THE GAP BETWEEN REAL AND IDEAL OUTCOMES FOR PATIENTS
Affinity Dental Management is an innovative dental support organization (DSO) with 45 locations in the northeastern United States. As a provider-led DSO, Affinity gives dentists the autonomy to make the right decisions for their practice — while providing them with cutting-edge technology and expertise.
Every provider at Affinity shares the same goal: To give every patient the best possible care. However, with hundreds of dental professionals to support, Affinity’s leaders simply didn’t have the insights they needed to address their biggest opportunities to optimize care, from diagnosis to treatment planning to case acceptance.
Affinity’s Chief Operating Officer, Ariel Wiener, relied on manually collected data in the practice management system (PMS) to create spreadsheets and reports. This tedious process gave the team only an incomplete picture of the real care that patients received on a daily basis.
"Before, a procedure had to actually take place for us to have data,” Wiener said. “We had no way to identify issues that weren’t already treatment planned, which meant we didn’t know the gap between what the provider diagnosed, versus what could have been.”
AFFINITY DEPLOYS DSO ANALYTICS TO PROVIDE OPTIMAL CARE AT SCALE
To find this gap between the status quo and the ideal outcomes for patients, Affinity Dental Management turned to Overjet, the world-leader in dental AI. Affinity served as Overjet’s Lead Design Partner in developing DSO Analytics: the first AI-powered analytics suite built specifically for DSO leaders.
DSO Analytics uses artificial intelligence to analyze every single patient visit, across all of Affinity’s locations. It captures what the clinician treatment-planned compared to what the AI recommended, it documents whether the patient accepted care, and it even reviews contextual information, like notes in the PMS. DSO Analytics then transforms this mountain of data into actionable insights — so that leaders like Wiener can easily identify the most impactful opportunities.
“Overjet gives us insights that you can only get with AI,” Wiener said. “Now, we can see what we missed across our entire organization, automatically. And because Overjet works with hundreds of DSOs, we can benchmark our performance to understand where we excel, and where we can get better.”
Crucially, DSO Analytics helps Affinity not only identify its top challenges, but also take action to improve specific aspects of care. Its dashboards help leaders drill down into key performance indicators — such as treatment planning — at any level of detail, down to each clinic and even each individual clinician.
“Our goal with Overjet has always been to create uniformity at scale, so that all of our patients receive the same high standard of care,” Wiener said. “It’s fantastic to have the insights necessary to make that possible.”
THE ULTIMATE TOOL FOR EVERY DSO LEADER
DSO Analytics has become a game-changing clinical tool for Dr. Mariz Tanious, Chief Dental Officer at Affinity Dental Management. It arms her with comprehensive information when she meets with clinicians, allowing them to review everything from big-picture opportunities to specific patient X-rays.
“I oversee a vast team of dentists and hygienists across 45 locations, making it impractical for me to be present with each of them simultaneously,” she said. “With Overjet, I can now effectively monitor the activities throughout our entire organization — down to individual dentists and their patient appointments. This platform enables me to identify our highest-performing practices, recognize missed care opportunities, and find out when patients opt out of treatment.
For Dr. Tanious, what separates DSO Analytics from other solutions is that it leads to “actionable results,” such as targeted training and continuing education:
“Overjet helps identify opportunities where I can assist practitioners in developing their skills to enhance their competencies as clinicians. This technology brings me as close as possible to each operatory — without being there in person. Every dentist at the clinic level and every Chief Dental Officer in a DSO should implement Overjet.”
When we asked Dr. Tanious what advice she would give to her peers who are considering AI, she emphasized that today is the day to get started:
“Don’t hesitate,” she said. “When it comes to AI, a lot of leaders have concerns about implementation or training. They’re not sure if their team will find it useful. But I can tell you that our doctors are hungry for this technology. If you’re not utilizing AI, you’re going to be behind the times. The future is here now.”
