Hosted by NexHealth, The Party Enamel: DEO Happy Hour was a social networking event at the DEO Fall Summit 2021: Doubling Dental event in Orlando, Florida. Dental professionals shared drinks and hors d’oeuvres, as well as insights into the challenges they face in the dental industry.
The event also featured a discussion period between Alamin Uddin, CEO of NexHealth, and Lori Mixon, Vice President of Marketing at Mid-Atlantic Dental Partners, where Lori was able to explore the challenges that Mid-Atlantic faced, as well as the strategies they used to overcome them.
Key Takeaways from the DEO Happy Hour
Below, we cover some of the highlights from the discussion period between Lori Mixon and Alamin Uddin, centered on how Mid-Atlantic Dental Partners was able to achieve success in the industry, despite facing numerous challenges.
Compatibility is King
For practices and DSOs, compatibility is essential for patient experience and acquisition solutions like NexHealth. For these solutions to save time and maximize efficiency, they need to integrate seamlessly with the EHR, PMS, and other solutions that a practice already uses. For a DSO particularly, it’s incredibly important that this solution integrates with a wide range of solutions, as practices can use varying tools.
Lori points out that many solutions say that “it’s going to be compatible, it’s going to integrate exactly with your PMS system.” However, in practice, “you get sync issues, and practices being down, and revenue being lost.” These issues not only impact the practice, but the entire DSO as a whole, and this trickles down to impact the patients themselves.
The Ultimate DSO Dilemma: Build vs Buy
As DSOs scale – especially quickly – they are tempted to build products in-house in an attempt to save money and gain more control over the features and functionality of the solution. Here’s what Lori had to say about their experience attempting to build a solution like NexHealth on their own:
“It didn’t go well. It was an epic mistake for our revenue; it would have been an epic mistake for our patients. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you can do things bigger and better than the people that are experts in the field.”
Mid-Atlantic found that relying on a high-quality, practice-focused solution like NexHealth empowered them with the functionality and performance they needed to improve their practice experience for patients, allowing them to acquire new patients and grow.
NexHealth’s customer obsession means taking user feedback seriously and striving to continually improve their solution to offer what practices need most. For this reason, Mid-Atlantic was able to leverage NexHealth’s practice management solution to optimize operations and improve the patient experience.
Digital Marketing: Path to Patient Growth
Lori mentioned that while they do use other avenues of marketing to ensure they don’t miss out on patients that need care, digital marketing is where most dental customers come from currently. She estimates that about 85% of their customers are generated from digital marketing efforts.
This is largely due to the reach and impact of digital marketing initiatives – and the related ROI – compared to other marketing channels, such as direct mail, billboard, and radio. The return on investment using Google and other organic avenues is unparalleled. This is especially true in this post-COVID climate, where patients require – and expect – more online solutions and services.
The Mid-Atlantic Growth Story
In 2018 and 2019, Mid-Atlantic Dental Partners was a rather small DSO, with 17 operating locations. In the 3 years since then, they’ve grown to service 240 operating locations, and are still in growth mode despite the impact of COVID. As the 5th largest DSO, they are a leader in the industry, and have their sights set on hitting the top 3 in the next couple years.
One of the biggest challenges they faced during this growth spurt was maintaining a pulse on the dental culture and what is truly important to the practices they serve. With a lower number of clients, it’s much easier to have a clear handle on their – and their patients – needs. As you handle more clients, this becomes increasingly more challenging, as you have more varied needs and a larger number of practices to interact with.
As they grew, Mid-Atlantic wanted to ensure that their clients know that they care about the success of their practices.
How Mid-Atlantic took it to the Nex-level
After having a poor experience with another patient experience solution (Solutionreach), Mid-Atlantic was wary to trust another practice management and patient experience solution. NexHealth was able to offer them a top-notch solution that was easy to adopt and manage, that helps you retain patients, get them in for appointments, and grow your practice.
Optimizing your Patient Experience
For Lori and the team at Mid-Atlantic, the partnership with NexHealth needed to align with their main objective of providing “access to care and high-quality dentistry”. NexHealth is a big part of what makes this possible for their team, as they facilitate online scheduling and reminders that fill appointments and ensure patients show up!
If you’re still unsure if you’ll be happy with NexHealth, take it directly from Lori, who says she’s “very happy” and is a “big fan” of what NexHealth has been able to do for them:
“I was very excited to make the switch. It was seamless and it’s making my life so much easier; I really appreciate it, actually.”
To see how you can benefit, just like Lori and Mid-Atlantic, try a NexHealth demo for yourself today!
