3 Things I recently learnt about Dentists

I recently had the opportunity to consult a Memphis based startup in the healthcare space and bring my experiences and skills from silicon valley into the heart of the bible belt. My first advice was to focus on a small target group and learn as much as possible about them. Pretty quickly the focus fell on dentists and after about a dozen of interviews in which I got to ask a lot of open questions, we decided to run a larger scale survey.

1.) The Top Challenges for Dentists in 2016

We asked dentists what they see as the biggest challenges in the near future and I was surprised to learn that transitioning to ICD-10  seems not to cause significant headache. Instead they mostly worry about:

• HIPAA Compliance in Technology and Training
• Administrative Burdens
• Keeping Pace with Technology in General

There seems to be also very little worry about ACA (Affordable Care Act aka "Obamacare") or Meaningful Use 2 Attestation, which was a surprise for us.

2.) HIPAA Compliance is confusing but not too burdensome

When dove deeper into the burden of reaching and maintaining compliance with HIPAA it turned out that practically all participating dentists consider

• HIPAA not to burdensome in regard to money and time
• But feel that understanding HIPAA Regulation is very hard and confusing

which leads close to 89% of dentists declaring HIPAA Compliance a top priority for 2016. About half of the practitioners are unsure if they might face fines or if they actually fully compliant at the moment.

3.) Your Single Dentist is a thing of the past...  

..at some point in the future that is. The cost of capital to setup and maintain a dentist office is becoming increasing more expensive as technology advances and cost of equipment as well as innovation intervals are growing. This leads increasingly to single dentist practices being less profitable and the model of "Dental Group Practices" becoming more and more successful.

Never the less the majority of dentists are still small enterprises and even though the decline is fast, we are coming from a high level. An estimated 84% of all dental practices are small businesses. Down from 91% in 2010 - But if you look at the total team size, it becomes obvious that the Group Model isn't big either - Almost all dental businesses in the US have less then 20 employees.