Scott Leune: This podcast is sponsored by dentalmarketing.com and they have agreed to give the listeners of this podcast a free competitive marketing analysis. This analysis is going to show you very clearly how your practice is doing compared to your competitors. It's going to give you the health of your SEO, it's going to give you a website grade, and you'll also see what your competitors are up to. This helps you know what ad strategy you should have today, how clean and effective is your marketing right now Find out by getting this free and detailed analysis. Text the word marketing to 4 8 6 5 9 and you'll receive this competitive analysis from our sponsor dentalmarketing.com. So today we're talking to the chairman of one of the most exciting AI companies in dentistry. He also happened to be the co-founder and president of Dental Intelligence, which he founded about a decade ago that has become one of the most important software platforms in dentistry. Super excited about this episode, speaking with Rob Bay. We are going to dive into ai, what's happening, what to expect, how long will it take, what does this new world look like? And of course what should we do about it today? That's in this episode of the Dental CEO podcast.

Alright Rob, so again, thank you so much for joining us on the Dental CEO podcast. We're super excited to have you and of course we're super excited to talk about AI in dentistry. So if you could, even though everyone just heard me introduce you, if you could maybe say a few things about yourself in case someone has never heard of you or hasn't heard of Alta AI or hasn't heard of Dental Intelligence, that'd be awesome.

Rob Bay: Yeah, sure. Thanks Scott. Co-founder of Dental Intelligence helped build that company and guidance direction and helping practices improve their overall financial position, understand their business better, use data and information to be able to mobilize action and obviously am involved with Alta help put the group and the team together. A lot of the same people that help build dental intelligence are involved in building Alta, but the whole point behind Alta itself is utilizing AI and utilizing voice to be able to get rid of mundane and the tasks that people don't want to do. Basically the things that drive him crazy, but a little bit more about me aside from that, and the reason I guess why and how I ended up becoming involved with Alta is I invest in a lot of other types of businesses. Some of them, a lot of 'em are in technology, a lot of 'em seem to have been in dental. And so that's I guess a little bit more about me.

Scott Leune: Yeah, so when I think of you Rob, I think of you on one hand as someone that has really helped change the face of how dental practices grow, how they're managed, even how consultants grow practices and fixed practices because of the dental intelligence days where you got dental intelligence, if you don't know is probably the largest platform out there of helping track and understand the numbers and the business side of a dental practice as well as one of the largest patient engagement platforms out there for things like online scheduling and online form fill and things like that. And it really has changed how we as consultants and owners look at a practice and very quickly understand where are the opportunities, what are the things that we can improve. It used to be the consultants were very theoretical and opinionated on how certain things should be done, but it wasn't really based on measuring the facts and dental intelligence started that chapter in dentistry, which was long overdue. I'd like to go onto your experiences with Alta a bit. You say we need to utilize AI to help eliminate the mundane tasks in a dental practice. Before we dive into details with that, could you maybe list out what you see as the mundane tasks that people are running into in a dental practice that AI may be able to solve for us here pretty soon?

Rob Bay: Yeah, let me backtrack a little bit on that because one of the big issues that we see in dental is staffing and getting enough people, getting good people qualified, people that know their job and know their role. And we are seeing that issue across assistance, front desk hygienists, all of those places. It's hard to find good people and COVID had a lot to do with it, with people deciding to take themselves out of the workforce or I don't know what else is involved, but that's a big issue that seems to not be going away. A lot of these people are already, especially if you're talking about assistance front desk people, they're dealing with so many disparate tasks and a lot of 'em are things that don't necessarily require a lot of creativity or a lot of personability, but require a lot of time and effort and they're things that they just hate doing or interrupt what they're already doing or take them away from dealing with a patient or making sure that they could answer the phone or whatever it might be. All these things are taking them away. And so the idea is to use AI to be able to automate those tasks and allow the people that you do have and the people that are trained to one, not get burned out and so then they're trying to move on somewhere else, but also use their time and effort in the areas that are actually going to be helping the practice to be able to build relationships, get case acceptance, keep patients, grow the practice, et cetera.

