SPEAKERS

Shawn Zajas, Mark House, Allison House

Mark House

00:03

Welcome to the authentic dentist podc

ast join Dr. Allison house and house Dental in Scottsdale and

Shawn Zajas, founder of zonna, a company helping dentists to extend their care beyond the chair as

they lead dentists deeper along the journey of authenticity, to reach greater fulfillment in th

eir

professional lives, and to deliver remarkable patient experiences. At the core of the authentic dentist is

a belief that the answer to the current challenges in dentistry is dentists discovering that their greatest

asset and point of differentiation is

their personal brand. And that forming that brand out of their

authentic selves is the best strategy for success in dentistry today.

Allison House

00:42

So this podcast is brought to you by sauna and sauna makes electric toothbrushes but it's more than

that. They have a program that will grow your practice with their electric toothbrushes.

Shawn Zajas

00:56

Hey guys, this is Sean and Dr. Allison house with the authentic dentist podcast and again, day two of

voices of dentistry. Here we are in Scottsdal

e, Arizona. And right now we get to interview Doug Baker.

And he's with dedicated sleeping implants. And you have some fascinating things. I have all these

people coming up to me saying you need to talk to Doug, you need to have him on your podcast and

you

need to hear what he's doing because it is so disruptive. in dentistry.

Allison House

01:24

We love

01:25

disruptive, disruptive is good

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Allison House

01:27

and innovative. And you're doing something that all of us want to do. But we don't know how.

So tell us

about yourself.

01:35

A little bit about myself. So I've been in this in the dental industry for about almost six years now I

worked for a small company in Los Angeles, and I'm working for the new company that I work for now

called dedicated sl

eeping implants. Very unique. Business very, very, very unique, very simple. I would

say it's so simple that people like why didn't I think of that, in a way our CEO is She's a brilliant woman.

And I love where I work. I really do. I really do. I met her a

t a conference in Baltimore about five years

ago. And I knew immediately that what she was doing in the industry, perfect word was so disruptive

that I wanted to be a part of it. And I literally called her on the phone after meeting her at a conference.

d I said When can we meet? I'm quitting my job, and I'm coming to work with you. Wow, that

passion. And it worked out? Well. I've been with her for about five years now. It's been brilliant.

Shawn Zajas

02:30

So is this something that you guys are doing

a lot of marketing to let people know about? No,

02:35

as a matter of fact, we've been in she's been in business since 1993. I've been doing this for 30 years

now. And five years ago, four and a half years ago, and I started working for her. I'm the first

salesperson that she's ever had on her entire team. So she has grown very organically, office by office

word of mouth. For at that point, what 25 years. Yeah.

Allison House

02:57

So it sounds like you've cracked the code on something that dentists have

been trying to crack the

code on a long time.

03:03

Yeah, it's just code, you're gonna love the code. You're gonna love this. So. So we what we do, again,

we are called dedicated sleeping implants. We've been asleep company for 30 years, we've now been

rking in implants for about three and a half, almost four years. What we do is we overcome the

barrier, the financial barrier, I should say, of patients who need desperately need these treatments.

Okay. We are a specialty Medical Group, not a Dental Group,

which is really unique. Okay, we're a

specialty Medical Group. We're in all 50 states. And we have board certified sleep physicians and

board certified oral surgeons who are on our team, okay. And they oversee and oversight, all of the

cases. So when a de

ntist who is on our team, you know, say Dr. Jones, okay, he'll put in a case our

medical director will scrub it to make sure that it's not only legal, okay for compliance with insurance so

that they get reimbursed, but it's also following protocol, and goo

d and actually good for the patient.

Allison House

04:11

So what you're saying is, if a patient comes in all of their dentition is destroyed,

04:15

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sleep or implant, let's talk about implants. Good, okay.

Allison House

04:19

I'll get intuition is

destroyed and I know that we're going to put them in an implant retained denture,

okay. And it's going to cost 70 grand.

04:29

Okay. So what you'll do in our system, you will join, you'll be a part of our network. You'll be a

subcontracted rendering provi

der in our group, you join our medical group. Okay. Before that patient

comes in, you're going to gather their BlueCross BlueShield card, we're going to run a quick benefit

verification, we're going to make sure that they have coverage. Nine times out of 1

0 they do unless they

have a restriction which is very rare. Okay, Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO. Okay. When that patient

comes in, because we've already run that benefit verification, this is amazing. The patient is are already

going to know exactly how much

their out of pocket is going to be to get that $70,000. Case, okay? The

beauty of it is because it's medical nine times out of 10, even if they have a $5,000 deductible, and it's

January, think about the conversation that you're going to have with your pa

tient saying, Oh, your total

exposure is $5,000. Because it's January 10, and you haven't met any of your deductible yet. However,

Blue Cross is going to pick up 100% of the case above and beyond your $5,000 out of pocket Max.

