Secure Dental_Anas Athar (1).mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Welcome to the Secure Dental Podcast. Through conversations with the brightest minds in the dental and business communities, we'll share practical tips you can use to scale your practice and create financial freedom for yourself and your family. My name is Dr. Noel Liu, CEO and Dentist at Secure Dental, and also co-founder of DentVia. I'm your host for the Secure Dental podcast and I'm so glad you're joining in.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Hello everyone. This is your host, Dr. Noel Liu, and today we have another segment of our Secure Dental podcast. I'm here with a good friend and colleague, Dr. Anas Athar. Dr. Athar and I, we go back a long way, like decades. You know, you and I think what we probably over 20 years.
Anas Athar:
Oh, 25 years, man.
Dr. Noel Liu:
25 years. So, Dr. Athar, right now he's done in, this guy has been everywhere from radiology to orthodontics, from Invisalign to Reveal. And now he has his own practice. Also, he's been a consultant with small brands, with a large DSO that has huge and multiple locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. So, Doctor Athar, welcome.
Anas Athar:
Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Liu. It's a pleasure and an honor.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, honor all mine. So yeah, thanks for coming in and sharing some of your insights. So let's get started. Let us know, like, how you got started, and where you are today, and what was the journey like?
Anas Athar:
Wow, that's a long question because I'm originally from Pakistan. So came to the United States back in 2002, did my radiology residency from Kansas City, University of Missouri, Kansas City. I was a faculty there for about three years, and orthodontics was my passion. And I just got an opportunity to meet, Dr. Rolf Behrens or ... Behrens, that's what he's known for. And talked to him. He suggested that I should join the orthodontic program. So I did my ortho residency in Saint Louis, which is, by the way, is the birthplace of orthodontics. Dr. Edward Engle started that program. So it's a very unique program. If you ever get a chance, do visit. You're not too far from Saint Louis, so you should visit. So you should visit that place. It's a very beautiful building, very beautiful facility, and a lot of learning. It's a big orthodontic program. I graduated from my ortho program back in 2010. Then I came to Texas, and I, since then I've been with Smile Brands. It's almost like 12 years now. And now I have started this group of PLUS Orthodontics, which is my new excitement. And we've been doing this for a couple of years. We've been testing and a lot of input from friends like you. So definitely learning a lot. And now it's ready to go.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So tell us a little bit more about your journey, when you started, right, before you had PLUS. How did you find it, and what was the mindset behind it?
Anas Athar:
Great.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And what were some of the challenges?
Anas Athar:
So let me answer it this way. Why PLUS orthodontics? I think why, my personal why for that is: this is how I feel happy. Because my goal to do orthodontics or dentistry is just to stay happy. I think we are blessed to be in a very good field. Okay? I know people say, Oh, it's stressful and everything, but I think I feel very happy when I try to help others because this is where I think the human nature comes in. I always tell my team members, my residents, or whoever, my doctors I'm lecturing to, I tell them that the real happiness is by helping others. And that's something that you do. You are doing this program right now. We are doing this podcast. You are conducting it to help others. And it's not like you just want to do something. It's because you feel happiness in it, because you want to help others. And my main thing was, I see a lot of dentists struggling in their practices, and a lot of them do not offer orthodontics in their office. Now, 74% of US population needs orthodontic treatment. And how many are they offering to? Not too many. And I always used to question this thing: Why are they not offering it? A big reason is there's not enough training. And unfortunately, all these weekend courses and all that stuff, they set some wrong expectations. So people start doing orthodontics, then they stop doing orthodontics because it becomes very stressful. So I kept questioning that, what can I do and help these offices? So this is where the concept of PLUS Orthodontics started that, okay, with using this technology and everything, how I can partner with these offices and they can start offering orthodontics with a partnership within orthodontics? So PLUS Orthodontics is basically, it's a digital platform where you seamlessly integrate orthodontic into your office with, by partnering with a licensed orthodontist in your state. So over here, we are truly doing a partnership with you, and that takes away a lot of stress of case selection, treatment planning, monitoring; everything is done by us. And we do take pride in this thing that I don't think so anyone else is doing it right now with such large scale. And over here we are sharing the liability. So it's not okay, once you approve the case, Dr. Liu, you're on your own. I got my, I sold my plastic to you.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And that's exactly most of these companies, that's how they work, right?