Scott Leune: Yeah, so I'm just going to list off some examples. Patient scheduling can be done online, it can be done, it could be AI assisted, the phone call itself. We're almost there I think in industry, but that could be an AI agent handling a big chunk of the types of calls that come in. Insurance verification can be AI driven, posting of payments can be AI driven. And then of course we've got the whole AI side on the clinical area to practice with x-rays, diagnosis, assistance as well as charting. So many of those just mundane tasks can be done and what's left are the things that are really impacting the patient experience or the profitability of practice. So

We need case acceptance, right? We need to be full in diagnosis, we need to have the time to treat people well. All those mundane tasks tend to steal away those moments. Like in an operatory, I call this the 10 minute fight between the hygienist and the dentist. The hygienist wants 10 more minutes in all of her appointments or all of his appointments to treat the patient well take the images needed and have the conversations that we need to have clinically, yet the dentist wants 10 minutes less scheduled because we need to see more patients per day. More patients per day means more new patients, more production, more dentistry to potentially do and diagnose and there's this kind of tug of war that's happening. Hygienist, I want more time dentist, I don't want to give the hygiene team more time. It's already hard enough to get everyone in. And now when I look at Alta, I think we've solved it. So I'm going to have you dive into kind of Alta a bit what it all does. But to introduce this, what I found is that when we utilize alta, we're able to shave off 10 minutes of mundane tasks for every hygienist in every appointment.

And that 10 minutes can then be reinvested in additional images, additional conversations for case acceptance, additional treatment, and that is a really good, I think example of how AI in this very small but significant way can impact the bottom line of a practice and make people happier. So can you describe, if no one's ever heard of Alta, can you describe what does?

Rob Bay: Yeah, basically it's a tool that listens in the background and let me back, I'll say a little bit more. There's a lot of different offerings that are in ai and right now all of them are kind of like single tools over a period of time, similar to other type of technologies. Consolidation tends to happen and I suspect that we'll end up talking a little bit more about that. But Alta, we're focusing initially on a couple key things, and this is one of 'em is saving this time for hygienists. And basically there's a tool that listens in the background that the hygienist can talk to and instead of taking the time to either type it in when they're doing a perio exam and type it in themselves or go track down and find an assistant and pull them away or somebody from the front desk and then calling off the information to them, basically Altel just listens in the background, grabs that clinical information and charts it for 'em.

And by doing that, they're able to go through it more thoroughly, more quickly. A lot of hygienists, if they are having to do it themselves, end up referring back to an old chart and then just making changes where it's not necessarily as accurate as it could be or should be by doing a full chart. But now they could do a full chart and save a ton of extra time and they're happy because now they're spending time on the things that matter to them. And at the same time, the dentist is happy because there's time savings in the operatory.

Scott Leune: So I'm going to go even more detail. So hygienist has a patient, and in the old way, the hygienist had to do everything themselves, have a lot of time, they feel in this pressure cooker of a schedule, and now we got to do probing gaps. Well, that takes a long time to do and it takes a long time to chart by hand, let alone putting the bleeding points in there or measuring recession or charting existing restorative or charting the needed stuff. And on top of that, we want intra images, we want extra scan or extra images, INAL scans, all these things we want. But man, all of that takes so much time. What Alta allows the ISTs to do is to call out loud, right?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but call out loud and start calling off probing depths either site by site, by site, by site, like 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3. Or the hygienist could just say the next four teeth are 3, 2, 3, and then it just automatically puts in the chart super fast. Did I say that correctly?

Rob Bay: Absolutely. They could do it by quadrant, et cetera, and it eliminates this issue that they have related to time, but there's also other things that it gets rid of is they feel a lot of angst sometimes even going and finding somebody and asking for somebody to come help them. It's a point of contention. And so it also removes that, so it makes them happier about what they're doing, improves the overall morale within the organization.

