Hemesh Surana is a seasoned techie. He spent 15+ year at Oracle before starting his software venture, patientXpress. This venture started as a hobby to help his dentist wife, who had purchased a boutique dental practice few years back. He wore many hats in dental office and observed closely to find many broken processes, inefficiencies which costs 1000s of dollar in revenue leakage.
VIDEO - DUwHF #1204 - Hemesh Surana
AUDIO - DUwHF #1204 - Hemesh Surana
Dr. Medicetty has more than 10 years of executive management and commercialization in Healthcare. He has been providing financial and operational management support for his spouse’s dental practices over the last 10 years. Joined patientXpress with a mission to provide smart tools to improve practice profitability.
Howard: It's just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Satish Medicetty who is a CEO and spouse of a dentist of patient Express and then we're with the founder Hamesh Surana who's a CTO and is also a spouse of a dentist so did you guys meet each other in some support club for men who are married to dentist
Medicetty: you can see by just how being as possible dentist is as a category of being on our title so you can say yes I think that made a very important role and how we met and then where we are and how we rated it working together I should say we almost didn't have a choice but to do that
Howard: well let me read up well the founder ISM Ashland let me start is by Hamesh Surana is a seasoned techie spent fifteen years of the work old before starting a software venture patient Express this venture started as a hobby to help his dentist wife who had purchased a boutique dental practice a few years back he wore many hats at the dental office and observed closely to find many broken processes in efficiencies which cost thousands of dollars in revenue leakage for example due to daily frenzy staff missing out to verify insurances on the day of service which caused denial claims staff not having proper data matter fingertips when handling calls and missing out revenue opportunities owner doctors not having proper visibility on phone activities who answered which call their nodes for the call staff logging into multiple websites to verify insurance staff not able to easily customize reminder recalls and many more all these daily office operation pains led to the vision of an all-in-one comprehensive portfolio of tools to manage a dental office efficiently and to focus on generating more revenue and plug the revenue leakage and this so teaches your CEO he's a doctor of veterinary medicine a PhD but also an MBA I have an MBA I mean I am this has been a problem since I got out of that old school 32 years ago so you're trying to solve a problem for your wives how's it going
Satish: well I think you know so far we've had very positive outlook towards this product and also what we were able to learn in the market already and the dental offices they're using this product have been giving us excellent feedback I would say so I mean overall in the journey has been very encouraging so far and they're really looking forward to you know take it to the next level in the next few months to a year
Howard: there's a lot of new players on doing this what is your unique selling proposition why did you decide to go the long route and just start your own company doing yourself as opposed of some of the other software solutions that are out there now
Hamesh: that's definitely a very appropriate comment yes indeed there are a lot of players must be later a lot of providers offering these services so I think it was very important for us to look at you know what is unique about us and how we can really have an impact so when you look at this particular image on the screen right now and we were thinking about okay the product should really be a force multiplier to the front desk and more importantly support the full cycle of patient interaction you know our patient can use or the office you know patient express starting from online appointment booking as well as always patient registrations patient reminders incident verification is a very very important need where we do the several other players are not able to provide us at this point and then at the top in the middle is mark alrighty I'll come back to a very very important thing because we actually have a patented platform around smart caller ID and then going further down obviously cause you know how are we doing with our patient calls because that we missed and how can we follow up on that and then after the appointment you know reviews reputation management and continuing to communicate with our patients with the to a texting system I'm finally putting it all together in reports that are very easy to understand for the front office or anybody in the office to take interactions I think all of these were an integral part and if we are able to come or bring everything together in a cost-effective manner we thought that's the most important thing for this product now
Howard: why do you think it's 2019 and I still have to have a human call a human at a dental insurance company and verifying this way I had a full-time employee doing this for three decades and when people complain about the cost of health care do they not know that 30 percent of the cost is paperwork why do you think that we landed on the moon in 1969 and I still have to hire a human to call your human to do something it should be just an automated electronic what why do you think that is
