July 2022--Part 5 of my presentation at the March 2022 ADSO Summit Meeting on artificial intelligence was a time for me to share more insights about the potential for AI in dentistry and how DSOs might want to begin using it.
In case you've missed, here's the previous post in this series:
ADSO March 2022: Part 4 - Available AI Platforms in Dentistry Today
One of the things that I notice when I sit on various board meetings is the many discussions we have about where to start with implementing AI. My advice—do not purchase AI technology if you don’t have a way to make it part of your workflow. Dan Sullivan’s book WHO NOT HOW is an excellent source of advice for change technology management.
Some expenses are investments.
Overcoming inertia is important, more so than the cost of AI software. DSOs understand this very well. In the single practice world, I have difficulty explaining the differences between outgoing expenses. They result in assets. We need to think about that.
What does success mean to you?
If success means, you do on an average x number of Invisalign starts every month across the country. That’s how you measure success. So, you start with what you average now and think about what can be operationalized in the workflow to move towards your goal.
Wherever you can, I advise saving time by automating tasks.
Your team will have more time to lead and convert patients. I personally believe that magic happens when your team members spend more time with patients--demonstrating that they genuinely care, discussing what treatment is possible, and explaining how they can afford treatment. Patients move forward with treatment, and you are going to have better patient outcomes.
I think DSOs will immensely benefit from AI propensity modeling.
Teams need to know the things that are most likely to engage new patients, move patients forward with the treatment they need, retain satisfied patients, and promote rave reviews and referrals. As discussed in my previous blog, Part 4, there is great potential for modeling patient behaviors to improve collections, for optimizing scheduling, and for predicting patient growth and demand for services.
You want AI reported micrometrics that enable you to have insight and foresight. Intelligent KPIs will enable you to predictably improve team performance and grow your DSOs. Don’t assume spending more on marketing is your only tactic.
The following books were my favorites over the last year and will help you broaden your perspective on business growth, team performance, and where application of AI intelligence can take us:
One of the challenges we had at Patient Prism as we developed our software was how to make it so user friendly and so problem solving for Front Office teams that they would be able to easily put it into operation and be eager to use it. We knew the AI intelligence and alerts were powerful tools but we had to make them easy and intuitive. Fortunately, in our case, we cracked that nut early and demonstrating huge ROI was never a challenge.
My advice is to think about who will use the AI platform you are considering and how you will introduce it to your teams and operationalize it. In our case, we’ve built an entire Onboarding and Client Success Team to focus on this with our clients.
With today’s AI platforms, I think there is opportunity to use the AI intelligence for insights and foresight, so managers and teams can make decisions in real time that predictably improve the type of patients coming into their funnel and patient outcomes. With today’s AI, there are some easy things DSOs can do now so they attract and convert a higher percentage of their leads without spending more on marketing.
With AI, there are some easy things DSOs can do to provide an amazing clinical experience and improve their revenue collection. Understand the ROI. Invest in what is most likely to be successfully used.
If you haven’t thought about warehousing your data and normalizing it across your PMS system(s), move ahead with that. Data is and will be the foundation of everything, and AI is going to only get better.