They're happy about what they're doing. Also, you've got the other side of the assistant who's not pulled off of what they're doing, which is probably dealing with some other patient that's up at the front desk potentially if it's a front desk person or an assistant who might've been having to do something else, prepare another operatory.

Scott Leune: And what I found is that the old way of doing it adds a lot of kind of inconvenience and friction so that hygienists aren't always doing a full set of probing depths. They're not charting bleeding points, they're not charting recession, A lot of practices aren't even charting existing restorative work. There's so much friction there, there's so much inconvenience that they just don't get to it. There's always a reason why they're skipping it because of the time pressure. What I've found is that when we remove that friction or that inconvenience, it becomes the habit to always do it. And when we properly chart probing, it results in perio treatment. Obviously,

When we properly chart bleeding points, it's very easy to then start diagnosing and treating patients with laser therapy, which should be done on every bloody prophy. When we have the ease of calling out the clinical notes, just verbally calling out clinical notes, we have more complete clinical notes or referral notes to other providers, and this saves time. And like you said, it takes away the staff conflict of having to ask. But if I'm thinking now as a hygienist and I'm applying to all these practices and I get to a practice, maybe I temp there and suddenly I have this tool to just call out everything that's needed and suddenly it's easy, it's fast. I don't have to wait on anyone, and it's thorough, it's complete, and now I got extra time that practice times eight or 12 patients a day feels different to work in.

Rob Bay: Absolutely. It's totally different. And not only that, as you mentioned, it's going to be driving a lot more treatment, a lot more production for that practice, for that hygienist and for the dentist.

Scott Leune: I think this is a great moment to point a couple things out. If we use AI and do a more thorough examination process, then we must also be triggered to diagnose more thoroughly based on those findings. So if we have AI and we can now implement, Hey, we're charting every bleeding point. Now it takes hardly any time. With Alta,

We're charting every bleeding point. And when we have bleeding points, by the way, the law in our practice says that we treat those bleeding points with a laser bacterial reduction code, which is very affordable for the patient. If we have that happen, then we have this domino effect of suddenly treating people better with more of those procedures and obviously financially it would impact the practice as well. Also, if we save 10 minutes, then what I don't want, then we go slower or we just waste time. But if we save 10 minutes, then we can do anal scan.

Okay, okay. Well then if we do anal scan, does that lead to more cosmetic dentistry? Does that lead to more aligner therapy? Or if we save 10 minutes, then we can do a smile simulation or intro photos. Does that lead to more dentistry? I love that investment, so I'm going to invest to save 10 minutes and that will now get us more cosmetic dentistry, or I'm going to invest in Alta AI to chart bleeding points, for example, and that is then going to get us better care for the patient using laser bacterial reduction. Did I say all that correctly, Rob?

Rob Bay: Yeah, all those things are 100% true. It's going to drive all of that. But even Scott, even if they don't do any of that, even if literally all they're doing now is I'm going to be slower on other stuff and now I'm going to be more thorough and I'm going to have better conversation with the patient, it's going to help to bind the patient to the practice and create a better relationship with that patient to where that patient is going to stick around and be a patient for a longer period of time and trust that practice more with their mouth, with their oral health. Even if they don't do any of those things, it is going to help to drive that. But obviously, yeah, the ideal situation is they're bringing in or they're doing these other things that are going to help the patient get the treatment that they need and get the best care that they can possibly get.

Scott Leune: What we've seen in coaching practices is if I talk about the financial side, a typical hygienist is producing about 800, 850 bucks a day, which is really bad when we think about what it takes to produce 850 a day. That's basically a hygienist that's just a pro female mill doing very little kind of adjunctive procedures. And it's common for us to get that number, double that within a few months of implementing a preventative protocol and a periodontal protocol. But what we find is that when you try to implement things like when are we going to use lasers or antibiotic therapy or when are we going to do sealants of fluoride, the pushback is from the hygienist. I don't have time. I don't have time. And so this is the solution. So the way I look at ALTA is I don't look at it as a way to make the day easier. I look at it as the first domino that needs to fall to double the production of the hygiene department.