Hamesh: I would say first of all fantastic statement right so how you hit the nail on the head I mean it's from a technology perspective unfortunately healthcare as a whole I mean especially down industry in a greater extent I think we're really far behind compared to other technologies that people are using right now but you're absolutely right that mainly insurance verification over owned is waste of resources on both ends amenable to practices as well as the insurance companies and unfortunately it's a patient sometimes you end up wasting a lot of these benefits just because they don't know what they have or what they can you know achieve with the benefits at the end so I think part of the problem is just really adapting this new technology and in trying to put it all together and making it easy and I think having a technology that actually makes it easy I think these are all the problems in my mind I think we are taking steps in the right direction here I believe our platform in a certainly is going in the right direction to make it easy for both offices as companies today to the next level and I know enough providers are looking into it as well and I think it's going to change very soon so let me add to that how would your doctor from you talking about the automation so that's what we are differentiating our subscapular the others in the marketplace we provide the automation of insurance verification so if you want to run the script with our software five days before two days before on the day of the service we can do all this insurance automation for you so for example we were losing thousands of dollars when my wife was reading in her office and we saw on the day of the service patient was not active he went to another dentist used up its all the benefits and we were losing money that's what we got this insurance verification tool in our portfolio which can go on the day of the service check your hundreds of appointments and make sure that patients are active on those appointments and put me as a verified on those appointments if a patient is not active then we will highlight some ways so that you can do it manually so we have started that automation process already and within five minutes all your hundred appointments in a day are verified automatically whether they active or not how much money is remaining
Howard: so you want to give a demo right now of your yeah just did you give it Emma why you because um you know I this has been my pet peeve for three decades is the business of Dentistry these people don't know how many I mean this is we've already almost finished half the year and if you ask any dentists in America how many people called your office in the first half of 2019 they have no idea how many of the calls are missed and so they don't know any of this stuff so talk about what wood attributes of this product you're making and why they're important to
Medicetty: perfect so I've got two one minced 1 is the Bertha and another is a Schmidt so those two patients in one patient you'll see that we is verified and another you see this no be out there so that means that our script was automatically able to verify this appointment that she is active insurance and since there was no way out here is the article verified and how easy it is to find out whether it's active under introduced or not you select the patient and clip the patient info button which we provide at the top it will tell you whether the person is active or not so it's three and time talking to the insurance company you see that working button and it's gonna pop tell you whether the person is active on that insurance or not within fraction of second we'll find out whether she's today or not and in the meantime while we're waiting for that in a perhaps what I can add here is the dashboard that you're seeing on the right-hand side of the screen so this is what we call the intelligent dashboard right so the technology the spot color ID technology that we have actually integrates the phone and the patient management system and is able to generate this give a snapshot of the key patient information so even before you go into a detailed patient chart you're able to actually get their information whether or not they have an appointment recalling history insurance I think we have the data here already and then you know any pending treatment plans you know his family a bunch of things that are important so this is and again our patented software again this is not a hardware this is a software plug-in that that we add to the offices so coming back so you can see the patient a Schmidt I tried second patient he has met life insurance 2250 remaining this is all real time we are able to pull in and if you're going to get further details you click this I button and it will give you further he just let me clear all the drawings which we have got here for example you want to search whether this patient is auto coverage or not be type or without here it will filter out all the data from insurance company later to ortho if you want to figure out further details about his remaining data all of the service remaining all the limitations regarding remaining are shown up out here if you want to search all of our deductible so you can see all the deductible related information is showing up so we have made it insurance verification a little easier compared to logging the website or calling insurance company here with a one-click you have the data fingertips and you can quickly make a decision inside the dental practice when patient walks in and that's how we are helping dental practices pluck the revenue leakage in their office we're optimizing the insurances when it's in front of them so we provide quantitative features rights from the online appointment booking so let's find out one of the online appointment booking how people can book appointment for our system let's log in quickly looks like the system is not working for online find working internet let's go to other features called we provided actionable report like recon reports or pending treatment reports if folks want to find out how many appointments how many patients are due for implants who do not have the future appointment they can search the influence here and click the date and time it's pretty slow code my site so I'm gonna use surge so we give you this actionable list is found out there are 39 patients who do not have future appointments for implants now your office can slice and dice the data these are the kind of insurances how many times you have in mind and then you can right click and call right from your practice mentor software or you can send them a text message also so if I want to select all within three clicks or four clicks I can select all the patients in my list for implant and send an SMS or email to follow-up for the appointment oh I can do a little marketing for them campaign for them Hey look we are doing the some implant campaigns we have a specialist coming in our office would like to come with they get the treatment done so this way you can follow up with the patients pretty quickly with our actionable list and we provide you the contracting feature so you can find out how many calls came in your dental office who picked up that call and what's going on side and is it a real patient call or a marketing call all those things you can search for example if I want to find out who the phone number is this perspective which is not in our database if I select and click the W button I can find out whether this is the mobile phone numbers for number marketing phone number so I can quickly search on internet and find out so you can see this is the mobile phone nervous of patients calling from Texas so I can follow up by calling this patient right click from the call log but I can send them SMS or in the task list to do the follow-up task so that my office somebody can follow up with this patient so I'm gonna and task sign it to another office number