Anas Athar:
I give you my plastic now it's your, it's yours. So you do it. So this is what we do. Basically, we want to help the practices. We want these practices to start offering orthodontics and be stress-free. You always know there's someone who's watching, who's with you, who's invested equally in this case as you are invested. So this is what we are basically doing. And another challenge that general practices like yours, like Secure Dental or bigger groups, their challenges, you bring an orthodontist for whatever reason. If that orthodontist leaves, then what? Who's going to ...? Orthodontic cases are not like okay, one, two, three. It's not like that. It's a going on process. So over there challenge like within Smile Brands we were having and all the DSOs have this challenge that sometimes a single patient is being seen by 5 or 6 orthodontists because the doctor turnover rate has been pretty high, unfortunately, in some cases. So this is a solution for them to.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So you were with Smile Brand. What was your role with Smile Brands? Is this still during Plus Orthodontics or was this before? And how did you see a need?
Anas Athar:
Yeah, I think, I'm still with Smile Brands. I'm their Regional Director for Orthodontics. And these are the things that I was noticing. And I'm like.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That you're seeing, right?
Anas Athar:
Yes, I'm seeing that this is a need. And because eventually, Dr. Liu, who's suffering? The patient is suffering. And it's our responsibility, we, as a healthcare provider, we have to take care of their health. This is our promise. This is our, this is something that we take pride in to take care of our patients. And so I'm like, Okay, yes, you can give them a little bit of a refund. Okay, you can make them happy. But this, is this right? This is not the right thing. So continuity of care is something that's very important. And that's where we, our goal is that we can help as many practices as possible. So I'm still with Smile Brands. I'm working with them. And of course it's a very big group. So implementing something like this over there will take a long time.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So with Smile Brands that you're currently with, I just want to know, like for our regular smaller group, when these guys are looking at identifying like what's their need, so with Smile Brands, do they still have an orthodontist that comes on site?
Anas Athar:
Yes.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Is that still the case? Okay.
Anas Athar:
Yes. So Smile Brands, if I'm not wrong, last time we counted we had 101 orthodontists with Smile Brands.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh wow. Okay.
Anas Athar:
So nationwide they have a lot of offices. They have 101 orthodontists. The way the practice works is the general dentist stays in the office, and all the specialists they go to different offices. So like, right now, I go to seven of their different offices and my days are scheduled. I do have the same team. They have my scheduled patients. But you know, weak thing in this whole, from a business aspect, this whole setup is that you lose a lot of orthodontic patients that way because now the patient visits.
Dr. Noel Liu:
I was just about to ask you. Yeah. Okay.
Anas Athar:
The patient comes to your office today and you say, Oh, by the way, Dr. Athar is going to be here next Thursday. Can you be here the next day? And it's all about convenience now. I always say that in dentistry we do have a combination of patients and consumers. With a consumer mindset, you have to keep one thing in mind, that convenience is a big thing. Now they have taken a day off. If it's a patient like me, if I have taken a day off, I want to get things done the same day. I don't want to take another day off just to go and see Dr. Athar. Okay, now, if I'm not there on that day, what I will do next is I know I need orthodontic treatment, so I want to see who's available today. So I'll just go to that person. So PLUS Orthodontics is a solution. You can do a same day consultation and get all the records done. So you don't have to wait for Dr. Athar to come back on that next Thursday and take care of that patient that day.