I need the 10 extra minutes and the positivity that comes with doing it this way, I need that 10 extra minutes so that we implement a preventative repair protocol so that my hygienists are doing 17, 800, $1,800 a day, and for a typical dental practice that's hundreds of thousands of dollars of added profit per year, that increase in hygiene. So I would like these listeners to see that entire picture because sometimes we get consumed with what is a product? What is this new AI product? And we forget to think about the domino effect of using it afterwards. We just think of the one little solution it brings, but we don't think about what happens after that solution happens. What else will then fall in our lap that's positive? So a few more questions. If I'm a dentist and I'm in my restorative schedule, can I use Alta to kind of do my own clinical notes?

Rob Bay: Yeah, absolutely. You could use it to do your own clinical notes. It's going to be more comprehensive. You're going to better capture the data and information. It's easier to do right at the time where you're thinking about it, what's happening, you're not trying to remember later. Absolutely.

Scott Leune: Yeah. And so I've been through insurance audits and Medicaid audit before, which is never a fun thing to do. And what I found is that whenever we've had issues with audits, it didn't have anything to do with bad clinical care. It was always bad note taking

Because they try to find evidence in your notes for the codes you send them and any reason they can to say, Hey, you didn't say that decay went into Denton and it's not evident on the x-ray, so we're going to call it a seal instead of fluoride, right? They they're trying to downgrade everything we did and then get money back from us. So for the DSOs listening to this, I think this is a very important solution to kind of de-risk happening with a bunch of associate dentists who may not always be on top of charting. Also, this will make it easy to create referrals. So let's say I need to refer to an in-house orthodontist or an out-of-house orthodontist. I'm able to use ALTA to just very quickly say out loud exactly what I want that referral to look like, and for that to then be sent to those people. Is that correct?

Rob Bay: Yeah, exactly. You say out loud, it'll put it into your format and then you can send it off to 'em.

Scott Leune: So do you see Alta as over the next few years, a collection of AI solutions?

Rob Bay: Yeah, absolutely. Like I mentioned before, there's a lot of individual tools that are out there and your listeners I'm sure are aware of many of them that are out there. And I believe that over a period of time there will be a consolidation of several of these types of tools, like there have been in a lot of other types of technologies that exist within dentistry or even any industry. So yeah, we have plans and anticipations of bringing or rolling out multiple different types of tools that work in conjunction with each other, all to the point of eliminating these mundane tasks, saving the practice time, removing angst and frustration and conflict, leveraging your team that you have so they can focus in the areas where you really want them to focus and where they can help bind patients to you and provide great experience and ultimately drive more production and more revenue to the practice.

Scott Leune: So if we kind of dream for a little bit, we dream five or 10 years out in the future, it's really possible that through technology and potentially through outsourcing, but for sure through technology, almost everything will automatically be done outside of treating patients.

Rob Bay: So

Scott Leune: At some point the dentist just say out loud what I completed today, and automatically the notes are in, the codes are completed, the claims are sent out, the payments come in real time, they're automatically processed, and if a patient owes us money, it's automatically charged their card. That happens. It can happen with scheduling, it can happen with so many aspects of the practice. So what are we left with? We're left with a smaller, more highly skilled team focused on the patient,

Rob Bay: People that know what they're doing clinically, people who can build relationships with your patients, provide the patient an experience that that's above and beyond maybe where they're getting somewhere else because you have these tools that are helping to assist with these mundane things. And you as somebody in the practice or not running around with your head cut off trying to put out a gajillion fires, AI is dealing with a lot of this stuff and you're taking your time, you're being deliberate, you're dealing with the patients, you're providing them an excellent experience and giving them the best care that they possibly could get to make sure that everything is taken care of and they understand it thoroughly and ultimately they have a great experience.