Howard: so would you know first of all let's explain this in in macro is this more something you used in addition to a practice management system like dendrix eagle soft open dental or is this something that you want to use just only and you wouldn't need dendrix or eagle soft or open dental
Medicetty: so we need to practice Microsoft for like they eat this up entrance to open dental and be on top of it we had a plug-in on those practice management software we augment the operations inside a dental practice okay
Howard: so so let's um let's I'm gonna hold your feet to the fire you this is your space you're both married to a dentist um if some kid just walked out of dental school and they're gonna open up their dental practice um you've worked with all these software what would you recommend then Church Eagle soft open dental smart Pratt what would you recommend
Medicetty: some all practice medicine that software's own good but I have been leaning towards open dental because it's open source and you can easily create the solution on top of it and that's how I started patient Express because open until I was able to read the code inside out and figure it out and extend the open dental the way which affect my office should run
Howard: okay so let me stop there just because these kids these kids studied on dentistry for years and they might not know what you said but I was on another practice management system for soft end for thirty years and that's why we switch to open dental I have no relationship with open dental they've never given me a dollar they do and they don't even advertise so I'm not even plugging in advertiser they don't advertise are growing too fast because of what you just said it's an open-source software so I shall we both agree open dental I'm do you have a good relationship with open dental I mean do they seem to work with you or they are they heart early like dendrix where it'd probably be easier to have dinner tonight with trump then talk to anybody that knows what's going on at Dentrix what being open
Medicetty: source is open code so we can pull in the code from them and can modify the application so innovation which is inhibited when you prepare your software it stopped and that's why we were able to create so many solutions that they need to soften our open dental like smart come right Lisa fish talked about before so integrate your phone service and you practice met my software without even changing your existing phone service we are the only one in the marketplace who can hook into your existing digital phone service and providing smart caller ID we are the only one in the marketplace hook into your existing phone service a provide a call tracking so that's why
Howard: let me stop right there because again you guys are married a dentist I'm a dentist but the Devils in the details when you talk about when you talk about call tracking are you talking about your regular phone line are you talking about voice over Internet Protocol you know for you to do this what type of phone are you talking about it's your phone services
Medicetty: so we service is but is that does that mean VoIP s900 person wipes there are certain phone companies who are digital but not white so like comcast time warner cable the cable companies are not web companies technically so they're a hybrid of so we call them digital so any digital phone service which are using digital signals we can integrate that plug in with them pretty easily
Howard: okay how does the dentist listening to you right now driving into work know if their phone line is digital or analog
Medicetty: I mean question so if they aren't able to see the old telephone instrument in their office they eighty to nineteen question using analog phones so digital phones require different instruments which has got more caller ID and all those things so kind of a voicemail tracking and those new features and
Howard: what percent of the dentists in the United States do you think have a digital phone come so percentage is growing daily so I believe it's almost over fifty presses are going digital my wife when she started her dental practice she was inhibited I'm going voice over IP or digital phone service she felt like phone is a bread and butter her office yes initial six months hiccups we had to learn about this white but once we moved to the white not a single day we had any issues if internet is down all the phone calls get transferred to our cell phone in our office so we don't feel any instructions that he but what if ATT was down which we had before if somebody cut the cable outside for days we were figuring out how to make that phone service work now it's pretty easy with oiseau right your digital phone services you can direct on your smart phones and you can work your office demo team you know ninety two hundred percent of the phone services are gonna be digital in the next ten years and that's how the industry is shipping so I think one way or the other all businesses will be in any some ways forced to go in that direction and yes a we have in my wife's office we actually did that change last year and you know we took a while I mean it took almost like three four months for us to even make that decision but I think our experience was much more smoother than what image is explaining we got onto the VoIP service and then literally we did that over the weekend and by next week I think everything was going just fine yes we dad we did have a couple of minor issues but other than that I think it was fairly straightforward I would say
Howard: I want to stay on this issue cuz like saying when you go to dental town and they're talking about these these are huge issues voice when you said the phone line went down and they referred him to your digital phones your your smart phones in the office how many times does that happen in a month or a year
