Dr. Lior Tamir joins Dr. Mustafa Shah-Khan to share his journey from clinician to software founder and practice owner. He discusses the gaps in traditional practice management systems, why dentistry needs true CRM/PRM tools, and how The Dental App helps practices streamline operations, improve follow-up, and drive predictable growth. A must-listen for dentists who want to simplify their workflow, increase efficiency, and run more profitable, human-centered practices.
Episode Navigation:
00:20 – Introduction to Dr. Lior Tamir
01:10 – Becoming a dentist during the recession & leaving clinical dentistry
03:00 – Building software in the advertising world
05:30 – Returning to dentistry with a new perspective
07:15 – Why dentistry never had a real CRM
10:40 – The power of patient follow-up & outstanding treatment
13:10 – Integrating CRM + PMS into one platform
16:00 – Automating hygiene recall and patient communication
19:30 – How AI will support dental practices
22:00 – Tracking preferences, pipelines, and patient behavior
24:45 – Insurance workflows and getting paid faster
28:00 – Growth through operational efficiency
31:00 – Managing high-value cases like Invisalign
33:40 – The Dental App’s open ecosystem & App Store model
37:10 – Cloud-based PMS vs. server-based systems
42:45 – What it means to simplify a dental practice
47:30 – Advice for entrepreneurial dentists
Featured Discussion Topics:
CRM vs. PMS vs. PRM in dentistry
How practices lose revenue without realizing it
Automation and AI-driven workflows
Insurance claims, aging, and payment speed
Growth through efficiency, not just new patients
Building streamlined, data-driven systems
Entrepreneurship and innovation in dentistry
Meet Our Guest:
Dr. Lior Tamir is a dentist, practice owner, and founder of The Dental App, a cloud-based practice management platform built to modernize operations and help dental teams grow with clarity and efficiency. With a background in tech, advertising, and clinical dentistry, he brings a unique perspective to solving the everyday challenges practice owners face. He is passionate about creating more powerful, profitable, and human practices through better systems.
Connect with Dr. Lior Tamir:
Request a Demo Instagram
Connect With Simplify Dentistry:
🌐 Website: simplifydds.com
🎧 Podcast: Available on all major platforms
📱 Social Media: Follow for updates and community conversations
Transcript
00:00:01.840 — 00:00:13.680
Welcome to the Simplify Dentistry Podcast. Join us as we discuss clinical, operational and financial aspects of your practice. Help you enjoy life and dare to simplify dentistry.
00:00:14.720 — 00:00:41.160 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Welcome back to the Simplify Dentistry Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan. Today we’re here with Doctor Lior Tamir. Doctor Tamir is a dentist and founder of the Dental app. The dental app is an all in one cloud based practice management software with built in CRM and patient engagement tools to streamline operations, boost revenue, and enhance patient care, all from a single seamless platform.
Doctor Tamir, thank you for being with us.
00:00:41.520 — 00:00:43.560 · Doctor Lior Tamir
It’s really my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
00:00:43.600 — 00:01:03.410 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Well, I appreciate you taking the time today. This is kind of the Sunday morning podcast for us. We don’t do a lot of these and we really appreciate you taking the time, especially being on the West Coast. Um, Tamara, tell us a little bit about your background, you know, how did you how did you go from being a dentist to building a cloud based practice management software.
00:01:03.450 — 00:03:53.350 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So the intention was never to go out and build PMS. It kind of happened along the way. Um, essentially, I got out of dental school in 2009. It was the peak of the financial crisis. I didn’t really have any family in dentistry. And, uh, when I, when I got out, I had a really difficult time finding a job that would help me essentially pay the bills.
And one thing led to another. I just figured out I had to do something else, and I pretty much left dentistry for for about six and a half, seven years. Um, I started those were the early days of, like, Facebook ads. Uh, so, you know, uh, advertising. And I started working in advertising. Taught myself everything I could possibly know about that.
Um, and essentially ran an advertising agency. And along the way, we started building software for advertisers. So in that company, we built bid management software. So essentially advertisers would come to us or brands would come to us and they’d say, hey, look, I got a $30,000. I need to take that and optimize that spend against this goal.
So we need to get, you know, whatever more sales or more signups or whatever it is. And so we built software that would automate that, um, that optimization, um, the first thing we built was just a tool to help us better communicate. So when we came to so for those of you that don’t know, Silicon Valley is extremely saturated with dentists.
And one of the things that we wanted to do was say, all right, how are we going to differentiate ourselves? How are we going to be, you know, a practice that stands out in the best possible way? And we spent a lot of time curating the patient experience that we wanted to create. And one of the things that was really important was to have a better way to communicate with patients, chair side, to be able to tell them, like, hey, these are the things you need to do, and this is why you need to do it and help patients understand the why behind treatment.
And so the first thing we built was like a guided patient exam. Um, that it was like a clinical workflow that would take you through the different steps of, of a new patient exam, but that eventually became okay. Well, now that I have this, I got a treatment plan it now that I treatment plan, I got to schedule it.
Now that I scheduled it, I got to send an insurance claim. And it was constantly referencing like what I was currently doing with my old systems and what I wanted to do to run a really, um, you know, simplified workflow and sophisticated system. And that’s essentially it became like full blown practice management software.
So it really came out of my own need. And along the way, our vision has really become to make dentistry more powerful, profitable and human, to really create a tool for dentists that recognize the broader dental ecosystem and kind of the tools that are out there and want to build thriving practices and give them a tool that’s really been designed from the perspective of a dental business operator.
And that’s kind of the story of the dental lab.
00:03:53.430 — 00:04:14.570 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, I kind of look at, um, what your mission statement is. Um, and so you have built in CRM. So let’s talk about CRM, the advantages for practices to have CRM. I think a lot of dentists don’t even understand what CRM even means. Um, and how is CRM and patient engagement tools and advantage to having this.
