Hello everyone. I am Maria Mohammed with Becker's Healthcare.
Thank you so much for joining us on today's podcast.
We are absolutely thrilled to be joined by Dr.
McKenzie Woodard from Commonwealth Dentistry. Doctor,
thank you so much for being here today. How are you?
I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.
Of course. Again, so happy to have you on today. Um,
today we'll discuss all things within detect ai. To get us started,
would you mind please introducing yourself and sharing a bit about your role?
Sure, absolutely. Um, as you said, my name's Mackenzie Woodard.
I'm a general dentist in Central Virginia and I work with an amazing group of
doctors here. And, uh,
I've been in practice with my group since finishing dental school in 2011.
And I have three kids, a dog, cat, and a fish.
Wonderful, wonderful. Thank you so much for that good information. Um,
to get us started with what we'll be talking about in depth today,
as you know, the presence of technology in dentistry,
especially artificial intelligence or AI, is growing pretty rapidly.
Um, in your view, doctor,
what are the challenges at dental practices driving this trend? Yeah.
Well I think that we have to take advantage of technology because it's important
for our patients and it can add so much to our diagnosis
and our assessment of, um, our patients' conditions. But then, you know,
it's always balancing that with your own clinical judgment and experiences.
So kind of balancing those two things together I think is, is a challenge,
but important.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
And can you share a bit about how Commonwealth Dentistry has
leveraged detect AI to address some of those challenges?
And also how has this approach changed day-to-day operations at the
organization?
Yeah, so we are utilizing video four multiple areas of our,
of our practice flow. So from our doctors utilizing it for caries detection,
our dental hygienists using the radiographic bone loss feature to help diagnose
periodontal disease and then our administrative team taking advantage of the
insurance communication aspect.
So I think it's really streamlining the way that we can communicate with
insurance on the administrative side,
but it's also changing and really benefiting, I think,
our patient communication and our diagnosis.
Got it. Got it. Thank you so much for that insight.
And can you share an instance where detect AI played a role in a
patient's treatment acceptance?
And also in what ways have you seen detect ai enhance patient trust and
communication?
Yeah, I um,
I actually had a really interesting situation with a patient maybe earlier this
year, six, eight months ago. Um,
we had a patient that had seen a colleague, 'cause again,
we're in a group practice,
so we have multiple providers kinda sharing the same patient pool. So,
um, it, it creates an interesting thing when a patient was in,
she had just her general cleaning exam checkup. Um,
they grabbed bite wings and my colleague, um, you know,
informed her that she had no treatment needs to return to the clinic for,
so she came back to see me six months later. Um,
she was not due for x-rays at that visit, uh,
but I could clinically see that something had developed on,
in this case it was the distal of six for this patient. Um,
so I explained the need for treatment to her and she was,
you know, that patient who was sort of naturally distrusting. Um,
she had a difficult time believing that she had a treatment need.
Uh, when we went to do the treatment, you know,
we took intraoral photographs and were able to show her the lesion.
Um, and as soon as she saw that something was going on,
she immediately pivoted to a level of distrust of the provider she had seen
six months before.
She could not believe that this could have developed in six months. So, uh,
it was so interesting and so helpful to be able to run
video on the historical x-rays.
'cause thankfully we could see the distal of that canine on her bite wings, um,
from her prior visit.
So it changed the conversation entirely as soon as
I ran the analysis and you know,
Vidia did not detect caries on the distal six at her last, uh,
set of bite wings. Um,
and I'm confident that my colleague did not miss it six months prior.
But having that piece of information that was impartial,
you know, um,
helped that patient understand that, you know,
that's why you come in every six months because things do develop and change.
Our bodies are constantly, you know, changing and in development. So, um,
it really helped her, trust me, it helped her trust my colleague. Um,
and she was much more accepting of the treatment, you know,
being able to go through that exercise.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for giving us that example. I imagine that,
you know,
detect AI can be so important to a patient's treatment acceptance and
even though I also, I have to admit, don't like coming in every six months,
it is important. And so , I'm glad you made note of that. Um,
before I let you go, doctor, the last thing I wanted to ask you is,
can you elaborate on the long-term benefits you foresee in terms of patient
care and overall practice growth within the continued use of detect AI and
industry?
Yeah, I think there's just so much we can utilize a pro, uh,
products like this for in our practice. And it,
it obviously takes time to be able to utilize something like this appropriately
for our patients. It's gonna help us, um,
monitor ongoing periodontal and clinical conditions
so differently and so well, um,
which is something that I think our patients are really gonna benefit from
long-term.
That will of course breed good things for our practice. You know,
in terms of either diagnosing things we wouldn't have known about. Um, you know,
obviously if we find two cavities instead of one, you know,
that's gonna have a very clear impact on our productivity.
But then just being able to continually convey those things more clearly to
our patients and have better tools to show them, you know,
what we see to make things more obvious to the untrained eye on
radiographs. Um,
they'll accept the treatment I think more readily and it'll improve our
communication.
And then being able to tie that back in with insurance and save our
admin team time, um,
and have really concise,
important information for the insurance companies and standardize the
information that they get, obviously will help with our, our collections.
And, you know, I think it's,
I think it's so important that we communicate effectively with insurance
because, you know, as soon as something gets denied,
I think a lot of our patients immediately think that it didn't need to be done
or we recommended the wrong thing. So I think having that streamlined,
concise communication with insurance from our first claim submission,
um, to decrease the,
the number of times that they try to deny a claim or request or more
information. Again, it just, it's good for our patients,
it's good for building trust with them,
it's good for our administrative team and giving them time back. Uh,
so it's, you know, again,
it really has positive benefits for a lot of different areas of our practice.
Um, so those things will just continue to be very important moving forward.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, doctor,
thank you so much for joining us today for this discussion.
It has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.
And I'd also like to thank our sponsor, Henry Schein, one.
You can tune into more podcasts and virtual events from Becker's Healthcare by
visiting becker hospital review.com. Thank you again, doctor.
Okay. Thanks so much for having me.