Medicetty: ear Aliza thrice twice twice here okay and
Howard: it's the same thing with cloud like these people get on they talk about miracles of VoIP phone systems they talk about cloud computing they're like why would anybody want to have a server and software and firewalls why don't you put on the cloud but there must be something going on in the cloud yep because it really hasn't taken off in dentistry to McDonald's I mean you still see all these franchises where every store location has you know the internet connection the server the software also is cloud in dentistry bleeding-edge and it's gonna really take over the next you know five to ten years urja here today is a leading edge
Medicetty: leading edge I believe it might catch up down line the biggest challenge which I see well the club face is our digital x-rays so bringing back and forth the extras ticked too much that bit time but other than that having a practice Menace offer in the cloud I went my wife's practice spend open dental in the cloud so my database in the cloud impacts of automatically I don't have to worry about it I can access form anywhere in the world I can just show it to you quickly oh you can access if it's running my voice practice quickly you is clouded you go I mean Amazon half of their revenue is their cloud business did you use Amazon Web Services for your cloud or racket little expensive for us so if somebody is hearing this fraud car that is a small company called digitalocean you can use them or Microsoft Azure because even you go Amazon you need Windows operating system so Microsoft Azure provides you a quicker way to provide you these X's so I can access my wife's practice I should not be sharing in publicly and she will hate me when you can access from the cloud a practice calendar almost many patient communication stuff over the clock so if you work so with some young kid was listening to you right now and she's saying okay so I'm in over my own practice and I'm gonna use open dental would you have her have open dental on the cloud or would you recommend her to have all of her hard work what would be your decision so initially on in the office slowly once they learned because the cost is the biggest prohibitive if you work with going to the club it's gonna cost you a lot initially so maybe one or two years down the line when things are growing they were enough cash for coming in they can invest they can move to the cloud because cloud even though it looks like but it's kind of little expensive sometimes when I check my bill it's really high compared to what normal in the office I can buy a server but six hundred seven hundred dollars from Costco and put it in my office versus sometimes in three months I've already spent $700 in the cloud you never know when the processing power of the cloud so cloud pricing is a little complicated
Howard: so every so rr5 for your genesis you know just I always actually this is a faster is it easier is a higher quality as a lower cost is a smaller more succinct and when they start violating a lot of these things you know if it's not faster and your staff wants a raise every year and your insurance companies want to pay you less and denied more claims you know keeping one eye on the customer patient and one eye on cost is huge but you're basically saying that cloud is expensive right now so you'd have your own server you'd get on open dental and then you would recommend your patient Express for smart caller ID call tracking insurance verification reputation management appointment automation two-way texting automated reports tight integration on and on and on that's not what you're saying
Medicetty: yeah and also I think what I would like to add from a cloud-based perspective having worked in other healthcare settings as well in general the biggest roadblock is the security aspect is about that - concerned I mean we don't have hours on the cloud yet but I have you know known that some other health you know HIPAA compliant you know cloud-based you know systems out there so I think again it's gonna be you know matter of times where you know the you know the change will happen and when you come to the security aspect of it now that you hear a lot about how people can hack into your servers as well so you don't have to be on the cloud if you have security issues and from that perspective I think young dentists have to look into systems that are more amenable to incorporate newer and better features that make their practices very efficient going forward because they really want to concentrate on dentistry right and the more things that they can automate in terms of helping them manage their calls their patients patient engagement insurance all these things the better off they are
Howard: so um I love you it's bizarre so you know you know in my journey dendrix up there in Provo Utah right next to the god of Dentistry Gordon Christian you know they started this practice management information system and they were the first ones to come out when I was a kid to line right up with Bill Gates Microsoft Windows 3.0 and they've been riding the wave but you look at all the things they never did or added or did right and around northern slopes of Utah there's like 10 different dental companies or I just think you shouldn't even have existed dentures should have done that 10 20 years ago and it's just amazing all these companies that Sprout up just because of all the things they never did that all the things that we're talking about today but the other issue and whatwe talked about what you guys did first all those things like that you know or you know the phones coming the phones are the most neglected you know your smart car IDs small dragging on I guess up but the other big part of this equation is connecting it with your accounting software I mean I still can't believe that that my opened dental doesn't seamlessly integrate with softened or Microsoft GP Microsoft great plains accounting I mean you know why where are we out now with the accounting deal and everything that you're talking every feature you're doing is basically about patients coming in out of the phone insurance reputation management where are you out with the accounting
