During the first years after I graduated from my first dental school in Iraq in 2009, I had never used to deal with practice statistics, surveys, and digital quality measures. As I moved to other countries where I worked or studied in the dental field, I also did not find many data-driven private practices where I worked at.

Dr. Al Sammarraie

However, after getting my second dental degree in California and starting my first job in community health care, which involves multiple practices that serve thousands of patients. My new role as a site dental director opened the door wide for me when it came to big data. I realized collecting and analyzing data can tremendously affect the quality of care we provide.

I believe that dentists today should count on incorporating data-driven goals in improving the quality of dental services. The data collected at various points of dental care can be essential for delivering timely and improved care. Clinics could work smarter to improve the quality of dental services while spurring innovation.

With many dental practices adopting electronic dental records (EDR), collecting data about your dental practice and patients are now easier.

When done right—and with the help of office managers and your dental team—data analysis can result in improved quality of dental services as well as practice workflow.

By collecting and analyzing your mass of data held in the EDR, you could help drive improvements in the following areas of your dental practice. Here are some examples on how big data can help:

Improve Population Health

Data can help you identify patients at a higher risk of developing chronic and severe oral diseases. You can then implore them to make an appointment and prevent the danger to the overall systemic health. This will not only improve their health but also reduce the cost of getting quality healthcare.

Reduce Missed Appointments

The EDR can be used to identify the people who are at the most risk of missing an appointment and the underlying reasons.

This ensures that you can follow up on the group and take other measures to understand their reason for failing to show up. Moreover, it ensures that you can maximize the time with the patients that willingly show up.

Real-Time Prevention of Oral Health Deterioration

Analyzing patient data in real-time alongside historical data allows you to identify potential issues that could otherwise get out of hand if not acted upon with urgency. With data analysis, you can take note of the inconsistencies in oral hygiene and prescribe the requisite remedies.

There is no doubt that big data is already affecting dentistry for the better. Data analysis will be vital in ensuring that you improve customer service delivery by working smarter.

Moreover, integrating new dental information with historical medical information for each patient will result in a better understanding of disease patterns. This ensures better preventive measures and improved quality of dental services.

When I started practicing data management and quality metrics, in the beginning, I thought it was easy to achieve a significant increase in any quality metric shortly if you only add more patients. After a while, I realized that things are not easy as they seem. Improving clinical performance and quality productivity needs a lot of work, chiefly understanding your weaknesses, strengths and working hard to invest everyone’s best towards the ultimate goal: caring for patients.

Data showed me trends in many practices that open my eyes to dig into root causes of wins or losses. For example, our sealant metrics met our quarterly defined goals. Still, when I brought all data together (patient ages, erupted, unerupted, partially erupted, or restored teeth, recall-due visits, schedule utilization, and availability). I found that we could do better and more than what we proposed. Such data-driven speculation was a reason for a pilot practice to modify our workflow. We revisited our results after 90 days. The results were outstanding; our metrics showed an 8% increase compared with last year or other clinics that did not establish the pilot workflow. Because of the data, we learned that we could do better than we thought before.

Other examples include treatment completion and cases like dentures or RCTs. With detailed data reports, we tracked our average starting and delivery days. We reviewed our workflow to find the best practices to ensure that our respective patients are getting the best quality treatment on time. Sometimes, a rapid jump in your metrics or a rapid drop indicates a training issue like wrong documentation, incorrect coding, etc. This will allow the clinicians or managers to identify areas of improvement and training.

Having a data-driven mentality, in my opinion, helps achieve quality and productivity at the same time. It will keep the team focus on our mission and be more engaged with the clinical aspect of dentistry.  For example, it’s important to understand why dentists care about preventive care, a recall system, continuity of care, and the various treatments.

Do not be afraid of numbers. They do not turn people into statistics; statistics turn patients into healthy people.

Do you think that EMR can be used to improve quality and productivity in solo practices? I would like to learn from your experience in that at private offices. Please DM me at muhalab.ns@gmail or LinkedIn

Editor’s note: For more information on electronic health records, visit the ADA FAQ Index web page.