00:04:14.810 — 00:06:24.190 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So so I think in order to really answer and understand that, we have to kind of take a step back and look at what is the challenge inside of dental practice and how does this relate to other businesses. Right. So, you know, if you think about what we do in a dental office, patients come to us, uh, you know, we diagnose their problems and then we try to help them understand what they need in terms of treatment and then complete that clinically.
Um, and at the end of the day, the purpose of running a dental practice is to have a profitable one. I mean, we’re not we’re not in this to lose money. We all have bills to pay, mortgages, kids, things like that. We’re not, uh, volunteer, uh, workers. And so our goal is to do that in a profitable way. And in order to do that profitably, there’s a lot of, um, you know, essentially micromanaging of the patient experience along the way that’s required.
So if you leave dentistry, if we just put dentistry aside for a second and we look at any other dentistry profession or industry. So if you take, um, you know, let’s say plumbing or HVAC or you take an e-commerce business, uh, you know, they don’t have patients. They have leads, right? So, uh, those leads would come in and then, you know that let’s say it’s an e-commerce website.
You know, their job is to follow up with that lead and try to convince them to, to buy a certain product and, uh, you know, track their, their different steps along the way. And that is all done with a system called a CRM. So CRM stands for customer relationship management. So, you know, if we think about traditional practice management software, practice management software is like a place where you would put your information in.
Right? And then historically, what we what what Dennis, have been required to do is purchase multiple different third party systems. So one for patient engagement, one for online scheduling, one for analytics. Um, you know, and then if you want to do marketing campaigns, you essentially like using your analytics system to, you know, segment and refine your patient base and export a list.
And then you’re taking that, maybe you’re putting into a MailChimp to launch an email campaign or a promotion or things like that. Or maybe you pay an agency to do that.
00:06:24.190 — 00:06:29.390 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
And those are all out. Those are all outside of your practice management software, typically.
00:06:29.830 — 00:09:36.140 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Historically. Right. Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And so the concept of bringing us so what a CRM does, is it, it essentially tracks every specific every interaction that you have with with a lead or an existing customer, uh, to give you insights into that relationship and then helps you maximize that relationship.
So either you know, upselling them or things like that. So in dentistry, it has a slightly different context, right? For us we have patients that, you know, that come in and need treatment. Patients that come in don’t need treatment. Maybe they need to be on recall. Maybe patients that come in need treatment do it and then some other treatment they don’t complete because they max out on, you know, an insurance policy or they’re traveling or whatever it is.
Um, sometimes you have patients that need high ticket items like Invisalign or an implant, and they’re thinking about it. And we know historically it takes like 6 to 8 months to actually get them to to commit. Well, you know, we have to manually manage or keep track of those interactions. And we do that with multiple third party tools and a lot of micromanagement.
And historically we haven’t had like the equivalent of a CRM, uh, that works with our PMS system. And so, you know, I think for more context, like when I started my practice, a lot of what I did was keep track of these things. Follow up with patients have very specific, you know, protocols in place to reengage patients, get them back in and always stay top of mind.
Um, and I think that if your treatment, you know, we I think in dentistry there’s like, almost like the stigma about being, uh, salesy. Uh, it’s very different. Right. We’re not we’re not salesy at all. We treatment plan with the highest level of ethics and standards and so on. But then it’s our job to run a profitable business.
And so in order to do that, you have to follow up with patients. And, um, you know, so many offices focus only on new patient count. But sometimes that’s not just the answer. I mean, sometimes you have like hundreds of patients that have fillings, uh, deep cleanings, periodontal therapy, uh, you know, need an implant because they’re missing a first molar.
Need their wisdom teeth pulled out. Um, and they don’t do it because, a, they don’t want to spend the money. Be they don’t, you know, whatever. There’s so many different reasons they’re traveling. They ran out of insurance and it’s our job to follow up with them. So following up with them If we kind of agree that we’ve treatment planned ethically and honestly and we’ve done the right thing there, it’s our responsibility.
And also in order to run a very successful practice to do all those follow ups. So I scaled my first practice, um, $5 million in collections in its seventh full year from a startup. And I did that doing in a very saturated market, doing these kind of things. Um, and so what we’ve done with the dental lab is we’ve taken those tools.
So, you know, in terms of, uh, it wouldn’t be a CRM, it would be, we call it a PRM. So patient relationship management, or if you think about it differently, um, it’s essentially a sales and marketing engine that we have layered into a practice management software to essentially empower practices to run more powerful, profitable and human practices.
00:09:36.460 — 00:10:40.600 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Uh, it’s great to say that. Yeah, I’ve been getting some questions from, um, some of our listeners, which are kind of coming in real time, um, about practice management software. And, you know, one one thing I think is, is interesting in the CRM capacity, we lost my long time, um, office manager. So, um, my wife has been kind of filling in my office, and she is from a, a software background.
Um, she did, um, you know, CRM for you, Cedric, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, all that sort of stuff. Um, and we’re an Eagle soft practice. She looks at our software and she’s like, how is there no way to track people who want their their appointment moved up? Um, you know, people who have really kind of canceled their appointment and need it rescheduled without kind of being able to go in and pull it an easy report for that.
So it sounds like, um, you guys are solving a lot of these problems and are making it so that there is a resource for practices to be more, um, operationally efficient, um, by being able to pull this data. Is that correct?
00:10:40.640 — 00:11:22.570 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. I think there’s two parts of that. right? Today, you could hypothetically get a third party analytics system and segment and refine and get these lists, like who’s canceled or who’s needed this or who’s who’s due for hygiene. But it’s been historically challenging to then do all the follow ups associated with it and more importantly, keep track of what is being done within the office.