Medicetty: so that's in the works so accounting not just with the QuickBooks or big place we're thinking from the energy management perspective so the insulation are trying to work on raising some capital to take the company the more bigger directions to do more integrations and if we get crazy able to raise the capital definitely will tackle the accounting side and the inventory management side of the business which is still lacking in the dental space yeah
Howard: it's missing in action I mean it's like complete schizophrenia when you have two software systems one is all the patients scheduling in insurance and then the other ones your accounting and then you walk into a dental office you say what do we have to do today to just break even no one knows you know so on that so have you thought out any of your accounting I mean have you if you got funded today which accounting software would you go to because in my opinion but then again I got an MBA I mean I think quicken and QuickBooks Pro is for personal home individual stuff I think peachtree which is now owned by sage is the best but it didn't have any big name brand microsoft's the monster they bought great plains accounting if you got funded today what accounting software would you go with
Medicetty: QuickBooks I use QuickBooks so I understand quickest that's where I go first for sure but of course we need to find out which is a bigger market share in the marketplace that should be a business decision yeah and also I would say also books online is the cloud version up at which we use I actually that part of that is also because again in a cloud-based integrations have to be part of any of these digital systems so we absolutely are going in that direction we will have more integrations into in our software because of the same reasons that you said in art and I believe we know I think when it comes down to innovation around these products right so it's not unusual as you know successful company gets larger the innovation goes down and that's normal process and also another side of it in innovation happens because talent meets paint right if you think about how him I started I mean he have the skillset of building a product like this but at the same time because it was driven by the pain in his voice office you know similarly a lot of things that I'm doing including my role in impatient Express it's driven by the pain as well as what it will be bringing out of the table and that's how innovation is coming out and I think eventually our hope is that some of these bigger companies like Derrick Henry Schein and Patterson would really be amenable to come and talk and in support this innovation and it girls may be dentists who started venture capitalists are more the Emma shine and the parents and should start venture capitalist arm and find us that's what we're looking so we have got this ideas we can innovate we can come up with the solutions quickly compared to there so here after the furnace if you become a they can acquire us
Howard: so I'm gonna so we talked about all the phone stuff and then I start in other phones I saw haven't met anyone that can tell me how many incoming calls you had last month how many I went to voicemail how many the voicemail were answered and call them when they call in the first thing I have to do is say oh what is your name and you say oh you know my name is Hamas and then I type it in the computer when it should have just came up instantly the minute I picked up the phone I should have seen your beautiful face and all this something that says oh we talked about all that stuff I want to switch gears to a different thing prescriptions I think it's very sad when an 85 year old grandpa comes in and you got to give him a prescription when he leaves your office he's got to go to Walgreens across the street turn in the prescription wait in line used was it one of your first features a patient express our were worried about with prescriptions
Medicetty: so we started prescription initially but the cost was prohibitive for us to do the electronic prescription so we dropped the idea again when we have enough funds to come back on that track and we can always get into that market too
Howard: so then your is your first product called so what is your first vertical is it called converged calm
Medicetty: so that was the or name which we used to before we have changed the branding so smart caller ID was our first product pop-up right when you went born drinks at the office it pops up and then we provide shortcuts on the swap up so that you don't have to ask first name last name not even you have to type in your practice minutes offer it directly takes you inside the practice went to supper so we have taken one or two minutes of time of identifying patient and quickly get to the profile of the patient so that was our first product
Howard: okay so your first four and what makes it cost prohibitive is it HIPAA regulation what is the what is the cost driver to make that so complicated
Medicetty: so in the prescription one there are two big players in the market place and they have captured the market and they don't want to lose enough and they want the money if you want to use their systems through the electronic prescription and ignition a new practice when your software East Clips another got another one
Howard: and then I'm on the smart caller ID so with your system patient Express if I'm on soft at and I am patient Express when you call my office it pulls up the screen right yes it so right now we're integrated with open mental ten tricks and working on either soft did not get with soft end we tried communicating with soft and it's again we've never got any feedback from their company they never talked to us so we all need to get it with top pretty practice with myself in the marketplace so good mental yeah open dental in Oregon and then dendrix in Provo Utah and then I go soft and Effingham Illinois speaking of Eagle soft it's right there in Effingham right next to the biggest dental player DSO Rick workman with Heartland dental I would think if I was a company like you that the first people I would go talk to DSO because the dentist all want to just learn more dentistry and that's why I love them I flip and love the fact that all they care about is their art their surgery their dentistry but they don't know any of their business metrics I mean they don't know they couldn't even tell you last year's return on equity versus return on asset how many guns they can't tell you anything about that and that's why I love them it's challenging but have you gone to DSOs because those are the people that want to talk better faster easier higher quality lower more profit before bone grafting
