Hi, everyone. Welcome to Becker's Healthcare podcast.
I'm very excited for this episode. I have
a very special guest today, Rob Jerome. He's
the senior vice president and chief digital officer
at Heartland Dental. Rob, thanks so much for
joining us.
You're welcome.
A lot to cover here. We we have
a ton a ton of great questions for
you, and a lot of things that certainly
have an impact today in the industry itself.
But before we get started, can you just
give us a little bit of a background
of your role, what you currently do, and
just a little bit about your experience in
in health care?
Yeah. So, first, you can call me RJ.
Everybody does. But, my my role so the
chief digital officer role was created about three
and a half years ago at Harland. And
the way that I would describe it is
the word digital is really important. And what
it what it really
refers to is digital transformation.
And so Harland is a very high growth
company. We are about a $4,000,000,000
company. We support
almost 1800 dental practices across the United States.
And
as we've grown,
so has our need to evolve
how we think about technology,
how we implement technology.
And so my role was created to do
that. And I have a background.
I was in the consulting in the software
world for about 20 years, the better part
of 21 years.
And,
Heartland was my customer. So I had this
amazing opportunity to take all those experiences, how
world class companies
apply
technology to solve for business problems, but also
opportunities
and come into Heartland,
and apply that experience in this role.
Yeah. And you've mentioned, obviously, so much 2
decades,
in in this space, lots of developments within
that time frame.
How have you seen
technology
change the way business is done
within the dental world? And and what are
some of those what are some of those
changes that really have made a significant
impact
in your perspective?
Yeah. Well what's interesting in those 2 decades
or so, the majority of my time was
not spent in health care. Not was mostly
spent in manufacturing and distribution and frankly the
public sector and the defense sector.
But when I came into healthcare
my observation was that there was this absolute
massive opportunity for things like process automation
standardization
and Heartland is a company that really has
led in those areas so for me I
would say that that that you know an
observation was that medical and dental specifically in
some cases
trail from a technology perspective
other industries
and so I just saw this massive opportunity
to take the foundations of what Heartland has
done from a technology perspective and just kind
of maybe apply some of those lessons learned
that other industries have have
capitalized on and and apply to Heartland.
Yeah. I just it's interesting because we were
just coming off of our big, big dental
conference in Chicago, and a and a lot
of the folks were saying or one of
the one of the one of the quotes
that really stuck with me was, like, yeah.
Yeah. We're just coming out of the stone
ages. We're just coming out of the we're
just starting to scratch the surface on what's
possible with some of these technologies, which is
really interesting,
to me because I think one of the
key things too is it's all about the
patient. Right? It's making the experience better for
the folks that come into the facilities themselves.
How is this contributing to enhancing the patient
experiences,
and where have you seen those impactful outcomes
yourself?
Yeah. That's a that's a great question, and
I would say there's probably
50 ways that I can answer that question.
I would say that when you think about
Heartland and you think about our approach to
technology,
I'd say the foundation
in everything that impacts our doctors and their
teams and ultimately their patients
goes back to, I'll say, our foundation of
technology, which is really standardization.
So, like, we have a standard practice management
software system, which allows us to have all
this this common data that we can then
use to enable the dental practice.
And so if I'm were to think about
patient experience,
I think about it through the lens of
from the moment they walk into the door,
through when they're in the chair, and when
they leave. And when you think about some
of the technologies that we've applied,
somebody walks through the door,
the business assistant could know say hey RJ's
walking in and you know what
he's coming in today for cleaning
but 2 months ago he was in for
Invisalign and there was a treatment plan was
established for him but he never did anything
with that let me have a conversation with
RJ
let me talk to him. And so if
you think about that, we at the front
end we've got the BA we're enabling them
to have a better conversation with the patient,
then they go to the chair and now
when you think about things like artificial intelligence,
clinical AI,
now you've got the patient looking at a
screen
with doctor and seeing things that the naked
eye can't see because artificial intelligence is more
effective than human eye when viewing x rays.
So now you think about that patient. They're
like, wow, look at that.
And that drives case acceptance and the patient
is happier because they understand it then they
go to leave and we think of when
they go to leave.
Okay,
what do you care about the most? Well,
okay, what do I owe you? What do
I have to pay? So then you start
to think about technologies associated with like insurance
verification
and eligibility. So when we think about technology
and when I look at the most impact
to the offices and impact to the patient,
you gotta look at the whole system.