So let me give you an example. So let’s say you pull a list. Let’s say you’re using Eagle soft and dental Intel and maybe you’re using Magento. So you pull the list through dental Intel. You say, all right, show me all my patients that have been in the office that are overdue for hygiene and maybe need some fillings, and then maybe you send them an email blast saying like, hey,
00:11:23.610 — 00:12:37.100 · Doctor Lior Tamir
um, you know, here’s some availabilities for for hygiene. You’re overdue and maybe some of them scheduled that way. And then the what happens to the ones that don’t schedule. And then what happens if there’s like a phone call made to reach out to some of these patients? How do you keep track of that? And then how do you know that you’re not bombarding them?
And how do you add notes in relation to that conversation that you’re having? Right. So that’s essentially the missing component. Right. So you have the today you technically could like duct tape something together and say, all right, pull that list for me. Yeah. You know, it does require. You got to do your research.
You got to find which system you want. You got to install it. You got to pay for it. You got to do that. So you get you can get the list. You can do some basic outreach, but to keep track of the overarching conversation and to have like a holistic insight into the relationship that you have with that, with that patient across the multiple touchpoints.
Remember we have websites, we have phones, we have multiple employees that might talk to the patient. Um, there’s really nothing to accommodate that. And that’s really where, um, you know, you have to get past the point solution conundrum that we find ourselves in as dental practice owners. Uh, you know, to really see, you know, that vision through.
00:12:37.620 — 00:12:49.710 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So a couple questions. Um, where I look at kind of your site and what it, what it says. Um, how does, um, the dental app reduce time for the practice on a day to day basis?
00:12:49.790 — 00:14:21.000 ·Doctor Lior Tamir
I mean, there’s many ways. Um, so there’s, um, if you ever whoever’s not seeing a demo of the dental app, essentially we have practice management software, you have all of your automation. So you have like your reminders, reputation management, you have an insurance claims dashboard. Um, you know, you kind of have a bunch of the most important workflows built in.
So, I mean, we save time with insurance, uh, the insurance workflow just by organizing that. So historically, let’s say you’re using like open dental or, you know, tricks or eagle soft, you know, you’re completing an appointment, you’re submitting a claim, you’re typically going into a clearinghouse, um, adding an attachment.
You’re copying and pasting that detail back to, you know, your PMS system. You’re printing out a report to keep track of outstanding insurance claims. And that’s how you do a lot of the follow up. So, you know, for example, just organizing that into a streamlined dashboard where you can see, you know, you’re doing your attachments within the within our solution, you’re adding your x rays, you’re adding your narratives.
You’re able to keep track of outstanding insurance claims. You’re able to keep track of claims that have not been submitted. You’re able to quickly pull up and see which claims need follow up. That it’s been more than 30 days. Like that’s a perfect example. Um, another one is just automating the confirmation process and so on.
Um, just having everything at your fingertips. You’re saving a bunch of time in terms of like moving from one solution to the other, and then you’re also saving a bunch of time by simplifying the workflow necessary to run a practice. Um, so, you know, that’s a good example.
00:14:21.040 — 00:14:33.480 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So is it, um, is it proprietary software and things that are built into into the dental app, or is the dental app using solution reach and Vine and things like that?
00:14:33.560 — 00:15:35.140 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So I think You have to dive a little deeper into that. So vine is a clearinghouse, right? Dental exchange is a clearinghouse. Right. So so we’re not a clearinghouse, but we integrate into, for example, in our case, we build into the into dental exchange. So um, but it’s a seamless integration. So you’re never logging into dental exchange to do anything.
There’s what’s called an API, which is essentially like a back end interface for softwares to talk to each other. And our entire system is built and designed around the Dental Exchange API to be able to take an insurance claim and see it all the way through, add attachments, etc.. Um, everything we do is proprietary.
Nothing. You know, we haven’t plugged into solution reach or anything like that. So all of our confirmation system, reminder system, the actual CRM component where you can search and filter by different attributes, create lists, and then, you know, turn patients with outstanding treatment into pipelines, send out broadcasts, marketing campaigns, all of that’s completely proprietary and built from the ground up.
And it’s unique to the dental app.
00:15:35.220 — 00:15:58.820 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So for instance yeah we use solution reach. So um, let’s say we pull up our list and we see that we have, um, you know, a hundred people who haven’t scheduled hygiene. So then we take that list and we go into solution reach and we start sending individual text messages through solution reach. Is there an automated component in the dental app that that keeps this from happening and also tracks it?
00:15:58.860 — 00:16:37.240 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Exactly that. So you can pull out that list. You can create a sequence, right. Or like a set of automated responses. And for example, you could say, hey, you know, 30 days before someone’s due, uh, send them this text message, include this book online link and say, hey, you’re going to be due for hygiene.
Uh, the day that they’re due, send them a follow up reminder and say, hey, you’re now due. And here’s the link to to schedule, uh, 15 days after they do, say, send a follow up text message, say now you’re past due, here’s a link. And so on and so forth. And so you can customize. You can create these sequences and customize it.
And then everything is tracked in the in the app itself.
00:16:37.280 — 00:16:45.600 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So the book online capacity does that. Is that integrated just directly into the the software that you click on it.
00:16:46.320 — 00:19:00.380 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So it’s a it’s a full. So we have online scheduling um, all of the text messaging, all the automation, all the reminders, reputation management, insurance claims, analytics, reporting, sales like the sales and marketing CRM component. So I think that’s probably one of the most unique things about what we’re doing is, um, you can essentially find patients that have outstanding treatment and turn them into a pipeline to follow up with.
So, you know, I don’t want to call it a sales pipeline. It’s like a treatment pipeline. So you can say, here are all my patients that have an outstanding that need a crown. Um, and then there’s a dedicated dashboard where staff can log in and message the patient, start a phone call, email the patient, and it logs all that communication.
And when it was done and, you know, staff can add notes and then they’re moving the patient down a funnel or a pipeline. So first it’s a patient that needs treatment. Then it’s a patient that needs treatment that’s been followed up with once then followed up with twice. Then maybe they schedule and maybe they end up completing it.
