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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Dr. Corey Anderson, Dentist and Practice Owner at Affordable Dentures & Implants in West Virginia
00:17:48
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, this is Ariana Porterlatan with the Becker's Dental and DSWB Podcast. I'm thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Corey Anderson, a dentist with affordable dentures and implants. Dr. Andersen, thank you so much for being here today. It's great to have you on our podcast.
- [00:14]
B
Yes, thank you for the invitation.
- [00:16]
A
Yes, of course. To start us off, can you introduce yourself for our listeners and tell us a little bit about your background as well?
- [00:22]
B
Of course. My name is Corey Anderson. I'm a, as you said, a dentist in affordable dentures and implants in Bridgeport, West Virginia. I'm the practice owner of the office. I've been at this office for nine years. I bought, I was hired as an associate nine years ago and then I purchased the practice after that following year. So I've been a practice owner for eight years. This is my fourth DSO I've worked with since I've been a dentist. I'm a fellow in the Academy of General Dentistry, I'm a fellow in the icoi, a member of the ada, big believer in a organized dentistry. And I, you know, I also have done, I do regular like Missions of Mercy or RAM clinics as they're called now. Over the years I do peer review for the General Dentistry magazine for the AGD and a past life was in the Air Force for five and a half years as a JAG and NSC and after that I was an administrative law judge with Social Security disability. I previously worked as a managed care contracting and physician recruitment and enforcement. I worked at the National Institute of Public Health in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia and I've worked with the IMF and the WHO in Nepal and the Malachi Water Diversion Project a very long time ago. So I also married and I have four children and I'm just happily living in West Virginia. It's a beautiful place to be.
- [01:57]
A
Great, thank you so much for sharing your extensive background there. Great to hear more about yourself. First question for you here, what are some of the biggest issues you're following in the dental industry this year?
- [02:07]
B
I think the biggest issues that I'm following in dentistry kind of revolves around the, the practice of dentistry rather than the dental industry. I mean AI has kind of taken over a lot of different things, but substantially I don't think that's my day to day is spent with one handed dentistry. So you know, as I look at it, I look at what is in the practice, what's affecting the patient, you know, and what's allowing me to get things done so within the practice I think one of the largest skills, you know, and as I say, I work with the dso. So, like the skill set for the DSO and the practice is probably the hardest thing really right now. Getting people in the right slots that have the right skills and the right interest and the right motivation to do things that they need to do. Right. So, you know, how do we create a practice pattern and a culture where we can meet patient expectations, you know, in the building or at a set of standards for quality of services that are going to be handled efficiently? You know, with the dso, they're, they're my DSO that I'm working with now. They typically are aligned pretty well with that, but that is not all the case. Always the case, as people probably know, you know, so they need to have people at the DSO that understand dentistry as it's practiced at the DSO's offices. That can be a challenge, according to some of my friends. So that, that's a large issue within the practice side of things. Within the lab, you know, you're either going to have an inside or an outside lab doing your cases that you need to have done. And so the large change, I think, is going from analog to digital or some type of AI. With digital, you know, what, how do you practice dentistry, and how do you deliver materials that are as good as, if not better than, some other material? So is it a transition to analog or a transition to digital or using one or the other? And do you have the skill set necessary to handle one or the other? Does your lab have the skill set to handle one or the other or both? And is it affordable? Right? I mean, can you afford to do everything digitally? Can you afford to do everything analog? Do you want to deal with all one way or the other? And so that's a huge issue that every. Everybody I talked to has kind of got that going on. And then, you know, patience, right? How do you, you know, do you have a. Do they have a high dental knowledge or a low dental knowledge? What are their expectations? What do they want to have done? What can they have done, what's reasonable, what's not, you know, and then understanding the specialists around you and how they're going to take care of issues and what are they reasonably going to obtain? You got to fuse that in with the patient and their expectations, what they're going to receive from the situation, and then the money side of things, that's always. Nobody seems to have any money in the economy at the current experience. So, you know, people are hinging upon insurance pretty heavy. And you know, so, and the insurance industries are, you know, they're gonna make a money, make money out of the situation. So, you know, if they, they're using the AI to screen claims and then the claims are getting shot down and everybody's trying to appeal them, then they're using AI to appeal the claims. And it's this vicious circle of like, we can just turn our brains off and let the AI battle the AI. That's a concern for me. But, you know, it's expensive, right, to provide services and maybe it's expensive to run the payment mechanisms, but patients need to pay and the provider needs to be paid, staff needs to be paid and the lab needs to be paid. So the money side of things is a lot of things, but there is a room for charity care and there is room for compassion. And most of that falls on the practice and the people in the practice typically. So those are the larger issues that I spend my time thinking about when I'm at work doing things that are in the dentistry.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing all of those. A lot to cover there. So I do have a couple follow up questions for you there. I know you mentioned patient expectations. Can you list just a couple of the ways you've seen patient expectations evolve over the past couple of years?
