Hey there, dental professionals and industry enthusiasts.
Picture this. It's October, and you're in the
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experiences of your career. You're at the Becker's
fall future of dentistry roundtable in the vibrant
city of Chicago, fresh off an incredible 3
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and invigorated after attending captivating keynote sessions by
none other than the legendary boxing world champion
and CEO, Lila Elite, and the extraordinary professional
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attendees and learned from more than 80 speakers
who are at the forefront of dental innovation.
You sat in on educational sessions exploring topics
that elevate dental care as a critical element
of whole person health. You've witnessed firsthand how
digital technology is revolutionizing
patient outcomes
and how both large DSOs and independent practices
are flourishing.
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fall future of dentistry roundtable is from October
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Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Moriah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. And I'm thrilled to have with me
today, Chaim Habib, founder and CEO at Hudson
Dental. Chaim, welcome to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.
We're very excited to have you join us
today. To get a start, would you mind
please introducing yourself and telling us a bit
about your background?
Yeah. Thank you, Maria. Thank you for having
me. So, my name is Chaim Haviv. As
you said, CEO and founder of Hudson Dental.
We are a DSO based in New York,
operating in the Tri State, New York, New
Jersey, and Connecticut.
Before this, I was in financial roles. I
was with JPMorgan. I was with Ernst and
Young, and,
I have an MBA from Yale University. So
I'm more on the finance side of things,
but
I've been doing it for a few years
now. Super exciting. Great industry. So happy to
be here.
Yes. Yes. Of course. So very excited to
talk, with you today.
And for the first very question that I
have for you, what are some of the
biggest issues you're following at Dental this year?
Sure. Wow. So many.
So many. So I think, you know, without
any,
specific order, first thing I would say is
reimbursement and pricing.
We are seeing more insurances
are finding ways to what they call optimize
their payments. They use AI, they use other
tools and a lot of times we are
seeing rejection
for insurance claims that,
should be approved and they end up being
approved.
But they're just making our lives harder a
little bit on the reimbursement.
Certain treatments
are not being paid or not being covered
is all being delayed, as I said. So
that's that's making dental offices,
continuously look at,
becoming fee for service
or staying in network
and that's something we're causing to think about.
Second thing, market consolidation,
say 2 things about this year. The interested
environment, which has been high for the past
year, year and a half,
now could be easing. So definitely following that
and see how the market is doing given
that. On the patient side, we're not seeing
a big impact. We're definitely seeing patients still
coming in and getting their treatment.
On consolidation
and acquisitions, there is some
definitely
changes and
some seller expectations that are not aligned with
what buyers want, but we think that's going
to change as the interest
rates come down.
And 13 is recruiting and retention,
that's always true, finding talent, keeping talent.
Cybersecurity,
we just saw what happened with a car
strike
event in
all over the world, what happened from a
cyber issue,
that's something we are tracking, making sure we
are protected
in our practice and protecting our patients' information.
New technology,
AI, robotics,
something we're tracking,
And the last 2 I'm going to mention
is controlling the cost of dental business, doing
business in them is becoming increasingly
more expensive,
and then the government regulations and how they
affect our business.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I think reimbursement is definitely
something that everyone is focusing on for the
exact same reasons that you've mentioned, of course.
Is there anything that's making you excited or
anything that's making you nervous, whether it's something
that, you know, is being done at Hudson
Dental or just anything else that you're seeing
in the news?
Yeah. Definitely. So let's start from,
the exciting stuff. So definitely,
new technologies
that are changing the face of the industry.
If you look at AI for diagnosis,
helping the doctors diagnose more and seeing exactly
what's going on,
both on the imaging front and when the
patient is in the chair. 3 d printing,
which we use in our locations and enables
us to do more in less time, delivering
better patient care same day, many times.
And other technology innovations for then on down,
there are many, I just mentioned one,
you were seeing some
innovations coming from Stanford University,
with a robot's dental assistant. So instead of
having a dental assistant or you can have
1 and they supervise
all the dental assistants. So very exciting.
2nd thing that's exciting is consolidation
and
retiring dentists,
or the baby
baby boomer generation and retiring,
opening space for new dentists to come in
and either own their practices.
Or if they don't want to, they can
work with someone like,
like a DSO like us or someone, similar
to us and,
participate
in the ownership without taking the toll of
actually buying the location themselves. So that's exciting
and definitely something we're seeing.
2 quick things that make me 3, makes
me a little bit nervous.
Obviously, talent that we talked about. Getting the
right talent, maintaining the right talent, it's always
a challenge,
becoming
even more challenging.
Cyber, as we mentioned, becoming even more challenging
every day. And the last thing that we
said, insurance.
AI optimizing cost of insurance forms
and,
procedures that are not being covered. Those are
the main
few things that, you know, would make someone
like me,
being a little bit nervous, but we handle
everything we need to handle.
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that
information. And, Chaim, the the last thing I
really wanted to ask you before I let
you go is, what would the most effective
health care leaders need in order to be
successful in the next 2 to 3 years,
would you say?
Great question. So
as I mentioned, all of the things I've
mentioned before, the talent, the cyber, the insurance
reimbursement,
and,
government regulations,
market consolidation,
reimbursement,
looking at your payers and understanding, do you
want to be free for service? Do you
want to be in insurance? Which insurances?
All of that, just staying on top of
everything I mentioned
is something we do day in, day out
and definitely you need to be on top
of all of them.
It's not a
one man thing. It definitely requires a village,
but it's something you need to be very
mindful of. So that's the first thing. The
second thing I would add is to be
adaptable
and nimble. The market is changing
both on,
as we mentioned,
the talent front keeps changing all the time.
We've had
a very big shortage of hygienist 2, 3
years ago
with people retirement or hygienist retirement,
where was that was bigger than usual.
Now we're seeing classes of former dental assistants
going into hygiene school. Graduating now, that's changing
the dynamics on hygiene, just one example. So
being adaptable, being nimble,
data driven,
be data driven, that's the 13 I would
mention.
And you need to be able to make
decisions based on data, that's always important, but
it's
becoming more and more important as the case
of doing business
is becoming faster and faster with all the
innovation. So always use data.
A hunch is good.
Totally fine to start.
Start looking at something because you have a
hand, something is happening.
But then use the data to make the
decision. Never make the decision just on a
hand or just on and I see it
all the time. I have office managers come
to me and say, we feel that this
is happening.
We feel this is not going well. And
I say, well, that's great. Let's look at
the data. And the 4th thing I would
mention is
to leverage new technologies.
Again, very easy for us as human beings
to
I I don't know if there's this change,
but definitely if we're comfortable
and we know what we're doing,
we don't want
to invest the time in another AI technology
or another
service that's gonna maybe handset the phone better,
maybe not. We're not sure.
Maybe be
more efficient, maybe not, or invest some require
some time investment upfront, both monetarily and time
wise. And oftentimes we say, you know what,
I'm just good the way I am.
I don't think that's the right way to
go longer term to be successful.
You have to be open to those new
technologies and you have to invest the time
upfront
and oftentimes the money upfront
to adopt them. Not everything would be a
success,
but 80% or 70%, which would be a
success, is going to make up for much
more than the time and money you invested
in the other innovations or the other projects
that are not successful.
Got it. Got it. Thank you so much
for sharing those, the final thoughts. I'm this
has definitely been an informative discussion. So again,
I want, wanna thank you so much for
coming back on Becker's Healthcare, and I look
forward to connecting with you again soon.
Thank you very much for having me. I
look forward, for next time.