Dr. Noel Liu:
No, I love it. I love it. Because the idea that you are empowering the general dentist and empowering the actual doctor, the main doctor, right? So when the patient comes in, they can see Dr. X. Regardless, Dr. X is always going to be there like in a single practice or maybe even like a group practice, right? But then, you are on the back end providing the orthodontic services, ensuring quality, and ensuring that the patient's treatment is going right. Is that correct?
Anas Athar:
That's exactly right. And another advantage that we see in remote areas where in two-hour drive radius there is no orthodontist. So I have some patients who drive all the way. Like, I'm in Dallas, Texas area. Sometimes they drive three four hours to come and get the orthodontic treatment done. I really feel bad if I ask them, Okay, you have to come back in 4 to 6 weeks again to just check if your wire is active or not. If your aligner is attracting or not, because that's a lot of drive. It's their whole day is gone. If they're driving 3 to 4 hours one way, then they come in, I get their work done. So I feel like, okay, this is not right. I just wanted to help those patients. So it just works out well that it's solving a lot of patient problems.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So for a general dentist who's looking say they want to start with aligners, but they're now very comfortable, what would be a process? So can you walk us through like the whole process from setup to lets say a patient walks in just from your experience? And what you do, what you guys do at PLUS Orthodontics?
Anas Athar:
Great. So the patients, patient journey is something like this. The patient walks into your office. You take the orthodontic records and you first, you identify if this patient needs an orthodontic treatment. We do a lot of training and coaching that okay, about the case selection, okay? You take all the orthodontic records which includes pictures, radiograph, panoramic radiograph is, we always require that. ... is an optional. But if you have ... that's great. And then what helps us a lot is a 3D scan, Intraoral scan. If you have that, you will get all that information and upload to our portal. Okay, the PLUS Orthodontics portal. Over there, we will look at the records and we'll let you know this is a good case or not. You know, should we carry on with this case or through virtual orthodontics through this PLUS Orthodontics platform? Because not 100% of the cases can be done. But I'm talking about almost 80% of the cases can be done this way. Because if it's a crazy impacted canine, some crazy impacted molars, you don't want to do those. Definitely that patient would need in-person orthodontic care, and we would recommend sending them to an orthodontist in your area. But if this is an author, we select the case. We know what's the complexity. We give you a thumbs up. Then you let the patient know, yes, we are ready to move forward. Patient signs the contract over there. We start the treatment planning part of that case. Now, if the patient requires a virtual consult, we can always do a virtual consult with an orthodontist. Okay, so patient can, we can, we can send, if a patient has some questions which general dentist or your office staff is not able to answer, we'll be more than happy to do that for you, okay? We can do that once you give a thumbs up to us, that okay, patient is ready to go, we start the treatment planning. Next thing that you receive in your office is the appliance itself which is aligners or braces, whatever we are doing. So we can do both, okay? It's not only aligners. And along with that aligners, you would receive a scope that will connect with patients phone and through an app, they will be able to scan on a regular basis. From there onwards, that patient is connected to us now, okay? So they will do all the communication with us directly. If they have any questions, we will look at their scan on a weekly, bi-weekly basis. Any questions they have, any concerns they have, they would contact us. So they would not be calling your office saying, Hey Dr. Liu, my attachment came off. What should I do? Okay? Now you can just let the patient know, can you just send a scan, Dr. Athar, or your orthodontist? And they will let us know what needs to be done. Because another thing that's interesting is the most expensive thing in a dental office is the chair time. If the patient walks in for a broken attachment or something that could be, could easily be taken care of on the phone, that patient is taking up your chair time for 30 minutes or so. Your staff is occupied. Now that doesn't need to be done. They can call, they can scan, send us a scan in the middle of the night. We would not answer them right away because we do have a life, but within 24 hours they will get an answer from us. Okay? Whether you need to go.
Dr. Noel Liu:
If an attachment comes out, they still have to come in to get it attached?