Guest : so yes that's a major part of our strategy which we haven't really had any serious conversations partly because in all of our features you know we've been launching several of these features over time in the last year and a half so as of q1 2019 we have a fully functional product with all the features and now we know it's working so now we are actually making headway big idea headquarter PDS is not too far from where we live and smile brands and we are actually and if they're listening to us I think we would love to have the conversation with them but we're also working with a couple of advisers who could introduce her and then take us we were ready to have that conversation right now because we can absolutely show the impact and as yes I mean the basic tenets or the core of the product is this integration of phone and your patient management system with the software right so you don't have to buy a new phone system as far as you have a digital phone and over here practically any practice management system can be integrated but we try to be no three large ones can be and so when the phone rings on the first ring even before you become the woman you have this easy-to-understand dashboard that anybody in the front office can understand and have conversations with the patients and make it very productive and on top of that obviously we have this whole patient engagement platform with you know the texting the reviews appointment reminders a bunch of things that you can think of so clearly it's a system that would be very valuable and the differentiation piece compared to other providers is this software plug-in for the phone and the patient management system we do not mean hardware
Hoeard: you do not need hardware Oh
Guest : No so within 15 to 20 minutes if you have a digital phone service we can enable this spot color ID in your office and since you have opened into dr. Farhat says even go easier
Howard: your website patient express you talked about a lot of about web texting and all that kind of stuff what is integrated texting web texting what do you mean by all that perfect
Guest : example you're on the road you want to check who texted you in your office using your smart device you can peek into all these SMS communication or texting communication happening in your office and you can apply that so basically you are carrying your office and your smartphone
Howard: I've lived through a several rodeos being out 56 years old I can't remember when the banks started rolling out the ATM machines and nobody thought this was gonna take off now they're doing like open Donald's got the plugin for online scheduling all my dentists trends are my old I told them they just said well that sounds like a really bad idea we did it with open dental and it's been a really good idea so people are different but you're out there in California what percent of the patients do you think would rather go to your website and schedule an appointment online without talking to a human like an ATM versus call up and talk to a human
Guest : so in our office about 10 to 12 person appointments or online appointments especially the emergency patients 10 the relation percent yeah okay 10 to 12 percent in budget mostly emergency patients so late in the night when they're in a pain yes searching for any dental office who is gonna opening 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 a.m. in the morning and when the searchers have their beer by our office we pop up through the search engine optimizations and they see the opening in our website and they just booked the appointment so we have seen many patients showing up and we make $5,000 and that treatment because they were emergency had a root canal needed the crown so that is the must as I said only the point booking has become for emergency patient is the must solution for everybody Howard: okay so viewer on Shark Tank and you're talking about trying to go out and get funding and do more stuff and all that kind of stuff that must be exciting times for you I'm the first thing they're gonna ask you on Shark Tank is what is this cost so um so if I'm a dentist listening to you and I want this what does it cost
Guest : yeah so it can cost anywhere Louis $49 per month to two hundred ninety nine dollars per month for the whole suite of features right so you can use very modular we don't its monthly fees no long-term contracts and so yeah as I said it could be $49 or $299 based on what all what all you need so when you look at the overall the complete suite of features so we actually will provide the best bang for the buck because we actually being together and made it a comprehensive package and then Howard: Mr. wonderful if you ever watched shark net you guys ever watched Shark Tank yes the smartest guy in the room it's always the bald guy so it has to be Mr. wonderful and the most handsome the next thing he asks you is um who are your competitors in this space I mean it's a yappy lighthouse solution or each revenue well who is the your competitors in this space
Guest : yeah I think you know pretty much named both of them but I think a very important computer for us is B of course we've you know has done you've made some good progress and they came out of Y Combinator Britta raised a lot of money and they're really doing well and we're happy for them I think the main differentiator is leaves selling a phone system you know that's a tough sell in your download business because changing your phone system is not easy you're really scared for it there's more money involved but in our case that we do not need to sell the pound and we can integrate with any digital phone and we don't even you know it's very easy or the web we can essentially install the software for within 30 minutes and we can let you try for one to two months even before you have to make any changes in your office so that's the biggest differentiator and as a bug when it comes to you yappy you revenue well and several other patient engagement softwares yes there are competitors they offer similar things that we are but when we put the whole package together especially with the phone and basic management system integration you're very different we actually have an issued patent and we believe that we bring the most to the table including the insurance verification where most of these providers don't have that look about the
