Introduction
COVID-19 has opened the floodgates of the disparities that exist within the United States healthcare system. It has come back to all or any as a surprising revelation that the present system spends excessively and achieves minimally. The United States spends 17-18% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on healthcare. It has been so for a decade now and is considered to be a substantial amount. Still, there are severe inequalities in access to care for low-income groups, people in racial and ethnic minorities, people living in rural areas, and people with complex medical problems and disabilities.
Due to inaccessibility to healthcare, people reach hospital rooms at an advanced stage of their ailment, which in turn leads to an increase in overall health costs. When cheaper modes of prevention become inaccessible, costlier modes of intervention become inevitable. This disparity in access to health care is extremely evident in dental care. Currently, the bulk of the United States population i.e., 60% don’t receive regular attention from a dentist, at least annually.
According to the American Dental Association (ADA), dental pain accounted for 2.1 million emergency room visits in 2010. The majority of these cases were due to dental decay, which would have been easily averted through regular care and hygiene.
From the perspective of the practice, a patient is the most valuable asset. The average Customer Lifetime Value of a dental patient is calculated to be $3,500. CLV is the prediction of the total worth of a client to a business over the entirety of their relationship. It’s not simply the number of new patients that matters. It’s the full profit that those patients deliver over time that may build or break the business. In this context, every patient gained or lost is of utmost importance for a dental practice.
Innovations like teledentistry can alleviate both these situations i.e, to provide cost-effective treatment for the patient as well as to generate adequate revenue for the practice. Teledentistry is a technology enabled service that allows dentists to interact with patients remotely to provide guidance, virtual consultation and education.
Teledentistry improves and retains the dentist-patient relationship at an optimum, thereby increasing the CLV. It reflects a broader, dynamic care landscape that’s moving toward innovation, integration, and convenient care. Dental care providers adopting teledentistry are definitely on a path to innovation.