Dental Intelligence review

 Based in American Fork, Utah, Dental Intelligence goes by the slogan “On a mission to change lives,” through dental practice management software. Featuring real time data tracking and analysis, Dental Intelligence’s goal has been to provide dental practices with transparency into maximizing their practice’s revenue. It is currently used by over 8,000 dental practices, with 50,000 team member users, that serve over 11 million patients.

Features

The run of the mill dental practice management product targets streamlining operations, but Dental Intelligence takes it a step beyond these essentials of scheduling appointments, and electronic billing.

For example, there is the ‘Call Intel,’ or more descriptively, the ‘Smart Caller ID.’ At the regular dental office, the phone calls get answered via the front office all day with the pedestrian “Dental Office,” or just the dentist’s name. Alternatively, via Call Intel, the Dental Intelligence software integrates with the incoming phone line to input the caller ID info for incoming calls. Useful information gets displayed as the call gets answered, through an instant on-screen popup that includes the caller, pending treatment, past due balances, and other relevant info. Now, the front office answers the phone as “Hello Miss Jones, let’s schedule you for your next cavity to be filled” which instantly has a personal connection, and also encourages increased production by identifying missed revenue opportunities as fast as the phone calls are answered.

While data analysis is nice, it is ideal for it to be real time, and actionable. There’s really no point in finding out at the end of the month, or even worse the quarter, that volume is down, or the many missed appointments that decreased income. Dental Intelligence steps up to that challenge through the ‘Morning Huddle’ feature. Without the requirement of even running a report, Dental Intelligence provides useful information by the bushel about yesterday, today, tomorrow, and even next week in terms of volume. It breaks it down to give each team member a clear plan, based on concise and trackable goals for the day. It can also can measure the performance of the team as the plans progress!

The front and back office of any dental practice are challenged with the follow ups. For example, practices want to minimize those patients told to return in six months for their next visit, and never return. So, Dental Intelligence tosses the plan postcards, and goes with an internet solution. This software creates “Auto-generated call lists for appointment confirmations, hygiene recare, unscheduled treatment, and collections,” avoiding patients to get lost to followup, so they get the care they need, and by your practice.

Drawbacks

Truth be told, not everyone is 100% satisfied with every detail of Dental Intelligence.

In its favor, Dental Intelligence does offer mobile apps. On the Android side of things, there is a report that the app does not open, but more recent reviews look to be improved with an overall score of 4.3 out of 5 stars. Over on iOS, things are not as well, with Dental Intelligence garnering 3.2/5 stars, a drop from the previous 3.8/5. The complaints continue, ranging from that the app does not work, to that the app won’t login, and that it is not compatible with the latest version of iOS.

While some users have success with the software, few are frustrated, some highly with Dental Intelligence. Combing through the Facebook reviews locates some practices unsatisfied with this software, and are further annoyed with the cancellation policy (see below), particularly the cancellation fee. In some cases it was after months of promises to address issues that remained unresolved to the satisfaction of the subscriber as they still wanted to depart.

Support

Dental Intelligence offers a full spectrum of options to receive support. The first is over the phone, which offers a direct, toll free number. However, we will mention that the hours are limited to 6 AM to 6 PM on Mountain Standard Time, and additionally, it is for weekdays only- except on Fridays when they shut it off even earlier at 4 PM.

Additional options include email, and chat. There are no onboarding materials available, such as videos, eBooks, webinars or whitepapers.

Pricing

A common practice in this segment is opaque pricing. True to the segment, Dental Intelligence goes dark on pricing information on their site. Alternatively, company contact requires a custom quote which gets assigned the euphemism of a “Free practice analysis.”

We postulate that the reason for no pricing is the expensive cost, which is somewhat higher than at least some of its competition. Elsewhere online we find that Dental Intelligence has a $1,000 (£810) setup fee, and then a subscription for the month of $499 (£404). However we also see other prices online (in the same range) so we think that some other variables are involved, such as the length of the contract, and also the number of dentists in the practice among the possibilities to decipher the pricing.

Dental Intelligence has a difficult cancellation policy that states that “All payments for services rendered are non-refundable.” Also, the policy auto-renews, for a year at a time, with a requirement of 30 days of notice needs to be given prior to the renewal date to get out of it.

Final verdict

Offering a comprehensive suite of features that goes beyond its competition for managing a successful dental practice Dental Intelligence is a viable entry. We like the mobile app support for both iOS and Android, the automated follow ups, and real time data analysis. The downsides cover the truly opaque pricing, the expensive startup fee, and the limited hours of support that goes home early on Fridays. For a practice desiring a higher level of success, Dental Intelligence remains an option, although it comes at a cost.

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