Dr. Muhalab Al Sammarraie is a New Dentist Now guest blogger. He grew up in Baghdad before coming to the U.S. as a foreign-trained dentist. He obtained his D.D.S. with honors in 2019 and became a member of the A.D.A., California Dental Association, and the San Diego County Dental Society. While working towards his second degree, He accrued remarkable leadership experience working in public, private, and non-profit sectors. He led many departments and oversaw process improvement in education, social services, and community health. Dr. Al Sammarraie is currently a site dental director at AltaMed Health Services, the nation’s largest FQHC. Outside of dentistry, Dr. Al Sammarraie supports activist groups in Iraq that help war victims and displaced people find educational opportunities and medical care.

It has been a long but fulfilling 10 years of hard work in organized dentistry – or “dental-land,” as I like to affectionally call it.

Dr. Patel

I often talk about losing my community of colleagues and friends once dental school graduation happened, and how my work in the associations has brought me a new community. They are the support system I didn’t realize I needed, the mentors who have worked through countless personal and professional situations with me, and the friends who still stand by me, no matter what.

I am lucky.

My most favorite person, the one who I have always looked up to first (and the most), also happens to be my boss, my father. Through his eyes, with his wisdom, we have treated generations of patients in our hometown, Westchester County. It has, and continues to be, the best journey I have ever taken.

But what of the students, residents, and new dentists, who are our successors? I decided long ago that I was going to work hard to pay these blessings forward however I could. For me, its been my work with the new graduates, the members of the dental education community, and those trying to find their way, that has been the most rewarding.

Women, ethnic minorities, and new dentists (the American Dental Association defines new dentists as anyone who graduated less than 10 years ago from dental school), are flooding into the workforce in ever increasing numbers.

The American Student Dental Association, our counterparts in the dental education system, is full of driven, motivated, bright individuals, who lead their organization with conviction and fairness, and truly represent a diverse and inclusive body, reflective of its members.

What about us? The ADA and its tripartite – the state dental associations, and our local component dental societies, are made up of volunteer dentists who move through the ranks of leadership in various pathways to councils and committees. As the landscape of dentistry changes, are we, too, striving to be diverse and inclusive? Some would say yes.

The ADA Institute for Diversity in Leadership teaches valuable leadership skills to a small group each year, culminating in a project that puts these skills to use. I am part of this year’s class. Collaborating with the others in my group, learning and growing, and hearing their insights, have been amongst the most invaluable takeaways for me. It also opened my eyes to the incredible discrimination that we, as younger members of our profession face.

Our House of Delegates is the voting body of our association and is 483 members strong. New dentists make up about 30% of active ADA membership but only occupy 5% of the delegate positions nationally. Yes, some states strive to work at filling the pipeline to leadership with a diverse range of doctors. Many of the most qualified amongst us are former ASDA leaders. However, there is a marked drop-off of former ASDA leaders staying involved in organized dentistry in similar capacities to what they were in dental school.

Why is this?

I can speak from my experience. I have been told I was too young. I have been told I was too inexperienced. I have also been told that new dentists will never be allowed in positions of leadership simply based on age.

For some, this may have put up an unsurmountable barrier. For me, it fueled my desire to fight back against these conscious (and unconscious) biases by working hard and providing real results in the work of the association.

To that end, the New York State Dental Association, my home state organization, passed a resolution in 2019 marking out a new dentist position on every state council. This is in alignment with the council system at the ADA. It was a hard-fought victory, and even on the floor of our House of Delegates, the same concerns were brought up.

After hours of emotionally draining testimony, a colleague of mine stood at the “pro” mic and simply said the following, which brought it home for all of us. Her words were “We are all dentists, aren’t we? We have the same degree. We are all humans.” As she stepped of the floor, there was a stunned silence in her wake. Her words rang true.

There is still much work to be done, together.  The statistics support this. Our leadership is not reflective of the changing landscape of dentistry, and if we are to secure the future of our profession, this must change. Change is hard, and change takes time. But I believe in us. And I believe that we can do better. Because, everyone matters.

Dr. Amrita R. Patel grew up in Chappaqua, New York, and graduated from the New York University College of Dentistry in 2011 before completing a general practice residency at the Nassau University Medical Center. Dr. Patel is a general dentist in private practice with her father, Dr. Rohit Z. Patel, in Westchester County, New York. She chaired the New York State Dental Association New Dentist Committee, is the International College of Dentists – USA Section Fellow Ambassador of Social Media, and currently serves the new dentists on the American Dental Association Council on Dental Benefit Plans for the 2020-21 term. She is also among the recipients of the 2021 ADA 10 Under 10 Awards.