Or maybe you archive them or they moved away. But you know, there’s there’s really unique and proprietary tools to help practice, practice owners run, uh, more profitable practices built in. I think one thing that’s really important to note is the dental app is a really young company. So we’ve been around we’ve been building for about six years.
Uh, we’ve been in the market with, with live practices for approximately 16 months. Um, so we’re constantly innovating and the tools keep getting better. Like what what what offices see today. Well, when we started coming to market about a year and a half ago, a little a little under that We didn’t really have a lot of these components.
Earlier this year, we launched our first iteration of the CRM. Since then, we’ve launched a bunch of additional features, but we have some really exciting things that we’ve been working on to, you know, to start factoring in artificial intelligence into the CRM. Having recommendations on who to reach out to and what to actually say to them.
And so, you know, as the technology continues to improve, the systems will get better at helping offices really capitalize on, you know, their interactions with patients.
00:19:00.540 — 00:19:17.100 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Let’s talk real quick about you said artificial intelligence is there’s an aspect that’s going to be built in, um, what exactly what aspect is that? Is it actual artificial intelligence or is it more machine learning or is it data, you know, aggregation or what is it?
00:19:17.260 — 00:19:55.710 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So I think it’s important to identify what are the areas that we see AI come into play in dentistry today. Right. So for example there’s many companies focused on automating as much of the insurance claims process as possible with AI, right? So, you know, you have companies that do what we call computer vision.
So like Pearl and jet, like they read your x rays and they identify things that they see. So that’s an example of of AI. Um, there’s another example of AI which is like there’s a company called like Lassie, um, or uh, um,
00:19:56.790 — 00:21:41.570 · Doctor Lior Tamir
dentist. Right. And what they’re doing is they’re automating the process of entering an EOB. So they’re using artificial intelligence to read an EOB or an ERA if it’s digital, and then write back all that information, do the write offs and post the EOB directly to the patient chart. So they’re kind of taking the, the, um, you know, the, the boring data entry work that somebody is required to do and automating that.
And then you have like this concept of LMS or kind of generating, uh, you know, text. Right. So, like, let’s say a patient asks a question like, hey, what should I expect from my post-op? Um, you know, for after wisdom, teeth extraction, after an implant. I mean, we could sit there and type something out.
But you have tools like ChatGPT that, you know, you can say, hey, spit out a post-op instruction for me and tell me exactly what to say to this patient in terms of what to expect, and it’ll generate something. Then you can edit it and then send it out, and it’s going to be extremely robust and detailed and so on.
So what we’re trying to do is we’re actually working on integrating ChatGPT or that LLM customize it to the specific use cases that we we deal with with the dental app, where it’s going to, um, on one hand, use our own data to kind of uncover and say, like, look, these are patients that really need to be followed up with.
And then the second hand is using something like ChatGPT to actually create the text and, and the recommendation of what to say to these patients and then automate that whole process. So it’s all built in and then send that out. So, you know, again, I think there’s many different companies working on different AI solutions within dentistry.
That’s kind of the use case that we’re focusing on. Um, in terms of the dental app.
Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
And kind of with um, another question. We just got um, with filtering of list. Um, does dental app allow filtering of list that will show user preferences. So such as the most recent request for an earlier appointment?
00:21:57.650 — 00:22:52.420 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Sure. I mean, we have like you have like an ASAP list, right. So that you can say, okay, this patient really wants to come in sooner. Uh, but, you know, all of the preferences are constantly being tracked in the patient persona or the patient profile, right? So we have like a cover page where you can add details to, you can add medical history alerts.
You can add you can toggle the recall schedule. So like some patients need to be on a three month, four months, six months, whatever it is. And then, you know, you can through the through the CRM or the list generation component of it, you could say, hey, show me all my patients that are active that have been in the office in the last year, that that last appointment included x rays, that they have an outstanding crown, that they don’t have a balance, that they don’t have an insurance claim.
And the preferred provider is is doctor, lawyer or, you know, like you can you can generate a compounded list with those seven attributes and get that list and then do something with it.
00:22:52.460 — 00:23:04.180 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Kind of looking at a little bit about what what is described about the software. Um, talks about offices getting paid faster. How how does the office get paid faster? How is insurance more efficient?
00:23:04.460 — 00:24:47.090 · Doctor Lior Tamir
It’s a that’s a really great question. So if we go back to the old school way of doing insurance based follow up. Right. So you send out an insurance claim right in your through your PMS. You log into dental exchange, you’re fine. You’re adding your attachments, you’re copying the code, and then you wait.
Right. Um, there is a certain degree of, um, you know, like, a big part of it is like having transparency into that process and having the ability to be more proactive. So, for example, sometimes errors come up, a claim gets rejected. Uh, missing pay ID, you know, wrong attachment, not enough information.
And sometimes it takes like 21 days or 14 days for the office to realize that that happened and then have to follow up with it. So, for example, in my practice, um, before I use the dental app. Uh, so before I was ready to, to roll, um, we had, you know, a certain amount of days that it would take us to get paid on an insurance claim, and then as soon as we had more transparency into it, first of all, as a business owner, being able to have a dashboard where I could see, hey, these are all the claims that haven’t been sent.
Here are the claims that have been sent filtered by the data service, filtered by the date that they were. That they were sent out without having to pull a report. Like, I don’t need to, you know, I can also do that. But just having that level of transparency and making sure that things are being followed up with allowed us to have a more proactive process to get things done.
And we shortened our our time to get paid on on an insurance claim by about 30%. So just having more transparency and streamlined processes, we’re able to get things done faster.
00:24:47.410 — 00:24:56.090 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Another thing the website talks about, um, is stop chasing growth. How does the dental app help me achieve growth without chasing it?