- [06:20]
B
Sure. Some patients want to look like they're 18 when they were in prom and they're 65 or 70 years old. And there's. That's a huge ask at a heavy lift and it might not realistically be possible, you know, but even if it were possible, it might be expensive. Right. So how do you. That's a challenge for managing what people want. And most of what we do is pro is dentures or implant retained dentures. We don't do a lot of restorative dentistry. So how do you match what they want with what you can provide them? And is it reasonable for them to want what they want? You know, but you didn't really tell people, you know, I want to look like I'm 18 again. You know, it was great, but, you know, maybe this isn't the best option for you or maybe it's the best option. But, you know, I never want to put myself in a position where I'm over promising what I can do for a person to match expectations that may or may not be unreasonable for a patient. So it's kind of, you know, how do you just make that discussion with patients? It's very difficult.
- [07:34]
A
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I know you also mentioned AI being used by, by insurance Companies to review claims and then having to go through the appeals as well. Is that something new that you've seen just in the past year? Is that something that's been going on for quite a few years?
- [07:51]
B
I think it's starting to catch its stride in the last year. I mean, AI can do a lot of stuff. Your call center could be AI. You want to have someone answering the phone at midnight. You can get yourself an AI call center. That's a couple hundred dollars a month. Anything that sounds like a human being will be answering the phone and scheduling patients 24 7. Same thing with claims. You know, they'll. They'll do the rub a dub dub and, you know, suggest that you make changes before you submit it or it'll get bounced back and you'll have to address this. But, you know, a lot of these things that the AI can or can't do, it hits a wall pretty quick and then it comes back to human intervention. And so I think the insurance industry as a whole used to bank on we're going to deny this and then the person's going to need to intervene and then in a month you're going to get around it. Looking at that again, those games are kind of coming to an end with AI. It's actually coming to a point where like, they're now, you know, even in medical. In medical, claims are automatically being downgraded by. What is it? Sign. I think they just kick it down a tier because they can. And then you have to appeal and then there's a. They'll come up with a different appeals process for this. So, like within dentistry, you know, they don't want to pay the claims for the services that they don't have to pay the claims for. So dentists want to get paid for the services they provide. You know, creates a very, very difficult situation for dentists and the dental industry as a whole. Insurance is not always your friend.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah, yeah, I know. And there's definitely so many challenges that come with working through the insurance companies and getting reimbursed and going through denials and appeals as far as, you know, for the. For the dentist themselves. And I know when it comes to AI, AI has solved a lot of problems for dentists. But do you think as far as insurance, it's created more.
- [09:44]
B
I don't think it solved all of the problems. I think what it is allowed is more problems to be. The insurance company will study what is going to result in them avoiding paying claims. Right. They used to be the number of human interventions, you know, that you need to touch a human being needs to touch the claim so many times we're going to lose claims 60% of the time. Great, right. AI is solving a lot of that, but they're just coming up with new tricks and new practices to catch that same percentage of people where they don't get paid for those claims. And it's just putting the squeeze on. So is it an improvement? Yeah, but I mean, eventually, you know, if everybody's got this war of AI versus AI versus AI versus AI, they're just, they're coming up with new practices to deny properly or improperly claims for payment, you know, for whatever reason. And you know, people, the patient buys insurance because they expect the claim to be paid, not because they expect the dentist to have AI and the insurance company to have AI. And for those two people to get into some slug fest with technology and then have to go back and fill out paperwork and resubmit and then go human intervention. You send a check for partial payment to the patient, they come into your office, they argue about why this wasn't paid. You know, like the largest reason for denial we get on insurance claims is that they say that the NPI is not on the claim. And so patients will come in. It's right there, it's printed out on the form, it's been submitted, it is there. The patient doesn't know what an NPI is, so now they're causing patients to come in and ask me what my identification is. It was already print, it's already on the form, it's already submitted, it's on every insurance claim. But they're denying claims for that. And they're causing their customer, the insured, to have to come in to me, the dentist, to work out an issue that doesn't exist. And they're just trying to find barriers for people and that's where it's coming to. AI has reached its limitations at some point and then human intervention is what reduces the payout.