Scott Leune: So it might be possible that even a multi-doctor practice someday has almost all just clinical staff. There might be someone in the front that's piloting these tools and interacting with the reception of patients, but it's very possible that the practice model will kind of change over time so that it'll be more advantageous for a dentist to have five dental assistants instead of three dental assistants and two front office people. Especially when I think of alta, it's kind of like the first main tool I've used that bridges the clinical and business with ai. So when you look at other kind of x-ray AI tools, that's just pure clinical. They don't bridge the business side too well, but Alta is kind of in that spot sitting right between all those front office tasks that have to be automated and done, and of course what's happening clinically. And so I kind of view it as one of the core foundational technologies we have to have in a practice is getting our voice speaking to our software in the operatory. I don't know of another, I haven't used another product that does that yet. So it's super exciting. How do you see, because you built dental intel and I bet I was one of y'all's first customers way back in the day

Rob Bay: Probably I remember meeting with you right at the early onset for sure.

Scott Leune: It's crazy to think, I don't know if that was a decade ago. I don't know how long ago that was, but it's crazy to think that I got a direct mail postcard from you guys or a letter or something like that, and that prompted me to call the accounting firm that built the first draft of dental intel to what it is today, which is completely changed the face of how we do business in dentistry. How do you see things like patient engagement or metrics tracking the things that are like dental intel? How do you see that being impacted by ai?

Rob Bay: Well, I think a lot of these types of tools are going to be incorporating AI and using ai, and I'm talking any software that you're probably already using in the dental practice ultimately is going to have to be implementing AI into their tools or into their software, whether that you're talking about patient engagement, whether you're talking about business intelligence, whether you're talking about the practice management software itself, whether you're, any of these types of things that you're utilizing or are going to need to have some of this type of functionality or be integrated with this functionality or have the ability to leverage this type of functionality. Otherwise, I see a day where they're not useful anymore.

Scott Leune: And it's surprising to me that there's even been such a huge market for the add-on software programs. I guess I shouldn't name practice management software, but the big practice management software companies or products that we've all used in dentistry for a decade or more, why did they not have advanced business intelligence? Why did they not have advanced patient engagement? Why was there even an opportunity for a dental intelligence to exist? And on top of that, now we've got these AI products and services, and I would imagine at some point isn't the very best software out there, a software that has acquired business intelligence, has acquired AI and kind of does it all in one, and no one's close to that yet, but it is surprising to me that hasn't existed.

Rob Bay: Dentistry is an a really interesting market. I mean, as I mentioned before, I've invested in a lot of technology companies that are outside of dentistry, and dentistry is one of the industries I've found that has the most number of softwares that they utilize for a location or be able to run their business. And it's an interesting dynamic, and some of that has to do just with the amount of available revenue that there is within software within dentistry because it's not enormous. Maybe some other industries where it's like, okay, I'm going to be some big huge enormous player. I'm going to come in here and I'm going to build the Godzilla of software. Then people have these needs and they're started and they feel this specific niche and that just repeats itself. But what's going to happen in my mind is as consolidation of dentistry happens, following right behind that, every other industry, the same trend has followed this exact same way as the consolidation of the operating businesses happens. Consolidation of software follows right behind it. And so likely in the future there is a consolidation or more of a consolidation where the Godzilla software or whatever the software that maybe runs the business but also has the business intelligence and also does the patient engagement and also has the AI functionality and also is dealing with the claims and it's doing all of these things at some point someday that happens, but I think we're still a ways off from that.

Scott Leune: So maybe someday, if I'm a regional manager of a small DSO of five locations, I could sit maybe someday I could use Alta and I could say, Alta, pull me the case acceptance numbers of these eight doctors over this time period and show me the largest cases that walked away with not being accepted for Dr. Smith. And also show me how often Dr. Smith diagnoses industry compared to all the other doctors and show me what his hourly production is compared to all the other doctors. Build that for me in a report so I can present it to Dr. Smith to talk to him about why his numbers are so low.

