Maximizing dental practice revenue from the patients you already have

I'm great. I'm really grateful that you guys brought me on, and I'm excited to share my knowledge about what I've seen working with different dental practices.

My name is Zain, like you mentioned earlier. I'm actually a software engineer by trade. I graduated from UT Austin's computer science department a couple of years ago, and I immediately got a job as a technology director at a dental group in Houston. You can imagine: my peers were going to work at Apple and Microsoft, and I was going to advise a bunch of dental offices on all their technology, from imaging software and the analytics or engagement software they were using, to even what type of TVs they were buying for their operatories. My job was literally at the intersection of anything technology-related, and this was a group of about eight practices. I worked there for about a year and a half, and I noticed a lot of open spots. Not only while working there, but especially because my lens is through technology. I'm constantly looking at how we can leverage technology to make the staff more productive or to drive more business into the operation.

Really? Well, I'm happy to hear that. I'd like to say that's because I have interfaced with so many dentists, dental owners, hygienists, and front-desk staff. I've talked to everybody you can imagine. So when it comes to dental lingo and knowing what the day-to-day problems are in a dental practice, I feel pretty informed on that.

Something we saw constantly, not just at the group I worked with but also at many other offices I've consulted for, is that in an environment like this year, with a lot going on in the world, people might be hesitant to spend as much money. Some of our offices are down 15 to 20 percent in new patients this year just because of what's going on. We wanted to see how we could leverage what your practice already has in its database to drive revenue, because a lot of these patients get forgotten. Balances accumulate, the patient goes somewhere else, and all of a sudden you have a bunch of inactive patients in your database that you want to reactivate. That's the angle we're trying to attack from: How can we get your staff to take advantage of what's already in your database? How can we make sure this becomes a culture established across your entire company? That's where we got started. We also saw a lot of dental software tools that just weren't up to par. The quality wasn't as good. Coming from a computer science background, and having worked at several big tech companies while I was in college, I thought there was a huge opportunity to turn out some extremely high-quality software that also takes advantage of everything already within your business.

Right. I would add that marketing teams are amazing. They truly do amazing things, especially in the competitive online landscape I mentioned, which is changing very rapidly. But how do we ensure the staff actually capitalizes on those patients after they come in? Your marketing got you a lead. They came in for an exam, and there was all sorts of treatment prescribed, but they said no and walked out the door. Let's say that was two months ago. How can we revisit that patient? How can we ensure not only that we're revisiting the patient, but that it's happening across the entire organization? Whether you have five front-desk employees at one office or five separate offices, we're able to get them on the same page so the highest-value patients are contacted first. Every day when they come in, they have a predetermined list of patients who need to be contacted. Beyond booking appointments and generating production, what we're really going after is getting your staff used to being on the phone. When they look at the forecast, which we also have within our app, and they see that two weeks from now there's almost nothing on the books, what are they going to do about it? We give them that solution as simply as possible. We rank the patients for them. We give them the different lists they can contact. Then we give visibility back to the owner so they can see how many patients were booked, how much production was actually generated, and which staff members are converting these patients when they're on the phone. We integrate with some voice-over-IP software. We integrate with Mango, and we're talking to a few others. We're trying to capture the entire end-to-end process of patient outreach, whether it's booking appointments, calling patients to see how they're doing, or recovering leads your marketing team already generated.

Exactly. One thing I would add is that front-desk teams, dental office managers, and doctor-owners are constantly bombarded with different software tools being thrown at them. I've talked to many staff members who are very frustrated because their manager or owner has ten different things for them to log into and check in the morning. We're trying to consolidate all of that. You log into MyDentalForce and can see everything you could possibly want. You can see your analytics. You can see how many new patients came in. We have patient engagement software sending texts to other patients. And, of course, the meat and potatoes is our patient outreach feature, which keeps staff productive and booking appointments. We don't want anybody to feel like, "Oh, here's another tool we have to log into in the morning," because that's how a lot of staff see it. I totally empathize with them because it can get very chaotic. Whenever I'm talking to users, whether they're front-desk staff or managers, or potential customers, like owners, I want them to know they're not losing anything by switching over. They can keep all the good elements of another software they're using while also getting the benefit of using ours.

Exactly. But the biggest value proposition, I'd say, is that we are constantly getting your staff on the phone and filling your schedules.

Absolutely. Like you mentioned earlier, we want to give the data back to the offices. There is all sorts of data stuck inside your database. I promise you, there is literally a gold mine in there. On average, we find almost $600,000 in unscheduled treatment plans in the average office we connect with. So when I say "gold mine," we're actually talking about a gold mine here.

Addressing that is the primary focus of our software. How can we make sure all these opportunities are never slipping away? It might be $600,000 today, but two months from now it might be $800,000. It's a constantly evolving number. That's why our software is like a ubiquitous, always-on system your staff logs into so they know exactly what they need to do for the day.

Right. We want to itemize it as much as we can because, as I'm sure you know, a dental office manager or front-desk position is an extremely chaotic job. There are so many different things they have to stay on top of constantly. If we can simplify it, give it to them in a way they can easily digest, and help them actually understand why they're doing it, that has sealed the deal for a lot of our users who have given us positive feedback.

Exactly. We could say $60,000, but how many patients are you reactivating? You might go and sell that treatment plan from January, but now they're locked back in. They realize again, "Hey, XYZ Dental is actually my dentist. I'm going to go back to them in six months for an exam," or whatnot. It's the entire pipeline. Sure, we'll get you that one appointment and that one treatment plan you didn't sell, but we want to completely reactivate that patient.

Exactly.