00:24:56.090 — 00:28:18.130 · Doctor Lior Tamir
This is really, you know, I think this is like where and by the way, we have a so many things that we’re super excited about between now and the end of the year. One of them is like a major update to the website. We’ve really spent a lot of time trying to better to find better ways to talk about what we’re doing.
Um, and I’m super excited about that. But when you think about what are the tools necessary to run your practice, right. Like, let’s let’s like if you’re going to run a super sophisticated, data driven practice, you need your PMS, obviously, right. You need your patient engagement tools. Right. We agree on that.
Um, you need to submit insurance claims. Right. But then you need to track these things. Right. So you need like an analytics tool like dental Intel practice by numbers. You really need to have a tool like that. If you’re going to, um, track your growth and then fine tune it. And then you need the tools to actually launch campaigns, nurture campaigns, follow up with patients, keep track of all of that.
So one of the biggest hurdles for most practice owners that I talked to is that it’s very overwhelming, right. Like they they they want to run their practice okay. So they have like their dentists or their open dental, their eagle soft and then trying to figure out which tool. There’s so many tools and there’s a lot of overlap.
Right. So for example um, vine is a is a perfect is It’s a perfect example. That’s a company that started off with, you know, like phone systems that would pop up and show you who’s calling. And then eventually it became like patient engagement tools and, um, sorry, not not not fine, fine. Um, we’ve we’ve is the one I was talking about.
So we’ve yeah. So we’ve is the one that you know, it started off like I remember that feature coming out. It was super cool. Like it would pop up. It would show you who’s who’s calling. And then eventually they either acquired or started to to add more functionality. Um, and same thing with like dental Intel.
Dental Intel started as like an analytics, you know, a pure analytics product. Then they acquired memento. And now all of a sudden they have like the engagement tools and the campaigns and so on. Um, so there’s a lot of overlap between the multiple different systems that you have to pick. And then they don’t all work really nicely with each other.
And so as a practice owner it’s like, man, how do I get what I need? Which analytics solution, which engagement solution, uh, you know, etc.. What we’ve really tried to do is, is build from the ground up something that works cohesively together. Right. So, you know, I think dental Intel is a great product.
I think memento is a great product. You know, I’ve heard some offices complain about like, hey, when I create a list, I have to save it in dental Intel. Then I have to log into Magento. I have to update it. It’s not really based on real time data. And so I think one of the biggest challenges that offices experience is that there’s an overwhelming amount of solutions to pick and choose from.
And it’s really confusing to understand what exactly you need. Right. And then to top that off, as practice owners, you know, we come out of dental school, we’re not really being educated on how to run a practice. What are the best practices, what are the standard operating procedures? We kind of have to learn along the way how to run our practices.
And so what we’ve really tried to do, there’s like this relentless optimization effort on our end to constantly build a solution that’s built from the ground up to give you the core tools you need, like including analytics. Um. You know, all those tools that we mentioned before.
00:28:18.250 — 00:28:38.690 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Would you call it growth growth through efficiency. Is that when you’re you’re saying you’re you’re stopping and chasing growth. But, um, there’s not actual products in here that are leading to your growth except for from marketing perspectives and things like that. It’s more you’re going to get better practice growth because your operations are more efficient, and then you can focus on other things.
00:28:38.690 — 00:28:49.730 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Well, I think that is the product. I mean, you know, how many practices do you. So if I said to you today, um, doc, can you pull up a list of all your patients that have.
00:28:49.770 — 00:28:51.810 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
I’m gonna tell you I can’t pull up anything.
00:28:52.690 — 00:29:09.530 · Doctor Lior Tamir
So so I think that’s a very unique situation. And then can you assign that list to a staff member and then track every interaction they have, like when they text message, when they call, when they email, how many times they did it, when they did it last. Do you have a way to track that?
00:29:10.050 — 00:29:10.610 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
No.
00:29:10.870 — 00:31:28.090 · Doctor Lior Tamir
No. Okay. So that’s a perfect example of how we could change your workflow to help you drive more growth. How do you know that your staff is actually following up with these patients? Let’s take high ticket items. Right. Invisalign veneers all on X implants on average. Right. We know that it takes 6 to 8 interactions with a patient to get them to close on a big ticket item like that.
Right. Are you tracking those interactions? And are you doing that at scale? And do you have a do you have a way to make sure that you’re actually doing that? Let’s say a patient comes in, they need an implant. They’re missing tooth number 19. Tooth number 30. They have a kilometer of bone. They really need that so that their bite doesn’t collapse.
You’ve taken the time. You’ve educated them. How do you know that your staff is following up with them and trying to get them to understand the importance, and maybe preapproved them for financing or get them back in? Um, most practices don’t have a good answer for that. Right. And so the reason is, is that you’re either doing this manually, right?
You’re doing this with post-it notes, right? You have like your list or Excel spreadsheets like, hey, office manager, uh, here’s the here are the patients that we talked about that we need to follow up with. I remember I saw this patient two weeks ago. Okay. She does it once, right? Month goes by. Still hasn’t scheduled whatever.
The patient missed the call, forgot to respond. Didn’t have the money at the time. Was going on vacation. Do you have a second follow up? Do you have a third follow up? Do you have a sixth follow up? How are you doing that? Right. And so many offices depend on you. Patients only. Right. They’re like, my growth is new patients.
That’s how I’m going to grow. That’s how I’m going to hit my target. But that’s really hard to do. And it’s also a missed opportunity because most offices are sitting on hundreds of patients that need outstanding treatment. Right. And so that’s the growth element that. And then the other side of it is then measuring it.
Right. So the same way that you can pull up the list, but you can’t really keep track of the operation. And then how are you measuring that? They’re coming back in. I think that’s the that’s the secret sauce, right? Like when you start to really meddle all of those different components of the operation together and you create a tool, or you have a tool that tracks and measures all of that, that’s where growth comes into play.
