The Challenge
Onsite Dental made its name by delivering dental care on tech company campuses in Silicon Valley, part of lush perk packages that kept workers on campus and productive. However, when COVID hit, those offices emptied, and Onsite Dental needed a new footprint.
After a deft pandemic pivot, the DSO now delivers to a much more diverse set of companies whose workers either needed to be on-site, like carpet factory workers in Georgia, shipbuilders in Virginia, and Boeing engineers in Seattle, or needed coaxing back into offices, like Comcast in Philadelphia.
But the cross-country model presented scaling challenges: Onsite’s 39 locations were delivering care to vastly different patient populations and recruiting clinicians from different regions, with varying skill levels and approaches.
The DSO needed a tool to give them a window into each location’s performance to establish consistent clinical care and minimize missed treatment needs.
In the meantime, AI was starting to explode, and it had immediate applications for dental patient care and maximizing practice revenue.
Radiologic AI software could help dentists identify a host of dental pathologies with high precision. Pearl’s AI-powered Second Opinion emerged as a category leader, detecting up to 37% more diseases than dentists can alone, and helping patients understand their diagnoses.
Secondly, behind the front desk, AI like Pearl’s Practice Intelligence could also identify gaps in care and predict dental outcomes that could mean better long-term dental health for patients and positive ROI for dental practices. It could also speed up insurance claim adjudication: AI offers a valuable third-party perspective that strengthens diagnoses, which, as any dentist knows, can be highly subjective.
As VP of technology, Ganjifard was looking for an AI platform that could check several crucial boxes. “Can the product move the needle? Can it effectively educate patients about their clinical needs? And then along with that, are we going to get a benefit out of it?” he explained. Integration with existing tools was also key since Onsite Dental already used Denticon practice management software. Support and security were paramount as well.
Seeking a Second Opinion
In response to this complex picture, Pearl had to help solve three key challenges: chart auditing at scale, tracking clinician performance, and speeding up insurance claims.
“Being able to do chart reviews at scale was the hard part. That was the question we wanted to answer,” said Ganjifard. The process was random at that point: a dentist was selected, and their charts were audited. A more systematic approach was sorely needed.
Pearl allows Onsite to review clinician performance at scale: “[You’re able to say] OK, this doctor has a high misdiagnosis or low, and then you can hone in on the exceptions or the opportunity.”
Second Opinion also helps ensure the validity of insurance claims by providing objective AI analysis of x-rays that back up diagnoses. “[We’re able to say,] Hey, there’s really something here. AI is finding it,” added Ganjifard.
"Being able to do chart reviews at scale was the hard part. With Pearl you can say 'OK, this doctor has a high misdiagnosis or low,' and then you can hone in on the exceptions or the opportunity."
Behrod Ganjifard
VP of Technology, Onsite Dental
Clinician Adoption Equals Results
In May 2024, Onsite Dental piloted Pearl’s AI-powered Second Opinion software in 10 offices “that we thought needed AI immediately to address some issues,” Ganjifard said.
The results were illuminating. Pearl drove a 20% increase in office production by assisting Onsite’s clinicians in identifying additional treatment opportunities and scheduling treatment for previously discovered needs.
At Onsite Sony Pictures in Culver City, for example, production value exploded from an average of $26.95 per visit before the pilot from May to July 2023 to an average of $137 during the same period in 2024, a staggering 408% increase, without any significant expansion of services.
Dr. Todd Hauck, Sony’s practice leader for 10 years, said not only did Pearl convince his patients of needed treatment, but it convinced him. “Patients see that something objective is saying I have a cavity, and the doctor is agreeing, so it’s probably true,” Hauck said.
“It’s convincing me on some things that maybe I wouldn’t have treated,” Hauck said. “It’s telling me, [the cavity] is actually into dentin, whereas my eyes say it was maybe just short of it.” Rather than wait another six months and reevaluate, Dr. Hauk said he would treat those cases immediately.
The Impact
- 20% average boost in production across locations
- A staggering production boom—up to 408%—among offices that use Pearl daily
- Average production per visit increased from $26.95 to an average of $137
- Frictionless organization-wide chart reviews and clinicians willing to diagnose more, more confidently
Pearl’s value is now clear to Ganjifard. In addition to the immediate increase in clinician-assisted diagnosis, Ganjifard said Pearl succeeded in smoothing out some operational hiccups by scaling chart auditing and clinician oversight and on the finance side. “We were able to reduce the burden on the adjudication process on the dental side.”
Ganjifard plans to soon bring Pearl to all 39 Onsite locations. “The needle is definitely moving”