What's that conversation goin

g to be like? Now that conversation will be different in December?

Because they probably already met the majority of their deductible. Correct?

Allison House

05:43

I mean, that sounds too good to be true.

05:45

That's what everybody says to us. It's act

ually it's actually working. It's it's working.

Allison House

05:51

So I know, dentists have a lot of fears about jumping into medical.

05:55

Yep. So the beauty of it is, is that the dentist would become a subcontracted rendering provider in our

group,

okay? So they're credentialed under our umbrella, they're not going to be credentialed with the

insurance company on their own. The beauty of it is, is that now when that patient comes in, paperwork

gets sent in all the documentation goes into our software

program, we're going to be the ones filing the

claim on our pre existing 30 year old contracts. Okay. We share the case with the doctor. Okay, so the

doctor is going to do all of the clinical, and we're going to do all of the paperwork, we're filing our t

ax ID,

our contracts, all of it. And the beauty of it is, because we're a specialty medical provider, those

contract rates are so much higher than you can imagine. I mean, everybody listening can't see it, but

I'm showing Doctor $112,000 case. Okay, again,

there was terminal dentition. Here, this was a big

case, a lot of our cases are in the 7080 $90,000 range. Okay, this one was a little bit higher. 212,000.

But the beauty of it is, is that because it was late in the year, and even if it wasn't the the out

of pocket

for the patient was under $1,000. Now, everybody out there, think about this for a second. What is that

conversation going to look like when you slide that piece of paper over that shows the benefit

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verification that was run, and they're out of

pocket Max is like $900. So they're gonna get a $70,000

case, just by covering their deductible for the rest of the year. That's disruptive.

Allison House

07:35

That's amazing. So you're saying that Bluecross Blueshield is not going to come in and audit

practice? Nope. We never have to go through a Medicare audit.

07:44

No, we don't even take Medicare. There is no Medicare even we don't touch Medicare. So it's not

Medicare doesn't even they're not even We're not even on their radar.

Allison House

:52

United Healthcare. What if they're united healthcare? So

07:55

we again, we are, we were asleep company for 30 years. Let me back up and tell a quick story. Okay,

so we've been treating sleep for 29 and a half years at this point. We are in network wi

th Blue Cross

Blue Shield, United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna and UMR for sleep. Three and a half years ago, we got

contacted out of the blue by a dental implant marketing company, okay. And they said to us, Hey,

listen, you know, we share some of the same cl

ients, we've been hearing a lot of, we've been hearing

your name quite a bit. What we see is that what you guys are doing in the sleep world we're trying to

accomplish in the implant world. Let's talk about CEOs got on the phone, great conversation by the

end

of the phone call it was hey, listen, do us a favor, check your contracts for these 10 1215 implant codes

and get back to us and let us know. Well, lo and behold, all pun intended, we've been quote unquote,

sleeping on implant codes in our grandfathere

d in contracts for nearly 26 years at that point. Okay, not

even knowing it because we're asleep company. Okay. So we did a test, we did an 18 month test with

three offices, a small office in New Hampshire, a medium sized office in South Carolina, and a re

latively

busy full large practice in Dallas, Texas. Doctor take a guess I'm going to let's take the Dallas office

because that was the most successful. Take a guess what this Dallas office did in 18 months. Blue

Cross Blue Shield only we found that the oth

er four or the other four insurance companies had too

many restrictions. It was an uphill battle and their fee schedules were a lot lower. It wasn't worth fighting

the fight if that makes any sense. So this test was Blue Cross Blue Shield only one office.

Go take a

guess what we are what we were actually reimbursed in those 18 months.

Allison House

09:47

Oh, I just have no idea.

09:48

Take a wild guess. Take a guess.

Allison House

09:51

200,000

09:52

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close $3.3 million in 18 months. Whoa, yeah. And

that office now has been with us for two and a half

years because it's been about a year since that January 1 of year ago, we finished the test. He's over

the 5 million mark for two and a half years. And absolutely crushing it. Killing it. It is a competit

ive

advantage that is literally setting him apart from everyone in his area. And he loves it. And now we're

rolling out to a lot of other offices. Yeah,

Shawn Zajas

10:22

it's crazy that you guys were in sleep. Before sleep became such a big thing.

10:2

My CEO is she's she is a disrupter. She is a brilliant woman, because I've

Shawn Zajas

10:33

been hearing about it like nonstop for the last 24 months, maybe 36 months, but you've been doing it

for 30 years, Jill has been doing it for 30 years, because

I'm even the research on sleep apnea. And it's

linking to dentistry, I feel like is kind of just it feels like it's been just emerging last five years. So

10:52

it's been on it's been on everyone's radar for about five years. But it's there are there are

some key

opinion leaders who are really established in sleep. I'll give an example. We have an office in

Columbus, Ohio, I love this guy. He's brilliant. Husband and wife team. They were, you know, general

dentistry. They switched over, they sold their th

eir dentistry practice, and we're focusing on sleep only.

