After the initial wave of AI adoption across dentistry, dental organizations are now asking a tougher question: Is it actually paying off?
AI tools now touch nearly every part of the practice, from X-ray diagnostics to insurance verification and appointment reminders. But for many groups, the real test is whether those tools deliver measurable results in their own practices.
Some leaders say the returns are already clear: higher show rates, more productive staff, standardized treatment planning and more diagnosed treatment.
Four dentists and dental executives discussed where AI is producing real economic value at their organizations at Becker’s 5th Annual Future of Dentistry Roundtable in Chicago.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Where is AI already producing measurable economic value in your dental operations, and what’s one example that convinced you the investment was worth it?
Sherry Hassler. COO and EOS Integrator of Today’s Dental Nebraska (Omaha): We use AI in a couple of different places. Our most recent adoption has been our phone system, and the goal was work-life balance for our team, which is important to me. At one of our practices, we’ve seen an increase in case acceptance because patients can actually get a hold of us when our team is at a baseball game or eating dinner. Another win with that same AI partner was our show rate. We don’t measure no-shows; we measure show rate instead. We saw our show rate increase by about 7%, which was very unexpected.
Nimesh Patel, DMD. COO of Brite Dental Partners (Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.): For us, it’s in the revenue cycle. The company we use handles all of our insurance, EFT posting and bank reconciliation. I think we were able to roughly double the productivity of our existing management coordinators, which has been helpful.
Francesca Pregano. COO of Smile Makers Dental Center (Tysons Corner, Va.): We’re using AI in multiple areas. One of the biggest improvements was adopting AI diagnostics. We have 14 dentists across our six locations, and we wanted to make sure the clinical experience was the same everywhere. We didn’t want patients seeking a second opinion within our own group. So our doctors use AI diagnostics to standardize care and treatment planning. The next area is revenue cycle management, where automated text messages for collections have been tremendous. But the biggest benefit of AI is being able to review inconsistencies at scale and adapt quickly.
Mariz Tanious, DDS. Chief Dental Officer of Affinity Dental Management (Holyoke, Mass.): We use a lot of AI in our company. We were early adopters of Overjet, then added a credentialing platform, and now we’re using AI to pick up phone calls. There are a million applications. Where you see the most impact depends on the product, the department you’re trying to improve and the bottlenecks you identify. If we bring a product on, what is it going to do, and how will the end users actually apply it? Implementation takes time, but once our doctors adopted AI, we saw an increase in treatment planning. From a clinical standpoint, a lot of disease is underdiagnosed, and that’s true at every organization I’ve seen. Very few companies overdiagnose, so a lot of disease either goes undetected, or the conversations happen but never get documented. With Overjet, I can look at the treatment planning rate and ask: Is the disease actually there, and can we plan treatment, document it and eventually move to case acceptance? That’s where we’ve seen a large return on investment.