Rob Bay: Absolutely. Yeah, I think AI at some point definitely does that where it's integrated or it's interfacing with all of those things. It's interfacing. You're having voice interaction with the practice management software. You're having voice interaction with your patient engagement or with your business intelligence and you're talking to it to be able to gain or glean understanding or it's talking to you or you're talking to it to say you're the one sitting in the chair, Scott. And then it's like, Hey, pull up Scott's chart, change his phone number to, oh, what'd you say your phone number was? Yep, change it to that or it will change the way that we're interacting with our technology or a way that we're addressing these types of needs. And we'll be able to just do it with our voice.

Scott Leune: And as a practice manager, I might look in my schedule, I might see two weeks from now we've got everywhere, and I might tell my practice management software to start sending out texts and emails and prerecorded voicemails to these types of patients that need work. They need less than a thousand dollars of work. They have it covered by insurance by 80% and they've got remaining benefits left. Call all of those patients and text them and email 'em to come into the schedule with the scheduling links. All that would just bam just be sent out. So that's why I kind of mentioned earlier, I feel like there's going to be a pilot position, someone piloting the technology, and then you've got the whole clinical team as well. But that pilot is going to be assisting the clinical team to maintain a full schedule and to have of course, everything sent out and paid and presented properly. This is just super exciting to me. Any idea what kind of timeline we're looking at for this dreaming? I said, where we can just speak and things are done for us. Are we talking a decade? Are we talking three years? What are we talking about?

Rob Bay: I don't know. I'm probably a bad predictor of that because what I had planned and envisioned with dental intelligence, we're still working on with dental intelligence and some of the things aren't even possible. And we've been at that for 10 years where you said, Hey, we met a decade ago. It literally was a decade ago, and that's still in process where I thought that we'd already be there at that point or that technology would be there by now. But in this stuff, what's happening with ai, it seems to be happening even faster than what I'm thinking. So I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to say. I think that as we continue to consolidate or as consolidation happens at the practice level, the technology will follow a similar path or trajectory in terms of speed in its consolidation and in its robustness. I think that Do you feel like this

Scott Leune: Ai, this AI

Rob Bay: Automation, I think 10 years that happens, but I could be wrong.

Scott Leune: Do you feel like the AI automation takes away some of the risks of owning a practice?

Rob Bay: For sure. Absolutely.

Scott Leune: And it takes away some of the knowledge I would even need as an operator. Would that be safe to say?

Rob Bay: Absolutely.

Scott Leune: And it may take away the staffing costs over time.

Rob Bay: It will for sure.

Scott Leune: Okay. And so what that spells to me is even more reason why a dentist maybe younger in their career than they thought could own and run a profitable practice.

Rob Bay: I think businesses that invest in AI and are utilizing AI to their advantage and better understand how they can utilize it are going to be at so much at a greater advantage than dentists who do not. And so yeah, young dentists especially, I feel like they're more attracted to these types of things because they're already utilizing AI in their regular day-to-day life. They're using chat GPT instead of using Google. They're using other types of tools that are ai that they're involved with their social media or that's involved with who knows what. Maybe they're using it to build their website or to automate tasks or whatever it may be. People are utilizing AI and those who are better at understanding how to utilize it and utilizing it effectively are going to be at a big advantage, et cetera.

Scott Leune: So if we have Alta and we can start using that, we are going to save at least 10 minutes in every single one of those recall appointments, and that 10 minutes can result in more treatment. If we miss a phone call, we could have an AI agent handle the call for us. That already exists,

Rob Bay: Correct? Yeah, there's some of that technology that's already around, but you can, there's even technology where it could take two minutes of your voice and deep fake your voice and your voice is the one who's answering the phone or making a phone call. That technology is already around and it exists. So it's going to be just a matter of training these things to the specific use case so that they can handle item number one. Now I can do item number one really well. Now I can do item two and maybe initially it's one thing and the very last thing that it's able to do is like, oh, I'm calling in about my bill and I've got my family and I got my kid Johnny and my husband this and I got me and I've paid this much, and how much? Maybe that's one of the last things I don't know. But I think that those things will start to fall and those dominoes will be knocked off one by one.