- [12:00]
A
Yeah, some good points that you make there. So thank you for going into a little bit more detail about that. Next question for you here. I'm also curious to know what are you most excited about when it comes to dentistry right now and what makes you nervous?
- [12:14]
B
Well, I think what I'm, what I'm most excited about is I love wet handed dentistry. You know, I love my patients, I love my staff. I'm lucky to do what I do. You know, I just, I enjoy it. I like the work that needs to be done. And you know, it's really Nice to have patients that appreciate the work that we do. And so, for the most part, I like that that gets me out of bed in the morning. I also like the fact that the practice of dentistry is evolving. You know, you can get effective and appropriate care. The options in terms of materials have improved. In terms of practices, I think printed dentures, I think are probably not completely a solution to a lot of problems. But I think if you look at the technology is now starting to get to the point where it can correct a lot of the lab issues and a lot of the practices. You know, the shortfalls of skill sets and the number of people in the workforce. Right. It's starting to catch up. So that, that is exciting to me. Will it be affordable for patients to be able to do that? I don't know. That kind of makes me nervous. I think the, the workforce shortages, you know, the economy that's, that's challenging right now. You know, I look at, like, for the larger economy. There is a Panera across the street from my office where I'll stop and I'll get the office, like a box of bagels and cream cheese and coffee and whatnot in the morning. And five years ago, six years ago, seven years ago, you couldn't drive through the. Drive through to pick them up in the morning because there was a line around the building and into the parking lot in the last five months or so, there's never a line at that Panera. I could drive through and get bagels and be at work early. I think that, you know, from the Panera index, you know, I think the economy is heading in a bad way. And so that, that makes me nervous. Right. Because there are some people that don't have insurance that can't pay. They can get financing, but then they have to pay the financing. They just have other expenses in life they need to meet. And so that, I think, makes me concerned more than anything else. You know, people have less cash available for discretionary expenses, and most of dentistry is a discretionary expense. You know, you talk about the dental, the dentist shortage in the country, or the dental hygienist shortage in the country, or the dental staff shortage in the country, but all those people are still feeding at the same trough of dental insurance, patient payments and patient payment. If you don't have those two, the rest of it is just going to go away. So that's the two largest things. I like to work, but I'm concerned about the financing of it going forward.
- [14:58]
A
Yeah, I can definitely see how that causes some nerves in the industry as well. And I know that you're not the only dentist who's nervous about that as well. Last question for you here. What will the most effective healthcare leaders need to be successful in the next two to three years?
- [15:14]
B
Well, you have to. I look at dentistry as like, what is my core strength as a dentist? You know, is it is my career aspiration to be like a dental office chief dental officer somewhere or whatnot? You know, if that's great, build your skill set to do that. But that right now my goal is to do the best dentistry I can in the day to day that I'm doing it in. I think most dentists should focus on what they're doing now and get mindful about what they're doing in the day to day, you know, so, you know, the next two to three years, I'm focusing on developing as a servant leader. Right? That's the model that's always been taught to me in the military as a boy scout. As a boy scout leader, you know, all these things place yourself in the role where you are leading by example and functioning to as a caretaker of the people around you. Not only the patient, but the people in your staff to give them the things they need to be successful, to do the things they want to do. And then, you know, also, you know, stay current with knowledge, equipment, skill sets. You know, I think C can be an answer. You know, like I'll do, I think I do about 90 hours of CE a year, which is way more than the average person. But you also get the benefit of being the benefit from organized dentistry. If you go to these, participate in organized dentistry, you go to these meetings and you get surrounded by people that are, you'd be surprised. You're not. You may work in an office by yourself all day long, you go to these meetings and there's a thousand people that are doing exactly the same thing, working by themselves all day long. And they are very bright and very motivated and they've got solutions to problems you don't even know you had. So for me personally, I think I focus on that the next two to three years. If I think there's one thing I could continue to do or people continue to do would be to get high quality continuing education and focus on becoming a better clinician, a better person and a better person to work with and in the office that I think will pay off in spades. That's where I put most of my energy. I think that's in the next two to three years, a huge opportunity for.
- [17:30]
A
People well, that is all I have for you today, Dr. Andersen. Such a great conversation. So thank you so much for joining us. Definitely been a pleasure speaking with you and learning more about some of the issues you're following in the industry. So I'm looking forward to connecting with you again in the future.
- [17:43]
B
Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you so much for having me on.