Yeah. Those are the some of the things
that we see. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like
a it's a symbiotic relationship. Everything works together.
If one thing doesn't work, it affects the
chain of things. I think that that's really
key to it. It affects everything around the
practice, I would assume. Absolutely. You can't look
at technology in silos. We we are very,
at Heartland focused on what we call our
operation systems and we say systems, we're not
talking about technology systems. We're talking about the
things we know work in a dental practice.
So then how do you apply technology to
those systems? So along that I'll use the
word value stream along with the steps in
the process, where can technology enable that for
both the patient, but also those doctors and
those teams that are trying to do so
many things on any given day. At the
end of the day,
their mission is to really provide world class
patient care.
Yeah. And and I was gonna touch on
that too in the next step as well.
How is is this piece, this technology piece
also enabling
the clinicians themselves,
the doctors themselves? Right? Is it is it
having an impact
on on administrative burdens? We talk so much
about burnout. We talk so much about how
technology can help, how AI can help. How
are you seeing that effect affect that as
well in terms of workflows, etcetera?
Yeah. So so I'll take a a macro
view for a second, and then we'll talk
about the the doctors and the doctors and
their teams. You know, when you think about
what it takes to operate a dental practice,
our goal our goal is to remove the
administrative burden. We want doctors to be doctors.
So if the phone rings in the in
the office and they can't get to the
to the call, it goes to the, to
patient services.
And
they
they have about, I think, 4, 4,000,000 interactions
a year. That's like 17,000
or 18,000 a day. And when you think
about that, that results in like 12,000 new
patient schedules a week. Now what's my point?
Yeah. We have technologies
that's called like proximity scheduling. So when that
call comes in and that that PSR representative,
a screen will come up And if they're
trying to get a patient in to see
a dentist, see a doctor, and they can't
in their primary location based on a map,
we'll say, well, hey. There's these two other
offices, Heartland offices that have openings.
And so how does that help? That's helping
fill schedules, and that that's helping where where
we're trying to get new patients in. We're
trying to, have our doctors be able to
provide that patient care. They wouldn't know that.
And so for us, we can facilitate that
not just for one dental practice, but among
the community of dental practices at Heartland. That's
just one little example there.
But when you think about if you go
into the office,
think about the BA behind that the counter.
The person you go and you talk to
when you go in and they take your
insurance card, you know what I'm talking about.
They they have very high turnover in that
role and the person that's that is serving
in the BA role,
could have been working in retail the week
before. They don't necessarily have a clinical background.
They touch literally
over 30 different technology systems.
So what did Heartland do? We've consolidated that
into what we call a common digital experience
and so we've got a consolidated view
of those applications. So we've simplified the job
And so if you think about that, we
remove the burden. They don't have to go
to 15 websites. They don't have to go
to portals. They just go to this one
view that is aligned to a Heartland system.
Schedule,
produce, collect.
And then when you think about the doctor
and you talk about AI,
now you've got and and and we are
doctor led. So we have to be very
clear that we don't see clinical AI as
like replacing the doctor or things or overriding
them. No. The doctor makes the decision.
But the doctor now has this augmented capability
to facilitate a conversation with the with the
patient
about about their dental care.
And so you got to think about it
holistically, but those are a few examples as
to how we kind of remove the burden
and we simplify the roles, but we also
we focus on our core,
our vision to be a world class company
and the leader in dentistry
by empowering those in the office to be
doctors.
Yeah. And I think that that's really the
key piece is, again, focusing on being a
doctor and then being able to carry that
over to over to the patient and and
really improve the patient experience. I think that
that's really the the key piece is being
able to improve the patient experiences along those
along
improving the experience for for the doctors as
well. And I I want you to elaborate
a little bit on on your role specifically
as Heartland Dental, as an organization,
really.
What are you hearing from dentists on
why
having you folks and working with you is
an advantage?
And you mentioned, obviously, the the workflow piece
and the the the pieces where you're able
to make a difference for them. But why
do they why should they work with you?
Why do they want to work with you?
And what have you heard from practices that
already have you in in the offices that
really work with you, on a detailed basis?
Yeah. So I I think the first thing
I would say in regard to that is
is our size and scale. We we are
the largest DSO,
and and
that size and scale allows us to, I'll
say, leverage relationships with technology providers. We have
a lot of influence in the industry, so
we're in a position
to be able to support doctors and their
teams more effectively than others.