Scott Leune: Well, I think if someone's listening to this right now and you already own a practice, you need to save your ants 10 minutes immediately and Up the quality of their work up, the quality of the clinical care and the production that needs to happen right now, you need to also have a solution for your missed calls That needs to happen right now as well. Using ai, we're already to the point where my, about 80% of insurance verification is now done through ai. That needs to happen as well. We've got AI listening to phone calls, giving us information on did we miss a call or not? Did we convert the call or not? If the patient didn't schedule, what kind of procedures did they want to schedule? How much money did we lose by mishandling that call? All of that exists already right now. We have to be doing that right now, and I think we've got an ethical obligation to be utilizing AI on all of our X-rays right now as just another tool for diagnosis. All of that has to happen right now. So AI agent on the phone, phone analysis, AI verification, and of course x-ray and then the voice charting inside of the operatory, all it needs to happen right now.

So those of you all that own a practice and you're not doing those five things, maybe you're only doing one or two, you need to kind of move forward and do the other three because what you'll see, what rah Rob alluded to, is a better work environment with time savings and more consistency. And finally, solutions are giving us that it is in dentistry. We've talked a long time about solutions, but the consultants didn't always save us time or they didn't always make us money, or they didn't always help us do better. It's, they were just kind of juggling problems in different ways. But now I just truly see final solutions happening in part with technology. Well, Rob, before we end this, is there anything, any kind of words of wisdom or any kind of explanation or anything you weren't able to talk about that you think is important to add to this conversation?

Rob Bay: I mean, nothing other than dentistry is an amazing industry. You have chosen, if you're listening to this, an awesome industry to be involved in, there's not an industry out there where if you're trying to build a business where you're like, man, this is easy and nothing is hard. There's things in dentistry that are hard, but there are people out there solving those issues. And if you can leverage that technology to help solve those issues, you'll eliminate some of the frustrations and some of the worries that you're feeling about the industry. And ultimately, this is an industry, I think that's going to be around forever for a long time. And I don't know, or I don't think that AI ultimately ends up taking this industry away. I think it will other industries, but it is an amazing industry to be involved in, and I'm so grateful that I'm involved in that.

Scott Leune: Yeah, that's awesome. I feel like we are behind. If we're not using this now and if we're not using it now, we are adding too much stress to our team. That's just stupid. It's not productive. That is causing us to probably make less money. It's causing us to probably treat patients less thoroughly, whether that's through scheduling or phones or charting and so forth. We need to be on top of this. This is an area where the benefits are too big to ignore and we must be doing it. We must be on top of this. Otherwise we're operating the baby boomer style dental practice with mediocre dentistry and just stupid wasted, repeated tasks that are mundane, as you said, no wonder people don't want to work in a dental practice when they have to be on the phone for 45 minutes to verify insurance or spend five minutes charting something by hand or 10 minutes logging in, probing depths and bleeding points.

Of course they don't want to do that. We have to use technology to do those things because needed and to do 'em in a way that doesn't cause stress or friction. So I love where we're going into industry. Well, Rob, I really appreciate you hopping on with us on the dental CEO podcast. I think that it's rare for us to talk to someone that's as in it as you are and to kind of hear the latest. You are an investor in companies that do this. You are a founder of multiple companies and one of which has completely changed the business side of dentistry. I mean, you have left a permanent mark on dentistry, which not a lot of people have, and that is awesome. So for you to be on this podcast and talk to us about this is wonderful. We really appreciate it.

Rob Bay: Thank you so much, Scott. Thanks for having me.

Scott Leune: Alright, well everyone, well thank you for listening to this episode of the Dental CEO podcast. And Rob, I hope we can bring you back. I think we might need a regular set of updates from you as we keep doing this on the latest, greatest stuff.

Rob Bay: As I mentioned, this industry is moving fast and there'll be definitely a lot of things to talk about in the future.

Scott Leune: Yep. Perfect. Alright everyone, well thank you so much. Until next time on the Dental CEO Podcast.