Howard: insurance eligibility if they paid you 49 to 250 a month do you still have to have a person calling all these insurance companies what is the best way to check eligibility right now in 2019
Guest : so if you want to get a quick interest notification you can always use patient Express for example and somebody walked in you want to whether they're active or that insurance a lot and what percentage for the Diagnostics discovered that within two minutes by having the first name last name date of birth and they chose I need this for information they can quickly get the details as I should share in the demo and can find out whether they were auto coverage what else is covered but when you got going to get to details you can always ask your friend start to insurance companies and get further limitations like the full right now and all the code base details they can always cover basic information we can give you within a fraction of second
Howard: and what do you think is the is your hottest unique selling proposition
Guest : I would say our unique selling proposition again is this is a software plugin that could be installed in your office within 30 minutes from anywhere in the world and you get to try one to two months before you decide anything and in most cases the cost of patient Express is probably zero if you're already paying some other providers for your texting and reminders and things like that because when you look at our overall cost again it's probably just an exchange of what you're already paying something is completely in the world's trying the comprehensive system which includes the smart caller ID with intelligent dashboard insurance verification and a whole suite of patient engagement tools all together will make it very cost effective and really take the practice to the next level within a couple months imagine
Howard: I got a question know when I'm talking to my buddies that are dentist you know and when we talk about practice management software they're talking to open dental denture exceeding soft etc when I'm talking to my buddies that own dental manufacturing companies with a thousand employees they're on Oracle you know and you worked at Oracle for a decade and well when you worked at their Oracle from 2008 to 2018 how does the business world that you dealt with that whole time seem compared to now that you're in healthcare in the dental world
Guest : so when I was at Oracle I was working with Fortune 500 companies and they had a budget for process improvements though they think about marketing and I know they spent so much money in marketing but they forget that they're losing the patience behind keep your existing patient retain them nurture them and improve your processes you make more money than just going outside for a new patient versus having your existing patients referring the word-of-mouth and pain making you bring the pain patients versus almost marketing patients you come in they come for $50 or $30 a cheap patients and they never show up again for the big treatments hands and urine so invested process improvements versus too much in marketing so that your engine is smooth and then you can take on new more patients that's what I have learned from corporate world to the small enterprises like my wife's dental practice and
Howard: what was it like working for Larry Ellison I mean he's like the third richest man in America yes this is a fun company Oracle
Guest : absolutely when I was trying to leave Oracle I had second thoughts that I'm having such a good job I was managing one account cart delight and we were generating almost half a billion dollar for revenue for I come together with three or four folks us so leaving their job when you have such a high lifestyle and work helping your wife when she was complaining I felt like you know what is fine corporate is great well this is my time to create my own world to start my own company and help the boutique dental practices like my wife's dental practice and help them compete with the bigger practices which are leveraging the money power the muscle power of money and taking away these small dental practices away so that's what I like by providing this process improvement for a small boutique dental practices they can compete with the bigger practices and can have a better profitability in the practice a little bit because again and I know you brought up the small course of practices but the way that I see it is it's a very macro level our day because I feel when you look at in a Lamanna insurance benefits that are wasted and amount of patients that still don't have internet benefits or they don't I think there's a huge opportunity I'm not even concerned about small versus large Dale practices I think create systems that overall improve the dental health of the United States and across the bowl I think that should be our goal because in my mind I mean this is something that everybody has to think about you know your mouth is supposed to be an energy point for a lot of other diseases right so I think if we if we look at it from that perspective how can we build systems that make it so much more easier for the patients and the practices to expand the delta dental healthcare overall globally I think that would be a huge opportunity for every dental practice every company that's working on these kind of systems that's true I think it's a huge opportunity out there Howard: you know my favor you Larry Ellison last time I heard him talk on YouTube we were saying our services at Oracle are social mobile and simple and in the cloud Larry Ellison this reputation management goes to the heart of the Homo Sapien I mean it's a social animal and it fills more comfort in making a decision if he thinks that's what everyone else is doing so they I mean when they walk into a grocery store there's 60,000 SKU items that's why humans are so brand loyal I mean I still walk in I see the coffee there's eight million brands but I drink Folgers my mom drinks Folgers my grandma drinks Folgers you're just on Folgers how is the reputation management going and on your on your product and what are your thoughts on that