00:31:28.330 — 00:31:38.330 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Let’s let’s talk about a simple thing that I think is extremely valuable, especially from Invisalign. I’m a I’m a student of moles coaching. Um, with regard to Invisalign.
00:31:38.370 — 00:31:39.770 · Doctor Lior Tamir
I took molds to yeah yeah.
00:31:39.970 — 00:31:55.930 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Well this is great. So one thing that Ryan talks a lot about is, um, having on your schedule, um, everybody who has adult Invisalign coverage or adult orthodontic coverage and something identifies in there. Can the dental app
00:31:57.050 — 00:32:12.060 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
solve that problem? Can it look into the insurance? And can you have a setting where it’s putting an eye on everybody’s chart or, or on the schedule or something like that, because that’s that’s kind of a manual process that we had to get somebody to go through and look up Invisalign coverage.
00:32:12.340 — 00:33:03.780 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So so the, the the short answer to that is not currently right. Uh, we’re working with, uh, verification, um, which is a AI driven like insurance breakdown company. Um, our goal is to have that integrated into our solution. So, uh, it would pull up that information, right it back to the patient chart, and you’d be able to set that alert.
So, you know, again where we’re at, right. You know, and we we we get asked this, this kind of question a lot. It’s like again, we’ve been around I’m not making any excuses, but we’ve been around for a very short amount of time and we’re building a lot of really innovative products. If you give us another 18 months, 24 months, I’ll be able to say yes to just about everything and things like that will get resolved.
Um, at this time, you can’t do that. But it’s definitely something that we’re working on, that exact use case.
00:33:03.860 — 00:33:29.230 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So when I did the demo with you, um, there was a portion of it and tell me if I’m wrong. Um, there’s a portion of it that showed kind of the, um, icons for the different products that are utilized through, um, the dental app now. Um, are all of those integrated into it or kind of when we looked at it, uh, you know, one thing that that is my page.
00:33:29.230 — 00:33:31.350 · Doctor Lior Tamir
You’re talking about, like our app Store concept.
00:33:31.390 — 00:33:49.310 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah, your app store concept. So one thing that I don’t like is, um, the ability, the having to go to another window to view images. Um, you know, that things like that. Yeah. Um, have, have you guys kind of gotten through that now where, um, it’s integrated into it, or do you still have to go out to another window?
00:33:49.590 — 00:37:30.560 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. So so let’s talk briefly about the App Store concept, because I think this is a really important point. Most PMS systems outside of open dental are very closed systems. Right? So they have like a walled garden and you kind of have to work with what they. Curate for you or what they pick and choose for you.
And our goal is to not do that. Right. I feel like as a so for example, we have some partners in the App Store. For example, we work with a specific reporting system that is somewhat overlapping with what we do. And we do that because we have practices that love their product and want to keep using that product.
Right. And so it doesn’t matter that we overlap. There are specific features that they want to be able to use. And I think that it’s really important in the dental ecosystem to create more open platforms so that offices can have the ability to pick and choose what they want. Right. When we set out to build this.
Right. Again, remember, it started off as a clinical workflow tool and it eventually became a PMS system. The one thing that we said to ourselves we’re not going to do is build imaging. Imaging is difficult for a few different reasons. One is to to really do imaging, right. You really should be connecting to x ray sensors via SDK, not train drivers.
Um, you know, then there’s all kinds of other things. There’s FDA regulations as it pertains to imaging. There’s integration with, uh, you know, there’s transferring data, all that stuff. Right? And imaging has been solved in an exceptional way. Um, the company that we specifically integrate is with is called Soda Cloud.
Right. So Soda Cloud, um, has been around for a very long time. They had soda server actually the from what I understand, the founder of Dex’s Imaging is the person who ended up spinning out and building on Soda Cloud. Um, so we just said, all right, we’re going to partner up with this company, and we have a bridge which opens up a different tab.
And that’s what you’re talking about. We are still working on pulling in everything into our interface so you don’t have to actually open up a separate tab, but that’s around the corner. You’re going to start seeing that roll out in our product in the very near future. But the whole concept where this conversation started or the question started is our app store.
Our goal is to have an app store where then offices can pick and choose, like we’re going to provide our core services, which is the patient engagement tools, automatic reminders, reputation management, online scheduling, insurance claims. We have a basic eligibility and verification product. Essentially, we ping the API from a dental exchange and we just present the or the information that they send back.
It’s not the most robust, but it’s better than nothing. So we provide that. But for example, when verified comes into play you’ll be able to activate that. And they have an entire company dedicated to solving that specific problem. Um, and our goal is to just keep adding options to the App Store that. So for example, we get asked a lot about the different AI voice operators.
Right. So there’s, you know, Dan, Tina and Art and, um, Annie and there’s a bunch of them. Uh, so our goal is to again. Different offices have different ones. And our goal is to make it super easy to be able to pick the one that you already use and activate it and turn it on. And so that’s the whole concept of our app store.
And our goal is to just create a really robust ecosystem, uh, to allow practice owners to pick and choose the things that, that are the best for their, their use case.
00:37:30.680 — 00:37:40.000 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
And you’re still so in the App Store, you’re still subscribing to that particular app and paying whatever subscription fee that is that’s outside of the dental app. Correct.
00:37:40.040 — 00:37:41.120 · Doctor Lior Tamir
That’s correct.
00:37:41.160 — 00:38:28.450 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So something that I was looking at today, which I think is kind of interesting to the The Wall concept you were just talking about, um, you know, the shine with Dietrich’s um, in the upcoming update, it’s no longer going to allow you to submit to the Vine clearinghouse for insurance. Um, which is it’s kind of crazy because I guess KKR has taken an investment in another clearinghouse.
So basically they’re going to make all, um, dendrites claims go through the other clearinghouse. Um, you know, so it’s kind of that, you know, restricting kind of what the practices can do and things like that. So, I mean, I assume that that’s kind of not something that can happen with, with something like dental lab.