Anas Athar:
True. That's true. Exactly, they have to come in. But sometimes you need attachment in the initial stages of the treatment. Now, maybe you might not even need it. Okay? So I can look at it and I can say, Hey, you don't have to go right away. Whenever you're going for your next cleaning appointment or exam, just go at that time and I'll notify your office. So your office will be prepared for that thing. So you can plan that appointment really well. So it's going to be more efficient.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Makes sense. So that's a huge determining factor. Yes. Makes perfect sense. Otherwise it would just be like blowing up your phones, right? Like, just wanting to come in. No, that's great. That's great.
Anas Athar:
And staff would not know how to answer this thing because hey, I don't know if this patient should come in because the patient is going to say something is broken. That's it. Now, you don't know what's broken.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And you have to figure it out. Now you can be the person who can intervene and say what's broken and what's not.
Anas Athar:
Yes. And that's the so, from your office, that answer should be, Oh, I'm really sorry something's broken. Can you please send a scan to Dr. Athar? And then we'll be able to help you from there onwards. The scan itself takes maybe 30s-40s and they don't have to set up an appointment. They can just send us a scan whenever they want.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And how important is education for a general dentist to know at least some basics?
Anas Athar:
I think it's very important. So when you're saying, what we do is in our program, we constantly engage general dentists about different cases and how to identify the cases and everything, because I think that helps them how to talk to the, communicate to the patient that, do they need orthodontic treatment or not? So that definitely, it's a learning curve. We don't expect you to have a lot of orthodontic knowledge from day one, but we would like you to be involved and engaged with us so that we can help each other. We would know every doctor has a different working style so we would know that how, what's the thought process, okay, for this doctor? How we can, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses? We can plan things according to that. As I said, this is a partnership. So we need to understand how we can work with each other. So that's the main differentiating factor that, I don't want people to think this is just a service. It's a partnership. Because if I'm putting my name with this patient knows that they are talking to doctor.
Dr. Noel Liu:
You want to make sure.
Anas Athar:
Yes. So they're not.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Correct. Yeah, to make sure.
Anas Athar:
So that's why we want to make sure that we are good partners too.
Dr. Noel Liu:
No, exactly. So does the office, do they get you or do they get dedicated orthodontists to work with them? Like, how do you have it set up?
Anas Athar:
Great. So this is basically, right now we have, it's me and Dr. Melissa Shotel. We are onboarding more orthodontists. And that's like a win situation because we are not only helping general dentists, but we are also helping orthodontists establishing their virtual practice. And, because we want orthodontists to be licensed in your state. So if we don't have an orthodontist who's licensed in your state, then we would not be able to provide the service because we are sharing the liability here. So that's why, that's why it's important, not necessarily I'm not licensed in all the states. I'm licensed in a few states, but not all of them. So this is how we are, we are planning to grow in this direction now. We want orthodontists to join us too. I personally think it's, this is a way future of orthodontics is going to be.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Exactly. So what is the future for PLUS Orthodontics?
Anas Athar:
Oh, future is bright and beautiful.
Dr. Noel Liu:
What's your vision?
Anas Athar:
So my vision is, truly the vision is incorporate. And we are, we should be able to offer orthodontics to our patients who need orthodontic treatment. We need to remove all the hurdles which dentist is thinking or dental office is thinking that we should not offer orthodontics because this XYZ reason. And number one reason, when we did a survey with general dentists that why they are not offering orthodontics or why such a low referral rate, number one reason we found out was dentists are not comfortable talking to the patients about orthodontics. And that amazes me that you guys are so comfortable in putting a screw in someone's jaw, drilling that thing in, but talking about orthodontics they're not comfortable with. And I'm that kind of a person, I always ask the question why? One thing that I've discovered recently was, in a dental school, only 6% of your education is for orthodontics. So that's not enough. And I don't know how much time you would.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Same can be said about the implants too. They don't get any training on implants.