Before they were doing that they were doing about eight to 10 appliances, sleep appliances a month.

Okay, since joining dedicated sleep, he's doing eight to 10 appliances a week. Okay, why? Because

people can't afford to pay their deductible and get the treatment we take we remove that barrier. Now.

The reimbursement for sleep is is good, you know, three, four or $5,000 for a sleep appliance. So he's

doing well over a million dollars a year in sleep.

That's all he's he's only working two and a half days a

week. I mean, this guy's brilliant. But implants is really disruptive. Why? Because the average double

arch reimbursement is 7080 $90,000. And if there's a lot going on with the patient, it's well in

to the six

figures. That's disruptive. That's a big deal.

Allison House

12:07

So tell us about what what qualifies. You're saying. So we have a terminal dentition? Do you have to

have a patient with diabetes? I mean, what what are the criteria that

you're going to need? Great

12:18

question. So we have to prove what is known as medical necessity. This is not for cosmetic cases. So if

we're able to prove medical necessity that that diabetic that they have GERD, that their hypertension,

things like th

at, that that is emanating from the problem that they're having with their mouth, it becomes

very, very easy to prove medical necessity, and we have it down. We've been doing it

Allison House

12:40

for a while now. Do you have a form that you give the

dentists so they can we have

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12:44

a software program is so awesome. The beauty of the system, we built it ourselves, we actually I don't

want to use the word own. But we own the developers like they're our team. They're on they work for us

exclusively. O

kay. So even if we if if a dentist says like, oh, I want to make this change, we can make a

change in 24 hours in the software. But what's really cool is that they literally just hit checkmarks. And

the software then creates their it creates their narrativ

e for them. It does all their notes and everything,

literally by the press of a button. It's amazing. The team of developers and the and our staff who helped

put this all together or they're just, it's amazing. This is amazing.

Allison House

13:24

Alrigh

t, so how do we find you?

13:29

You can I guess email or call? My email is D Baker DBA K er at dedicated sleep.net. And my phone,

the best way to reach me is area code 310

383

1029. Again, 310

383

1029. And feel free to send me a

text introduce me, let me

know what state now I will say that this doesn't work in all 50 states. There are

restrictions with anthem states. So if you're in an anthem state like California or Colorado, Nevada,

some of the states it doesn't work in but 35 out of 50 ain't bad. That'

s amazing. Yeah, exactly. So

Florida, Texas, Illinois, brilliant states in New York on me. It's amazing. Well, I love it. What we're able

to do is I forgot to tell you this. So I have we so what we have found is that 60 70% of the consults that

come into y

our office are turned away because why? They can't afford it. We're cutting that down to

about 30%. Why? Because now half of those consults that you're turning away, potentially have Blue

Cross Blue Shield, so if they have Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO, now y

our turn away rate is going to be

25% 30%. Okay. So I'll give you an example. You have an office in just on the Oklahoma border. He

signed up with us this October. He did all of his training, all of his credentialing everything in October he

had it all don

e. By the end of November. He had 16 pre authorized cases on the books in November

alone in his first month. Now, this is a guy that did on average four to five cases a month. Why?

Because he was turning people away. Well, now he's not turning them away an

ymore. So it's

disruptive. That's a great word.

Allison House

15:18

So I'm just gonna ask one more question. So we're talking about full arch. Is there any coverage for just

I have somebody who with no posterior dentition, and they have diabetes, and may

be they could eat

some vegetables and that would be good

15:32

single single implants, double implants are really hard to prove medical necessity, because they'll say,

Oh, well, they can chew on the other side of their mouth, they, the insurance companies

are going to

push back as much as they possibly can. So it's very hard to prove single double, you know, double,

you know, two implants.

Allison House

15:50

I guess I'm thinking like, all the posterior dentition is gone,

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15:54

then that probably going

to be pretty easy to prove medical necessity. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Allison House

15:59

So so it's not just full arch. So those people that are doing, you know, six implants. Yep. Yeah,

16:05

as long as again, it all comes down to medical necessity if

we can prove medical necessity. It's ago and

they have Blue Cross Blue Shield ppl.

Allison House

16:15

All right.

Shawn Zajas

16:16

It's a game changer.

Allison House

16:18

Wow. Well, thank you so much. And thank you for doing this.

16:21

Thank you

for having me.

Mark House

16:23

Thank you for listening to the authentic dentist podcast. To join Allison and John on this journey. Hit the

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