Dr. Chaudhry will serve on the panel “What Patients Will Want From Dentists Next” at Becker’s Future of Dentistry Roundtable. As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference on Oct. 27-28 in Chicago.
To learn more and register, click here.
Question: Where do you see the dental industry headed?
Manu Chaudhry: The dental industry is barreling towards health improvement — this is consumer driven and payer driven with value-based care. In the near future, all will seek even further upstream preventive measures through saliva biome testing for inflammatory markers and further health IT integrations across all health systems. Further, we will continue to see the dental workforce flex into alternate dental home models and we will also see transforming conventional dentistry to total integrated health for example, dental providers who perform Hba1c testing to screen for diabetes and vaccine administration. True interoperability will occur to link with other health systems for health improvement. Beyond connecting health systems, it is more about changing clinical workflows to make these connections actionable and driving for better health. This idea isn’t well understood, because everyone tends to get bogged down with the need for interoperability and they don’t tie it back to how we should improve our systems to improve health for all.
Q: What are you most excited about right now and what makes you nervous?
MC: I am most excited about the change to the dental industry as we rebuild in this “recovery” period. What makes me nervous are managing investment expectations with increased utilization and revenue. Consumers may have gone for years without comprehensive dentistry and their oral health disease may have greater impact to strain the system and drive dentistry more towards episodic and limited care. Value-based care demonstrating improved oral and systemic health still seems to be a hypothesis and even more challenged with access barriers — it would be great to prove this.
Q: How are you thinking about growth and investments for the next year or two?
MC: Tech investments with digital technology and electronic health records linked to Carequality to exchange health information would be first. Flexing clinical workflows for medical-behavioral-dental health integration is also extremely important. Growth within dental workforce transformation with expanded practice dental hygienists and dental therapists is a must. Aggressive investment in our social health system demonstrating a limited amount of dental disease in children ages one to five relative to pre-pandemic.
Q: What will dental leaders and executives need to be effective leaders for the next five years?
MC: Humanism. If we can all focus on doing the right thing and at the right time, all else will prosper beyond our wildest imaginations. Focus on elevating humanity with ourselves, our internal and external teams, and our patients.
