Many dental groups are no longer asking whether AI belongs in the practice. The implementation and questions around it have shifted to execution: how many vendors a group can manage, whether an agent completes work inside the practice management system and who trains it on the realities of each office.
During an executive roundtable with Confido Health at Becker’s Healthcare Future of Dentistry Roundtable on Sept. 14, Raihan Faroqui, MD, Vice President of Partnerships at Confido Health and Akash Vi R, AI solutions team at Confido Health led a discussion with dental executives about change management, operational workflows and partner selection.
Here are 3 takeaways from their conversation.
1. AI Vendor fatigue is real, too many point solutions
When Dr. Faroqui asked who was experiencing vendor fatigue, about half the room raised a hand. Executives said consolidation alone would not be enough, however. A partner would also need the capacity to train staff, support large-scale deployment, integrate with practice management systems and provide organization-level analytics.
Mr. Vi R described dental groups managing 10 to 20 specialized vendors from inbound calls to insurance verification or revenue cycle work. The objection he hears is increasingly less about the price of any individual product than the burden of managing all of them. Point solutions are proving to be problematic.
2. The impact of AI agents on end-to-end workflows
One executive said insurance verification is not truly end to end if staff must still update coverage tables, fee schedules and insurance plans afterward. Mr. Vi R said practices should prioritize asking whether an agent completes work inside the practice management system or hands employees another task.
Mr. Vi R described the Confido Health administrative workflow in which an agent collects and verifies insurance information, schedules the appointment, sends confirmations and reminders, supports follow-up around existing treatment plans and preoperative and postoperative instructions, and contacts patients about outstanding balances before collections.
“Think of these agents as employees,” Mr. Vi R said. “The output’s as good as the input.”
That model has a clinical boundary. Mr. Vi R said AI can remind patients about an existing treatment plan or follow up on defined questions, but complex, consultative conversations still require people.
Dr. Faroqui said agents are trained on defined protocols and transfer clinical questions or complex administrative requests that fall outside those protocols. Across customers, about 70% of inbound calls are handled by AI and 30% are transferred to staff by design, he said.
3. Deployment is a people process
One attendee challenged the speakers on how technologists who had not worked at a dental front desk could account for payer quirks, office-level nuances and other knowledge experienced employees carry in their heads.
“If you don’t have empathy with the people that you’re building for, you’re going to fail,” said Dr. Faroqui.
Through Confido Health’s process, every customer receives a three-person pod consisting of a deployment strategist with experience in the specialty, a forward-deployed engineer who builds the agents, and a data analyst. The team remains with the customer throughout the contract and works with reception, office management, billing and revenue cycle employees.
The team uses interviews and screen recordings to document workflows and turn unwritten processes into standard operating procedures.
Mr. Vi R said undocumented processes become especially challenging in groups with more than 15 to 20 locations. Each office may perform the same work differently, creating an opportunity to standardize but also surfacing edge cases that cannot all be anticipated before launch.
“It’s an iterative process,” he said. “We’re constantly discovering and solving for new edge cases that no one has thought of. It’s what we do.”
Want to learn more?
For deeper industry insights on dental operations today, connect with Confido Health. These insights come from supporting more than 3.3 million patient lives across the U.S. and integrating with 40+ practice management and phone systems. Visit confido.health or reach out to kevin@confido.health with any questions.
