Welcome everyone to the Becker's Healthcare podcast series.
I'm Mariah Muhammad, writer and moderator with Becker's
Healthcare. And I'm thrilled to have with me
today doctor Manu Chaudhry, president at Capital Dental
Care. Doctor, welcome to the podcast. We're very
excited to have you join us today. To
get us started, would you mind please introducing
yourself and telling us a bit about your
background?
Yes. Of course. Thank you again for the
the honor and privilege to to be here
and and take the time to have an
open and open discussion about all the exciting
things that are going on in our communities
that we have. And, so my name is
doctor Manu Chaudhary.
I'm a human and a consumer,
and I am what could be considered a
dry finger dentist. Haven't practiced in a few
years.
And,
my my background is is quite diverse. Currently,
I I have the honor to serve as
president of Capital Dental Care. We are,
one of a very few organizations
where we kind of hold a payer hat
and we also hold an affiliated provider hat,
within the same organization.
What kind of sets us apart, kind of
a unicorn, so you could say, is that
the the payer component is chiefly focused on
the care of more than 360,000
Medicaid,
members here in Oregon, which are known as
Oregon Health Plan Members, which in of itself
is a very unique model that is one
of the only in the country that are
really focused not only in providing the services
that,
addressing disease acuity,
and in addition to that,
building systems and processes
to prevent that disease from continuing its recurrence.
A little bit more of my background.
I had served as
a regional clinical director for,
InterDent with the general dental offices in the
San Francisco Bay Area in the state of
Nevada for a few years. Before that, I
was a dental director for a community health
center. And my other
background also includes starting and operating a free
dental clinic, where I was in group canals
and crowns at no charge to the underserved
community in the Central Valley of California.
And finally,
before I decided to change my career
to become a dentist, I was a,
a process development engineer with a master's in
biomechanical engineering. I'm very happy to be here,
and and thank you for this opportunity again.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Thank you so much
for giving us that that insight into your
background,
and a little bit more about the organization.
So with everything that you're doing, what are
some of the biggest issues you're following into
the new year?
Thank you. This is a wonderful question.
This is something that, in reality, the things
that truly keep me up at night.
And for me, specifically,
I I continue to toggle
between 2
major,
major issues. 1 of them
is around AI, and AI is used
very frequently among everyone and a lot of
different health care leaders.
And for me, when I think of this
from a humanistic perspective, it's how do we
truly bridge
the AI human gap. I mean, it's really
easy to double down and triple down and
invest heavily in technology.
But how do we then connect that back
to,
the humanistic component of health care delivery?
And secondly,
this is another topic that is like
has been widely discussed
and talked about probably for nearly 2 decades
now, and that's this idea of value based
care. And,
dentistry has, for a long time, been really
mired in this idea of
surgical care and the number of procedures and
types of procedures that are being performed in
order to treat dental disease.
But I believe the roots of value based
care really
call into
shift that mindset
from
dentist thinking as surgeons to dentist thinking as
healing,
disease that occurs in the mouth and, of
course, the rest of the body. So those
are the two biggest issues
that I've continued to struggle with probably for
the last 6 months or so, and that
are that's really just really top of mind
as we enter into 2025.
Yeah. Yeah. That definitely makes a lot of
sense. Thank you for sharing that. Is there
anything that you're currently doing or seeing in
the media that you are most excited about
or anything,
else that's kinda making you nervous?
I would say that
some of the preliminary data that we have,
across, you know, our Medicaid populations and our
our non Medicaid populations
is that in this post COVID era,
we've seen an uptick of disease acuity,
as much as 30 to 35%
depending on the age group.
And so
likely through
individuals and patients who,
through COVID,
had delayed
seeking their dental care for whatever reason, whether
it was a
provider related concern or whether it was just
general fear
of transmission
of these air aerosol generating particles or whatnot
have you. I believe that
what what makes me nervous is that
we continue to see more and more kids,
more and more older adults
who,
have greater
levels of disease.
And
the reality is is that the workforce is
just so strained
from having operated and lived through a COVID
and,
reimbursement,
amounts for providing that level of care
kind of really
creates
a challenge path forward
for preventing these never never ever events from
occurring.
And so I'm
I'm chiefly nervous,
probably with my dental hat, that that dental
disease is occurring in greater degrees of the
population.
And we really we really need to come
back to our roots
of
of what dental care can provide and what
dental care can prevent.
And, bringing
our our people, our community,
to feel comfortable again and and come back
in for their routine,
dental care.