Guest : because that's the area of my interest as well so the nobody should manage and comes into play I think it's really in a key goes back to the existing patients in my mind right so as a dental practice I mean you to really focus on internal systems again not so much on external systems I think the reviews and all are great and then you hang outside agencies to get those reviews are fine but at the end of the day you have a process that really treats every patient that comes into your practice as a VIP and has the best experience right from the beginning where they book your you know the registration when they walk in walk out and afterwards I think that's humongous because we don't have thousands of patients but I think we were doing you know fairly well primarily because our focus our reputation management and this is something that the large corporations are spending a lot of money and that you have you give a good example Howard again you know from copy perspective and I always go to Starbucks now why and evidently I'm a spokesperson to Starbucks now talking about it already and this is what I want every now practice to invest time when people go out they should talk about deafness even without your deputies and I think that's where the reputation management should go and I believe again systems like ours though really facilitate that
Howard: satish is a veterinary min is married to dentists our Chitra I have to be honest my favorite Chitra is dr. Chitra Gidwani right here in Fishers owns most amazing that us in the state of Arizona but what what was uh would as please Chitra the most on this patient Express what did you guys do where Chitra came home from work when I says good job stitch [Laughter] you know so it all started for us you
Guest : know we started in a practice like you know anybody else and I think all these general problems to the front office and he's used it you need to know worthless terrible animals and Foreman efficiencies and things like that and one day she happened to really have this fun conversation in the national and then they're good friends and that's how we actually came today and then once we actually established this in the practice and then started looking at how quickly it changed the process in a more than you know I think money can important part I don't you know diminished and but more importantly how smoothly we were able to really let the pain go by right in terms of calls and reports and you know what we were able to generate in terms of patient follow-up and things like that she just felt that oh I just feel my days are going by much more easily and smoothly and I think you know she really felt that I'm too late thank you very much for making it happen so
Guest : I'm not sure the founder and CEO of patients press you two are married to a dentist doctor Rachna I'm what same question you what did you do where Rochester came home one night from work and said good job Amash
Guest : so whenever any patients gives her a good review or whenever sucks just like when we released our patient registration automated by booking and what patients showed up 8:00 a.m. in the morning with a big check she said had you guys save me so much time and money so I love what do you have done so far with the patient explained keep going maybe one day I could retire and join you in the patient
Howard: nice you think this is amazing I and also I would tell you that the reason I had you guys come on the show is cuz I'm a big fan of your posts on dentaltown you guys been posting away on dental town and the reason it's important to me is because I wouldn't be a leader to these young kids and I don't have to lead a young kid into wanting to learn more about Invisalign an implant how that's why they're dentists and their dental degree shows you they're already interested in that to be a leader in dentistry you got to lead them to the things that they don't care about and they just don't care about the business they don't care about the amici and even when they say oh I like the business okay answer one question how many incoming calls yet last year they don't know how many words a voicemail I don't know on how many came during working hours I don't know what do what is your overhead what is your break-even point what you ask him anything to do with the business of dentistry I mean I might as well ask my eight month old fifth grandchild Jasper you know so it's everybody's best interest to try to get the health care and the government to be focused on business and there's only two entities in America where you have to wait in line it's when you're dealing with doctors or the government when you were with Oracle I mean these people had budgets to deal with what you're talking about you know I when you when you're with Oracle you're dealing with people who already get it I mean you don't have to go to Silicon Valley and explain to them what the internet is and you don't have to go to the fortune 500 to say hey have you ever thought about overhead and profit and like yeah we've really thought about that a lot but so I really I'm excited that you're on dental town talking about all these issues I'm excited you're married to Dentists so you got a lot at stake about this I mean trust me not only do I want you to success I know your dentists wives want you to success is there anything that I should have asked you today that I wasn't smart enough to ask you on this interview yeah
Guest : I think everything went well we truly appreciated the opportunity to you know come and explain more and discuss more about our product and I think this is just an opportunity for us to interact with you and through you hopefully and a thousands of dentists and all I would say is Italy they will have an opportunity to come talk to us or you know website or email or and we're very happy to help how do they contact you what's the
Guest : best way to contact you so our website has our information so it's very simple its
www. patientexpress.us us and once you get there you'll be able to find our information and I think it's they know you think there are there's a contact form there are phone numbers but certainly we hope you'll be able to you know reach us and it's free to express that it's not expressed for the e it's just patient big action press patient yet big acts capital press so patient Express calm gentlemen thank you for coming on the show and tell both your wives I said hello all right have a rocky hot day