Dental lab is going to give you whatever opportunity you want. Is that correct?
00:38:28.490 — 00:39:12.300 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. As fast as we can integrate it, we will. Right. And again, this is what’s really unique about what we’re doing is this has been designed, tested, optimized from the perspective of a practice owner. I mean, I kind of built this out of my own need. And I also understand the reality of what it takes to integrate.
Uh, obviously we’ve picked our initial partners, but we keep adding and our our mission is to make it open. Right? We we are not looking to, uh, you know, we’re not in a position to, to make kingmakers. And as we scale our goals, not to become that player. Our goal is to give equal opportunity to the best possible product.
Because at the end of the day, you know who wins. It’s the practice owner.
00:39:12.740 — 00:40:04.030 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Yeah. Yeah. And as as you and I both know, as practice owners and clinicians, um, people are constantly trying to get their hands in Dennis pockets. You know, I feel like I. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people whose ultimate goal is just to make as much profit off of Dennis as they can. And you know, that that that kind of makes it tough.
And I think that’s kind of where, you know, you start thinking, is this what, um, what um, Hendricks is doing? They’re just they’re making more profit off of this, so they’re going to make you use it. You know, so I think Dennis need opportunities to choose whatever they want to use and to be open. I think open system is very, very valuable.
Um, yeah. How’s the dental app different than, um, eagle sauce? Um, cloud based solutions and things like that? Or doesn’t it have to be eagle soft? But but any of the the legacy softwares that are going to Eagle.
00:40:04.030 — 00:40:18.990 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Soft, they’re there or there’s this fuze. Right. Like they like that’s the. Yeah. So I mean I really didn’t want to get on here to kind of throw anyone under the bus or say mean things about them. I think the reality is, is that.
00:40:19.070 — 00:40:26.630 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Is that you that you know, that I mean, we all want to know what is the advantage and why should I choose this opportunity versus another opportunity.
00:40:26.670 — 00:40:36.670 · Doctor Lior Tamir
100%. I think there’s many different factors at play. Um, and it’s not just one specific thing. Um, at the end of the day,
00:40:37.830 — 00:41:04.800 · Doctor Lior Tamir
we the dental app is the only PMS system on the market that has a sales and marketing engine designed to help you grow your practice. So, you know, we’re not for everyone. We are for the specific type of dentist who wants to be a dental business operator. You know, the dentists who want to have those thriving practices and want the seamless integration with tools or the seamless tools right out of the box to help them,
00:41:05.920 — 00:41:07.640 · Doctor Lior Tamir
you know, identify opportunity,
00:41:08.680 — 00:42:12.490 · Doctor Lior Tamir
take advantage of those opportunities. Market to their patients. Measure the performance and run a streamlined practice. We are the only player that has that sales and marketing component integrated from day one. You literally we do your data conversion. I can show you in your onboarding, call your opportunities and you can immediately get to work on, you know, adding production, getting more patients in marketing to them.
Um, and that’s really the difference, right? Like if you want the most clinical, clinically advanced, you know, hyper focused on clinical, you know, there’s definitely things that we don’t have. Maybe one day we’ll get to that point. But if you’re looking to have the most robust, business focused PMS system to help you grow and optimize your practice.
We’re the main player for that, and that’s really the line in the sand. There’s everything else and those there’s great systems out there. They’re really focused on improving and optimizing your operations. They’re looking to help you manage better and we’re looking to help you manage and grow.
00:42:12.530 — 00:42:45.330 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
So I think kind of one of my last few questions, um, cloud based software, you’re depending on strength of your internet signal. Um, you know, my internet and my office is spotty, and there’s lots of times I’ll look at it and be like, man, um, if I was relying on cloud based softwares for operations today, I would be shut down.
Um, how do you counter that concern, you know, and how efficient can you be on operating on cellular data if for some reason, um, your internet’s going down? And how secure is that?
00:42:45.530 — 00:45:27.850 · Doctor Lior Tamir
So I think that, um, there’s a few different ways to answer that question. There are many offices that are in slightly more rural areas or have less ideal, uh, internet situations. Right. If you think about what does it cost to get a good internet connection. So let’s say it’s like 60 bucks. A hundred bucks a month, right?
Right. There are systems that you can get as backups. So for example, here in my house, I’m, I’m in like a hilly area. So I have like cable internet. But I also have Starlink, which is uh, you know, we use it’s a satellite based internet solution. And that’s how I ensure that, like if one goes down, I have another and it costs me, you know, in total under $200 a month to solve that.
Right. So in my office I have extremely reliable internet. So that’s not really necessary. I’m kind of in a business district. And the internet, that’s honestly the last thing that goes down. It’s always it’s most likely PGE in California who knocked my power out. And you know, it’ll be a perfectly sunny day.
No wind and the power goes out. That’s how you know PGE is doing some construction. Um, that’s usually my my issue in my area, but usually it’s not the internet. So if you have internet issues and you know that it’s a consistent issue, then you know there’s a price to pay and you get some backup internet. The, um, you know, I think that’s what you would typically do, right?
Like if you’re in an area where it’s less of a, you know, I always ask the question though, like, what are you missing out on by not having a cutting edge solution today? Right. Um, and I think that that’s really the a much bigger price that you are paying by staying on a server. Now, you could say the same thing like, okay, server, you have an on premise.
So if the internet goes out, you have you have your system. What if the electricity goes out. Right. So I mean, you could start playing this game and then what. You got to get a backup generator or solar power for your office. I mean, you can go down this rabbit hole. Sometimes things happen and you just deal with it.
Usually, if the internet goes down, it’s usually for like an hour or two, or if the power goes down, it’s usually for a few hours. You’re not like out for months on end. Um, you know, the the it’s funny enough, about six months ago, I was talking to an office, and we’re in the process of doing the onboarding for them.