I think the the other thing that kinda
makes me a little bit nervous,
particularly
from
a Medicaid space
and also from a non Medicaid space, is
that the there's such an increased amount of
regulations,
to to participate in these programs,
or what what would otherwise be known as
administrative burden. You know, taking care of the
underserved and and really believing that to elevate
humanity, we should provide provide preferential
care
to the underserved. You know, those feelings and
that type of,
gargantuan Samaritan effort that's been provided
that by the providers
really leads to a lot of fatigue in
the system.
And,
we tend to see
greater levels of of attrition
and people leaving the workforce
because of these,
high degrees of administrative burden.
So,
these are the things that
I guess, that also keep me up at
night. I guess there's a lot of things
that keep me up at night. Yeah. This
is just another one that, that makes me
a little bit nervous about
about the future of our
of the oral health of our community and
how it's connected to the overall health.
Yeah. Yeah. No. I completely
agree and believe in everything you just said.
I I talked to a lot of executives,
and I feel like burnout is definitely something
that is gaining more momentum in in the
talks that are, going on right now in
the dental space and just the overall provider
space.
Doctor, before I let you go, the last
thing that I wanted to ask you is,
in your opinion, what will the most effective
health care leaders
need in order to be successful in the
next 2 to 3 years?
Another great question.
I would say that
over the last few years, I had a
very fixed mindset.
I I believed that,
you know, care can only be be delivered
by my hand
when the patient comes and sees me as
a dentist.
And
through practicing through COVID myself personally
and about a year or 2 before that,
I started this
journey of belief that
that it takes a village
to truly
make someone whole or to heal someone.
And at Capital Dental Care, in order to
get here and through our general dental offices,
which are the Internet affiliated,
you know, practice supported practices that we have
here. We heavily invested in
this idea of midlevel dental providers where we
have advanced dental hygienists. We have we employ
dental therapists. We employ community health workers
to connect and coordinate
people who've been identified
with needing
treatment for dental disease
and and their routine follow ups after that.
And so this this notion of this village,
not only in the teams that we work
with,
kind of at the management support system, but
then also down at point of care, you
know, kind of taking
that it's that it's
everyone all of the dental providers working together,
much the same model as we know for
medical.
You know, there are medical doctors. There's,
there's
doctors of osteopathic medicine or DOs.
There are nurse practitioners. There's physician associates.
You know? And there's all the different layers
that support that and surround that that really
try try to drive this full person level
of care. And I I believe that we've
crossed that inflection point with dentistry. And, dentistry
itself,
you know, it truly does take a village
to to shift that perspective and that notion
of oral health care for that individual and
that person and make them
not make them. Make is such a bad
word to say, but rather empower them
to address their oral health needs
and and have that integrated in their overall
health.
I think, you know, beyond
this idea of this village, you know, if
we go a little bit more upstream to
that,
it's really about this this
perspective,
and shifting our mindset
that we're all here
as people, and we all exist as people
to elevate humanity.
And,
we are
we're in such an awesome position
to elevate humanity
through the businesses that we're in.
And one really cool thing that,
I think it's cool,
is that,
by the end of October,
all of our care delivery systems in the
state of Oregon, you know, the 45 plus
brick and mortar offices, the 160 collocations,
the 5 mobile dental health vans, the preventive
teledentistry that we we do,
you know, beyond being all connected to 1
cloud based dental practice management software system.
But by the end of this month, it's
gonna have a full integration
of physical and behavioral health information and social
health information for that patient
through our partnership with Reliance Health Information Exchange.
You know, by the end of the month,
we'll have,
real time access
to
the medications the patient's taking, the allergies that
the patient is taking,
and and so much other rich level of
information. And so when we start thinking of
how do we truly
break down the these these
clinical silos and technical silos that we exist,
you know, this this idea of elevating humanity
and breaking through these
these barriers with paradigm shift that can really
revolutionize
how we take care of of people, of
our people, of our neighbor, of our mom,
of our dad, of ourselves
as consumers.
That ultimately is by being on the same
infrastructure,
as all health care providers.
And
so
going back to the root of this question,
you know,
you know, how can, you know, what will
you know, how can we gain and garner
and empower health care leaders to be successful
in the next 2, 3 years? It's all
about shifting this mindset.
You know, shifting the mindset that
our our roles in our community and within
the businesses that we each serve in is
really truly to elevate humanity, and and it
is possible to do.
Yeah. Of course. Thank you so much for
those final thoughts, doctor. This has definitely been
an informative discussion. So, again, I wanna thank
you so much for coming back on Becker's
health care, and I look forward to connecting
with you again soon. Thank you very much,
and thank you for having me.