Anas Athar:
Yeah, that's the thing that there are so many courses you can go and attend. And I think that's the thing about implants where I feel like it's different, that you see results pretty quickly. Orthodontics, you have to wait. And sometimes, like when I went through my orthodontic residency, I learned a lot. But when I started doing clinical orthodontics in real life, that's when the real learning starts, because now you're handling the objects, now you're handling the patients. So that's where the real learning starts. Which of course it takes a long time for you to learn truly what's going on. I just feel, I don't feel right when they go for a weekend course for orthodontics sponsored by one or the other company, okay, whose job is to sell their product. Okay? Which is their job. That's what they are supposed to do. Okay? I'm not saying anything negative, but then they make them feel, Oh, this thing can resolve all your problems. And that's not true. Because once you will be in a situation where you're stuck, then that company will say, Oh, you need to send this to an orthodontist.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh, you're 100%, you're 100%. And I think it's basically all the fear factors that a lot of people have. It's they don't understand the long-term ramifications or the effects. And the last thing they want is not having the desired outcome. And now it's late because now they'll have to go back and wait another six months to recorrect it. So I can see that happening.
Anas Athar:
And desired outcome, this is a very important point that I like to educate all my dentist friends. Okay? Do not promise ideal that, Oh, this will be an ideal finish. Because ideal is something that we strive for. We do not achieve ideal in every case. So what we also help is we set the expectations right from day one for the patient, what we can achieve and what we cannot achieve. So the patient doesn't come back to me, because sometimes we have patients that bring pictures of celebrities, I want to smile like this, and I always want to tell them that if you bring me a face like this, I'll bring a smile like this. But it's two different things. Your face is different. So you just have to, but sometimes, especially younger dentists, when they're not comfortable, they'll say, Yeah, we will get there because they might have attended a course over a weekend and where the presenter has shown them the cases, Oh, we can achieve this, we can achieve this and all is done by this one tool. All you need is this one tool and you can resolve all your life issues. That's not the case. I think we learn most from our failures and during my orthodontic residency, one of the best thing that I, best presentation that I attended was by Dr. Kevin Horner. He's in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He would come and teach us that one lecture in the whole residency, that was the coolest thing, he said, Okay, he asked us, give us a number between 1 and 12. We said, Okay, three. Okay. Give me a number between 1 and 30. Okay, 50. Okay, March 15th the cases I finished, I'm going to show you those. Okay? That's when we realized that how many of them were ideal finish, and how many of them were not ideal finish. Because in order to have an ideal finish, you have to have an ideal patient, which means they will follow all the instructions. How many patients do that? Not many. So I tell my patients that, look, if you go to a doctor and the doctor gives you a medication, if you don't take that medication according to the prescription, don't expect results. You cannot, if I'm asking you, you have to take two pills in the morning, two in the evening, you cannot take four pills in the morning and say, Oh, I took four pills. That's, it's not going to work like that. If I'm asking you to wear your aligner 22 hours a day and you're wearing just night-time, well, okay, it's not going to work. So we help doctors and regular monitoring of the patients helps us. If the patient is not compliant, we know that because they will not be sending us the scans. They will be getting alerts on their phone, Hey, you have to send a scan. You have to send a scan. If they're not sending it. We know that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
That's such a huge statement you just made about patient compliance, because I think one of the things that we always target as dentists is we want to make sure it's ideal. It's always what we are promising patients. And then with services like yours, they'll be like, Oh yeah, we have an orthodontist, and it's going to be ideal just because they want to close a case. But that statement you just made, I think that is a huge takeaway. I loved it because I would never have thought about it myself. And this is something I think I just learned from you, like never promise ideal.
Anas Athar:
You taught me a lot of things. So that is one thing I taught you.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Hey, man, this is this is amazing. I love it, I love it. Great. So tell me something real quick, right? So how can people reach you at with your services?
Anas Athar:
Go to our website PlusOrthodontics.com. Register there as a user.
Dr. Noel Liu:
P L U S?
Anas Athar:
P L U S.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Orthodontics.com. Right?
