practices. Subscribili provides customizable direct pay options that attract more patients and improve care acceptance. Early access is available at 🥇 Early Access Information Signup (Plans) | Vyne Dental.
Jill Nesbitt Guides DSOs Through Software Changes
At Dykema DSO 2023, Amol Nirgudkar interviewed Jill Nesbitt about her new company, Optimize Dental Consulting. Software implementation often fails, and Jill Nesbitt knows why and how to ensure implementation proceeds. This 6-minute video discusses six musts of change management:
- Having an executive champion to explain why we are doing this
- Having a communication plan so the why reaches all involved people
- Having a project management plan, and document that communicates it
- Having a way to measure software usage
- Asking about observed lack of usage and solving problems
- Having someone track progress and periodically report it
Frictionless Chairside Financing with Sunbit
Sunbilt’s Dental Division VP, Jay Letwat, explains how Sunbit has made patient financing so easy and fast that all applicants with credit scores of 500 and above receive approval for financing of an amount and on terms that make it possible to receive the treatment they need. Letwat explains how a soft credit check is done via an ipad and Sunbilt’s AI software models what the patient can afford over time.
“We’re trying to help as many folks as possible get the treatment they need the same day,” says Letwat.