Gold Agenda

CHALLENGES DENTISTS ARE FACING

Dentists are under pressure to adjust to the behavioral change and expectations of patients. Expectations in that patients want to be treated as a customer which importantly includes having their specific needs considered in proposed treatments. With increased dental hygiene technology (e.g. electric toothbrushes), dentistry continues to have a declining number of appointments per population due to medical problems. Combined with the reduction in the level of coverage by dental public or private insurance, patients mostly have to privately fund their dental care. As a result, the majority of dental treatments are elective or optional in nature.

Patients are no longer comfortable with a lack of transparency in what treatment they are expected to follow. For patients, as most treatments optional, they can simply decide not proceed. To ensure the patient proceeds with a treatment, dentists need to establish trust in being transparent in what the treatment steps are, how long treatments will take and how much it will cost.

There is a joke in the dentistry world that to make more profit a dentist should identify a series of problems and treatments starting with filling, to root canal treatment to root ?resection? to implant. Some studies show that patients that reimburse dentists via Government funded public insurances have less dental problems than patients that reimburse via private insurance*. Trends show that government funded public insurance dentistry continues to decline. This continues to drive a loss in trust by patients with dentists.

Essentially, typical dentists manage patient relations with the perspective that as a professional the patient should agree to them taking control and accept what is largely a monologue during a consultation. This is not intentional but a result of limited education on patient relations, specifically what a patient expects from a consultation and how this improves the overall relationship.

Most dentists are still using telephone as the primary channel for an initial consultation and booking of appointments. However, over 35% of consumers prefer to book appointments in non-business hours and 25% (the under 35s*) are only willing to book online. The need for a systematic way of managing patient relations online is putting pressure for Dentists to digitize their relationship management with patients. Online consultations and use of phone photos provides dentists with alternative options to complete consultations without the patient needing to visit the practice.

(*source: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/should-a-salon-use-online-booking-software/).

Research data for Germany* that indicates that the majority of patients look online before they go to a dentist. While online dentist information portals offer information, it is not enough for patients to progress resolving their dental problem. Only consultations with a dentist or potentially an AI chatbot can support a patient's treatment progression. Traditional phone or appointment based consultations are not adequate to serve all the current patient online expectations. Dentists simply don't have the resources with their current Practice business model to offer integrated online chat & online booking systems to their patients.

Furthermore, dentists are typically unaware of the fact that potential patients are researching via Google for different treatments. Most dentists advertise based upon their location and their profession e.g. "Dentist Zurich". However, our research shows that volumes of research on specific treatments in a local area are significantly higher than just dentist related.