And in the middle of that, there was a hurricane that had gone through the practice and their server went flying and they, by chance, happened to find the server and get the backup. And they were able to to get going. I mean, you know, like there’s there’s other natural disasters that can happen that have much bigger implications if you’re storing all of your information on site and you’re not consistent about getting backups and so on.
00:45:27.890 — 00:45:53.100 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Um, so kind of a a couple of wrap up questions. You know, obviously our organization has simplified dentistry, and we kind of ask everybody who is, um, with us. You know, I mean, our overall goal is, you know, how can we help practices simplify their day to day operations clinically, operationally and financially.
Um, what’s your advice for our listeners on on what they can do to simplify their dental practice?
00:45:53.140 — 00:47:27.350 · Doctor Lior Tamir
To really answer that, every practice owner has a vision for what they want, right? A vision for how they want patients to experience their dentistry, their practice, what they want to squeeze out of their practice. Um, and then some offices have no clear vision. Right. And I think in order to simplify anything and get it to line up with kind of what you want to achieve, that’s really the first and foremost, most important thing is to identify what is it that you’re trying to achieve in your practice.
What’s your vision for your practice? What kind of energy do you want to bring into it, and what do you want to squeeze out of it and then design your operation accordingly? So I think that with a North Star and some vision in place, you can really do pretty incredible things. Um, and I would I would say that the best way to simplify your practice is start there and even audit like what’s going on.
Like if you have a vision and idea, but you’re in the weeds all day and you don’t give yourself the time to actually go and and run the business, right at the end of the day, that’s a really important thing. The administrative side of things, um, then you’re never going to be able to simplify things and improve things and so on.
So I think my, my, you know, I at this point, I’ve talked to so many dentists and it’s like one or the other bucket. Right. It’s um, people with a vision and a goal and a plan or people without a vision goal in the plan, but a practice and they don’t really know what to do with it. And so I think it’s important to just start with a North Star.
What do you stand for? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to achieve? What’s working, what’s not. And then kind of build a game plan to work against it?
00:47:27.830 — 00:48:03.720 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
Well. Thank you. Um, one other thing. Yeah, we’ve all done different things. Not all of us, but some of us have done different things in dentistry. Um, one thing that simplified dentistry also talks about is kind of the entrepreneurial dentist. Um, you’ve obviously, um, gotten out of demonstrated software, got back into dentistry, and now you’re doing software.
Um, what’s your advice for the entrepreneurial dentist? You know, there’s a lot of guys and girls who want to get out for what I say, get out from the operatory and do other things and not just be total clinicians. If if somebody were to have an entrepreneurial mindset, what would you tell them?
00:48:03.880 — 00:48:11.919 · Doctor Lior Tamir
You know, that’s a great question. I think there there’s different arenas to be an entrepreneur in, right. There’s the
00:48:13.000 — 00:50:00.830 · Doctor Lior Tamir
arena of being a dentist. Right. So for example, within dentistry, I think it’s like what, 8 to 15% of the industry has been rolled up. That’s a big trend that’s happening. Like there’s humongous opportunities there. Um, you know, and and so there’s like that, but there’s also like, hey, I want to bring an innovative product to market or hey, I want to buy an ice cream shop or whatever it is.
So it’s a little different depending on which arena you want to play in. Um, but there’s usually, there’s, there’s a lot of analysis paralysis that comes into play. And sometimes you just got to jump in and try and do something and see if it works. And then and then kind of, you know, pivot from there. I think the end of the day, being an entrepreneur has become a really popular term.
It’s really like operating a business, right? So when you’re operating a business, running a business is essentially solving problems, right? So, you know, you’re in the dental business. It’s like, you know, problem number one get a patient in. Okay. So you’ve solved that. Now problem number two you’ve you’ve treatment plan and do the dentistry.
Problem number three is like do it at scale. And then and then you know make sure it’s profitable and so on. But essentially what you’re doing is you’re solving small little problems that all add up to running a business. Um, and if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to identify the arena that you want to play in.
So it could be, hey, I want to start a small DSO. So I would say the first thing you should do is educate yourself. Go and find out who’s done it. How do they do it? What are the steps? There’s some great courses out there. Scott Luna has that one course on on multi practice Mastery that you know that’s really fascinating.
And then start doing things. I mean it’s it’s it does you know good to just think about things. You have to kind of at some point take the leap of faith. Believe in yourself. Don’t look back and go for it.
00:50:01.310 — 00:50:50.280 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
When I tell people all the time, when they’re when they’re talking about this, I think you have to look at what your strengths are. You know, I mean, if for me, my strength has always been in, in business applications, but health care oriented, so I don’t jump outside of the healthcare world and try to do other things.
Some people, you know may be great at real estate and real estate development. So maybe that’s that’s kind of their strength to kind of get out of it. And dentistry kind of gives you, um, the opportunity to build a successful career, achieve wealth and jump into other things. Um, well, uh, thank you very much for your time.
Um, we really appreciate having you. Uh, I think the dental app, um, sounds fantastic for our listeners who are interested in doing a demo and, um, kind of connecting with you a little bit more. Um, what’s what’s the best way for them to connect with you?
00:50:50.320 — 00:51:31.280 · Doctor Lior Tamir
Yeah. If they want to schedule a demo just through our website, it’s thedentalapp.com there’s a big button that says book a demo. Um, I also am available all the time. People message me on Facebook, on Instagram, uh, on my email, all my contact info is readily available. Uh, maybe we can throw it in with, uh, you know, with the podcast, but happy to connect with anyone, whether they’re customers, not customers.
Want to pick my brain? Want to talk? Want to just connect? Um, you know, I’m I’m in this industry. I’m all in on this industry and and love talking to dentists and just, um, just being a value add contributor to the community. So I really appreciate you having me on. And thanks for the conversation.
00:51:31.320 — 00:51:33.280 · Doctor Mustafa Shah-Khan
All right. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.