Jill Nesbitt’s takeaways from the 2024 Intellicon 24, RCM Bootcamp, and DSO Tech Summit meetings.
While normal people relax in the month of August, hitting the beach, taking a family vacation or just enjoying some downtime before school and work activities ramp up in September. . . I sprinted through 3 DSO conferences in 3 weeks. I thought you’d like to hear the takeaways.
Sponsored by: Dental Intel
Who attended: 74 dental group practices; many brought their office team
My role: Speaker & 1st time attendee
My observations & takeaways:
I’ve known Dental Intel as an analytics platform targeting solo & small groups that seems to be well known for its helpful morning huddle guide. I learned that they have expanded to include patient engagement (Modento acquisition) and patient payments (Wisetack & CareCredit) and are focusing on integrating these products through a “Better Together” strategy. They also are planning an integration with Dentrix Ascend by year’s end, which will be their first move toward cloud-based PMS interoperability. And they’re incorporating AI so teams can ask questions about the data to better understand and take action steps.
In my session, attendees ranged from a 50-location group to a solo practice using Dental Intel – and the general agreement was that successful software adoption required a dedicated project manager who communicates the reason for the change, documents how the system will be used by the team, and checks utilization to follow up with team members who are not logging in.
Data shared from across their customer base:
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Sponsored by: Zentist
Who attended: Estimated 200 RCM leaders, primarily from DSOs
My role: Panel moderator & 1st time attendee
My observations & takeaways:
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Sponsored by: Sunset Technologies
Who attended: Estimated 40 CTOs from DSOs
My role: Workshop facilitator & 2nd time attendee
My observations & takeaways:
This conference is designed specifically for the CTO or IT Director of multi-location groups who sometimes speak their own language of cyber-security, technical challenges, and cost-benefit analysis.
With easily the best quote from the conference, Ron Kerensky, CTO, SGA Dental Partners, shared on a panel how one software vendor refused to run a pilot, yet pushed for enterprise agreement. Ron commented on his assessment of the situation and how he ended up walking away. “They wanted an arranged marriage, I wanted Tinder.” The panel consensus was to document technology expectations into the service level agreement and refuse to sign long-term contracts.
In my session, I facilitated an interactive discussion for the DSOs only to talk through their decision-making process for technology investment. I’d estimate we had more than 1,500 offices represented, and CTOs clearly appreciated the opportunity to swap ideas with each other regarding building out the business case and setting the expectation for the minimum ROI on any suggested technology. They also highlighted the critical need to have a project manager to hold everyone accountable and some even said they will not approve initiatives without a project plan or project management office assignment.
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Interested in the DSO Market?
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Despite the back-to-back schedule, I felt very honored to speak at all three of these conferences and appreciated learning from the stage as well as from other attendees. My personal goal was to introduce Optimize Dental services to dental groups as we fill the gap between buying new technologies and helping groups successfully adopt software across all locations with a heavy focus on change management. In talking with Dental Intel, Zentist, and Sunset Technologies, each agreed that dental groups invest in technology to achieve consistent data, standardize operations and ultimately drive EBITDA. However, challenges abound and having a product-agnostic software adoption service available to dental groups will help technology vendors truly drive measurable results for their clients.
With 25 years’ experience, I work at the crossroads of group dental practice operations and software/technology. My experience includes private practice multi-specialty management, DSO integrations, and building the customer success program for a cloud-based software program working directly for a technology firm. Today, I lead the team at Optimize Dental Consulting where we offer dental software adoption services for dental groups to guide technology implementations. Personally, my next adventure is learning to sail a catamaran on the Atlantic just outside Savannah. Please reach out to me via LinkedIn or jill@optimizedent.com to talk tech strategy anytime.
Optimize Dental
Optimize Dental Consulting helps dental group practices successfully implement new and optimize existing software to make the most of technology investments. For dental groups who want to roll out new software across all offices quickly and smoothly, Optimize provides an experienced project leader with DSO experience to avoid hiring new or pulling an existing team member away from their regular responsibilities. We also bake in change management, SOP creation, global and per-location software set up - all the best practices in project management to avoid failed implementations, and wasted time and money. While product-agnostic, our team has extensive experience with cloud-based dental practice management and analytics platforms to guide you well past go live (where most training ends) to make sure you have all the reports needed, that your entire RCM process is fully built out and you are using all the top value features in the software you’ve selected. For dental groups focused on scaling, we support your management team by leading software implementations on a project-basis to save you time, standardize workflows, and increase efficiency for improved EBITDA.
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