No. To move away from my product a little bit, I do a lot of consulting with different dental offices specifically around technology. I believe almost 80 percent of dental practice owners have demoed AI software in the last year, and only about 11 to 20 percent have actually adopted it. I don't want to beat around the bush: Patients do not like hearing a robot call them. Patients just aren't there yet. Anybody can easily tell when a robot is calling, even somebody older who isn't as familiar with technology. We want to empower the staff within your office to make those phone calls. If they need to cut a deal, work out a payment plan, or remember a niche little detail about that patient, that goes much further in getting the patient back into the office.

Me neither. I'm the most pro-AI, pro-technology guy you'll meet, and I still hate it when an AI calls me.

Totally. People are scared of going to the dentist. Now you've got a robot calling them from their dentist's office. That may not sit well with a lot of people. That's why we like to empower the staff to do this. We do have some AI features, but they're mainly for texting. We do automated outreach via text, but if somebody is going to call you, we want it to be a human being, and we prefer that it be somebody from your practice.

Correct.

Absolutely. It's great that you mentioned that. I'd like to speak about the admin part of the app. If you're a corporate director or the owner, you have total visibility into what your staff is doing. I can throw a bunch of numbers at you, but what we're really trying to do is analyze the sentiment and actual content of what they're saying. We're able to do that with Mango. We can pull the entire transcription for that specific patient call and use AI to analyze it. Then we can give small critiques to the admin or whoever is viewing it on the other end. Of course, the numbers speak for themselves as well, but we also have a plain-English summary of how the person is doing, the general sentiment of the call, and whether they've been getting good patient responses. We try to give the director, manager, or whoever is watching the staff the tools they need to identify who is actually good at converting patients, who they want talking to patients more often, and who is actually going to bring them back in.

Absolutely. It really goes a long way when we partner with phone companies, because working in a patient-facing role is a constantly evolving job. You're always learning things about how to accommodate patients: "Maybe I shouldn't say this next time," or, "Maybe this is the attitude I need to bring to the patient." We're not trying to figure out who isn't doing what they're supposed to. We're trying to empower staff and their managers to help them grow as healthcare professionals so their patient communication is top-tier and patients are always given the utmost respect.

Exactly. In a constantly evolving technological landscape for dentistry, there is a lot of AI being thrown around and a lot of new tools coming out. We really want to focus on the engine of the practice: keeping your schedules booked and making sure your staff stays on top of contacting patients.

Yes. For our outreach feature, like I said, we're establishing a culture. This is not an overnight project. We're completely changing the mindset of your front desk, your manager, and all your patient-facing staff. We want them to know that there is one objective in this practice, and that is our patients. Not only our patients, but making sure they keep coming back. A lot of that has to do with the staff's attitude, the way they speak, and their general performance as healthcare professionals. Like I said, that's what we really like to focus on among all these things. To answer your point about cost, I'd say most of our practices save anywhere from $400 to $500 a month because we're able to consolidate a lot of the software they have. We have our patient outreach feature, analytics, and engagement. We don't want staff to log into ten different things per day. We want them to log into MyDentalForce, see everything they need to see, and let the admins, managers, corporate staff, or whoever it might be see everything they need to see as well.

We typically charge anywhere from $200 to $400 per month, per practice. It varies depending on the size of your office, but we do not charge per user. You can have as many staff members as you'd like in your office, and it's a flat rate. We work very closely with you during implementation to make sure everything is exactly to your liking. We can make small customizations per client, if they request them and they're within reason. There are no limits on users.

Similar to the system of patient outreach we're trying to create within your practice, we also include help for people who may have purchased older databases with a large accounts receivable balance, or practices that haven't paid special attention to collecting balances. We go into your database, pull your entire A/R list, and identify which outstanding patient balances are highly collectible. We surface those again as a list for the staff. They can see exactly how much the patient owes, what the insurance might pay, and what the true patient balance is. We also give the staff several options for what they want to do with that patient. A patient might owe $1,000. You might call them, and they just don't have it right now. We can work around that. We have payment plans we can incorporate, and we can send links so they can sign up for those payment plans. If the practice wants to give a discount, we may be able to accommodate that as well. Whatever you're able to collect from the patient is written back to your practice management system, so you have very good visibility into the financial recovery for these patients. If you were able to collect the full amount, that's great. If not, did you at least try to work it out with them and get something back rather than nothing? It's very much along the lines of the entire patient outreach engine. We want to make sure you're collecting as much money as you can from patients while accommodating their financial needs.

I've seen this happen time and time again. The doctor-owner comes in, somebody shows them the A/R report, and they get scared because it's a giant number most of the time, well into six figures for most offices. Then they get mad. They come in and yell at the manager: "Okay, start collecting this." Then what? The manager goes into Open Dental, or whatever the practice software is, clicks "A/R list," and sees a 12-, 15-, or 20-plus-page list. How are they supposed to digest that? They're supposed to go line by line, look at each patient's account, and figure out what the balance is. Sometimes it might not even be a patient balance; maybe insurance is supposed to pay. We try to cut all that out. We'd like your staff to log in and, when you tell them to work on A/R, have everything they need right there to collect from patients and recover what's actually recoverable, rather than attacking some imaginary large number that Open Dental throws at you.

Well, I'm here for the long run. I'm sorry to anybody who is not happy, but the dental industry has me for at least the next decade.

You can visit us at mydentalforce.com. You can email us at info@mydentalforce.com. We have a Calendly link if you'd like to book a demo, and it will go straight to my email, so you'll be speaking with me directly. I can answer any questions you have. If you go to our website, you'll see some case studies with real groups we've worked with, along with all the other peripheral features I didn't mention on this podcast. If you go to mydentalforce.com, you can find everything unique about us.

For sure. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.