Anas Athar:
So PLUS, like positive. So you're adding Orthodontics, so.
Dr. Noel Liu:
There you go.
Anas Athar:
Secure dental plus orthodontics.
Dr. Noel Liu:
I love that name. Yeah. Just awesome how they're mixed.
Anas Athar:
Yeah, it's a simple name. And we just, we want you to add orthodontics to your service. So just plus, plus orthodontics in your office. So that's, that's the easiest way to contact us.
Dr. Noel Liu:
And when they contact you, what is their first step would be? It would be a discovery call?
Anas Athar:
So basically, of course, what we will do is, once they register through our portal we get their information and everything, then we will contact with them. Yes, it will be a discovery call if they have any questions, any concerns, they can do that. If they're ready to move forward, then we will schedule our training; how to upload a case and everything. Simple stuff, which is very self-explanatory. We try to make it very simple on a portal, because before what we were doing is when we were in the testing stage, we were renting one portal from here. Okay, scans will be submitted there. Now we are trying to integrate everything together so it's making it easy.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Oh wow. Love it.
Anas Athar:
Because what I had realized is, who is going to be uploading the case? It's not going to be the dentist itself. It will be the staff. So it has to be simple. It should be a drag-and-drop thing. You cannot expect too much from the staff because they want to do things quick. And with the situation going on in the whole country right now, staffing issues, sometimes you have temps working in your office and you might have a new assistant every month. So it has to be simple solution. So that's what they would do.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So simple solution. I love it.
Anas Athar:
So that's what we have tried our best. And of course, we're going to keep simplifying it as much as we can. Our photo app is going to be coming out very soon, so you can just take pictures through the app. Integrates with our portal. Go there. Intraoral scans, we already have integrations with a couple of big scanner companies which will be done I'm hoping within a month. Okay, so you scan, you don't have to upload. It will just go directly integrate with the system.
Dr. Noel Liu:
So there's a lot of things you're working on. That's great. It is great. Yeah, one of the, one of the key things for us to like at Secure Dental is we have a lot of people, again, like you was talking about like turnovers, right? So having a simple, easy system, it's a huge key because people they just don't want to go through the hassle. What you're doing, I think it's huge.
Anas Athar:
I just want to let your listeners know that a big part of this thing is a feedback that you gave me. So thank you. You are always helping others and you helped me a lot. So thank you for doing that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
The feedback goes comes from the pain that we go through, right? So that's how the feedback comes in and from other people's experiencing. Thank you very much Dr. Athar. Yeah.
Anas Athar:
I would not know until unless I would get the feedback. If every, if everyone tells me, Yes, true friends are the ones who give you the true feedback. Hey, Anas, you're doing this thing right or you're doing this thing wrong. So that's the most valuable thing for me. I cannot thank you enough for that.
Dr. Noel Liu:
No, it goes both ways, my friend. It goes both ways. All right. Cool. Dr. Athar, thank you very much for your time. I know you're a busy guy. You just came back from the office, correct?
Anas Athar:
Yes. And the good thing about ortho is, it's a pretty laid-back field, and you don't have any emergencies. Like, I always feel like general dentistry and orthodontics as a heaven. So that's why I feel if general dentist will start integrating ortho in their offices, I think they will feel good about it and all their fears will take it away.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Definitely. Ladies and gentlemen, yeah, this is Dr. Athar checking out. PLUSOrthodontics.com. Go ahead and visit www.PLUSOrthodontics.com Dr. Athar is available. He's a very helpful guy. And from all of us here at Secure Dental, and subscribe, and we'll see you back on the other episode. Thank you very much.
Dr. Noel Liu:
Thanks for tuning into the Secure Dental Podcast. We hope you found today's podcast inspiring and useful to your practice and financial growth. For show notes, resources, and ways to stay engaged with us, visit us at NoelLiuDDS.com. That's N O E L L I U D D S.com.
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