I also think that going back to what
I said earlier that we're doctor led, we
don't do technology for the sake of technology.
That in my view is a is a
recipe for disaster. So that everything that we
do
is intended to make their lives easier. And
we never forget that what what is the
the the what is the business that we're
in to support doctors and their teams?
So I I would I would say that
if you were to talk to some of
our our doctors,
they would get very excited about things like
artificial intelligence, and us
now working on automating the revenue cycle, like
with insurance payment automation
and,
real time insurance, verification.
They'll celebrate things like that. What they may
or may not know is that in in
cases like AI, that was studied for the
better part of 5 years by our clinical
team before we did a massive
rollout. So my point is that we're very
purposeful.
We're we are an entrepreneurial company, we will
take risk,
but we're protective
of the relationships that we have with our
doctors because they
they have to provide world class patient care,
and they have to maintain the relationships with
their patients. We don't wanna Yeah. Introduce risk
by being reckless or doing technology for the
sake of technology.
Yeah. Absolutely. And you mentioned sort of the
the rollout process. Right? Looking at things in
detail. Hey. We we spent 5 years looking
at this before we rolled this out for
you to have access to it.
It is a longer process itself. And what
are you seeing sort of as the next
big thing? Where are you seeing this going?
Certainly everybody talks about AI and how AI
will be more intelligent and become more intelligent.
Right? But what do you what do you
see as the next big thing? What are
you excited about as as you look at
this space?
I'm extremely excited about, I'll say, the advancement
in technology regarding automation of of the revenue
cycle. And that's kind of a nebulous term,
but for us, it's really the insurance payment
automation
like electronic remittance advice and and and, electronic
payments automating
advice and,
electronic payments automating that. You would be shocked
at how many dental practices
literally have stacks of checks mailed to them,
that are then reconciled and posted. So So
that would be 1, and the other would
be the verification of insurance. There's been significant
improvements in technologies that allow for real time
and accurate
there's 2 ways to look at that, accuracy
and completeness of verification of insurance, and we're
studying all of those things now. I'm super
excited about that because I think I think
it's time. And I think the technology and
capabilities have evolved and we can effectively solve
for that. That will remove a massive
administrative burden on the offices.
And the the other opportunity I would say
is in generally in generative AI, and people
throw that term around and use it and
use chat GPT. And there's all these technologies
out there, but that that is I would
argue that we are in the middle of
a technology,
shift,
not in the beginning of it. People like
to say, well, that's new. Well, it's it
it may seem new, but it's we use
it every day already. And so when we
think of generative AI
beyond, like, clinical applications, when you think of
things like how we process invoices,
how we perhaps could introduce AI agents into
the that call center
when we think about how we could introduce
AI agents into that those applications that the
BAs use, making it easier. I have I
have an operations partner. I I love when
she says this. It's RJ. I just wanna
ask the system a question.
So making it easier for people to do
their job.
Automated claims narratives
through artificial intelligence. So think about that. If
you do that well,
now you're developing a a narrative automatically that
so what perhaps that will, reduce rejections of
claims.
And so there's all of these things that
generative AI will apply to, whether it be
on the back end from an administrative perspective
or actually in the office.
I'm super excited about that and we we
have a,
I believe in an obligation
to think about how we will use generative
AI effectively, but also responsibly.
Patient data is something we take extremely seriously
And so we we we need to make
sure that we're continuing to protect that data.
Yeah. It's I agree. And that's why I
I think your process of saying, hey. This
we have a rollout process. Right? We're not
just giving you something.
You're not just gonna get something that I
think is great here. Use it. There's a
process involved. We're not gonna just give you
something that's not refined, that's not at a
place where I would want to use it
myself as a user. I think that's that's
really key. And as you mentioned, so many
opportunities there. I think we could, probably keep
going here for another hour or so, and
I certainly have more questions, which, RJ, that
just means you'll have to come back. That's
I think I love to come back.
We'll just have to elaborate,
again, and I wanna thank you for your
time, certainly. I wanna thank you for joining
us today. I think this is a very
insightful conversation. Thanks so much for being here.
You're welcome. Absolutely. RJ, thanks again for joining
me, and I want to thank our listeners
for joining us today and certainly Heartland Dental
for sponsoring today's podcast. Make sure to check
out our other podcast on our site, and
we'll see you again soon.