In this podcast, sponsored by DentalMonitoring, Orthodontic Products Chief Editor Alison Werner is joined by Blake Davis, DDS, an orthodontist in private practice at Kirkland Redmond Orthodontics in Washington to talk about remote monitoring, the role it plays in practice growth, and how it fits into the digital workflow of today’s orthodontic practice.

When Davis started his private practice 6 years ago, he was limited on space; the only spaces available were under 1,200 feet. But within this space, Davis built out four chairs and relied on technology and a digital workflow to make that small space as useful and productive as possible. 

Three year’s later, Davis’ practice went a step further and went fully digital—adopting customized treatment for both aligners and brackets, and with that remote monitoring—all in an effort to grow the practice.

As Davis describes it, the decision to go fully digital was a big one, but it was also purposeful and intentional. And a key component of that was choosing the right technologies. On the bracket front, that was LightForce’s custom 3D-printed bracket system. And for remote monitoring, it was DentalMonitoring. That platform, he says, allowed him to “exponentially grow and change” his practice’s capacity. 

In the 2+ years since implementing DentalMonitoring, Davis says his practice has seen increased production, starts, and volume, all while not growing the team—and having more time to spend with family. 

Davis, who didn’t implement DentalMonitoring until the latter half of 2020, talks about he relied on a self-created app in the early days of the pandemic to monitor patients virtually. But he and his staff could only manage 50 to 60 patients at a time. Knowing he needed a more robust system to expand, he turned to DentalMonitoring and with its AI tools now monitors close to 1,000 patients in his practice. DentalMonitoring, he says, has allowed him to increase his practice’s capacity without adding additional salaries or infrastructure costs. 

In this episode, Davis not only shares the advice he was given when implementing DentalMonitoring—to go all in and use it with both his bracket and aligner patients—but also how DentalMonitoring has been key to growing his practice while keeping his fixed costs in check. He also talks about the data he looks at to know that this platform is helping him grow and giving him the ROI he needs to know this is a worthwhile investment. What’s more, he talks about how his practice manages patients using DentalMonitoring, including the staffing and scheduling considerations. OP