“Any dentist who tells you they never miss anything is lying,” laughs Jeremy Matthews, DMD, a practicing dentist with over 20 years of experience and a founding doctor at Dentive, a DSO with 85 locations in Utah, Texas, Oregon, Washington, and New Mexico.
Dr. Matthews’ mission is to take the best possible care of patients - and that means providing consistent, comprehensive dentistry. He comes from a family of dentists. His dad was a dentist for 43 years, and two of his brothers are dentists.
At Dentive, he is often the first clinician to evaluate new technology. In this interview, he shares the results he’s seen since implementing Overjet’s artificial intelligence technology for radiograph analysis and patient insights.
Q: How has the AI helped in your practice?
Overjet has helped us do two things. One, we’re identifying more treatment needs because the AI draws our attention to areas that we might have overlooked. Two, we’re getting more case acceptance because patients can see where they have decay or bone loss.
It’s no longer just us saying you need this. Now, they can see it for themselves; the AI validates it.
Q: What have been the results since you implemented AI?
SRP (scaling and root planing) has gone up tremendously. Crown production has gone up tremendously. For me, it’s about the standard of care. This technology helps provide the best possible care. And the patients are accepting more treatment because the AI validates what we’re seeing.
- 27% increase in crown production
- 28% increase in SRP production
Q: How do you integrate AI into your daily workflow?
We start our day by looking at the AI findings during the morning huddle. Overjet integrates with our practice management system and helps us identify patients who may have treatment needs that haven’t been met. It gives us a heads up before the patient ever sits down, so we know where to look.
Then we use it chairside. We have the AI findings on a monitor behind the patient’s chair so we can review them, and then we show them to the patient.
Q: How has your team reacted to having AI?
It’s been awesome. We went into it with an open mind, not with an attitude of “Oh great, here’s one more thing we need to do.”
I have associates who are newer and this has really helped them with their confidence. Not only does it validate what they’re seeing on the X-rays, but it helps them feel more comfortable when they’re talking to their patients. They can point to the AI findings to support their diagnosis.
Q: How have your patients reacted?
Patients are blown away. They don’t need to know how to read radiographs. They can see the AI findings and know that green is good and red is bad. It helps us do our jobs. It helps our patients to understand.
I had a patient who didn’t think he needed SRP and we showed him the X-rays with the AI, which measures the distance of the CEJ to the crest of bone. We showed him where his bone levels looked good, and then showed him everything over 3 mm and said, this is not good. He got it. There’s a wow factor.
Q: What would you tell other doctors who are considering adding AI?
This brings us back to the reality of why we’re here - to take the best possible care of patients. We’re all busy and this helps us deliver that.
Dentists are jumping back and forth and may be distracted. We’re human; we miss things. This is another tool to help us diagnose accurately and educate our patients. It helps us explain more clearly what is happening in their mouth. It gives us an objective analysis that we can point to.
It helps us to do our job better. In the end, we all want to provide the right care. This is a tool that helps us do that.
To learn how Overjet can help your practice elevate patient care and improve lives with dental AI, please visit overjet.com.