The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated several issues that may continue to get worse, including insurer relations, staffing shortages and increased competition, according to one dentist.
Rajdeep Randhawa, DDS, is the owner of Innovative Dentistry in Colts Neck, N.J. He recently spoke with Becker's about his biggest industry concern.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What is your biggest worry about the dental industry?
Dr. Rajdeep Randhawa: The dental industry as a whole is still trying to be resilient and recover, reorient and renew after the severe COVID-19 onslaught that not only temporarily increased the pent-up demand, but also curiously triggered somewhat competitive growth with a lot more corporate dental practices starting new locations in a very short period of time.
COVID-19 provided a unique opportunity for corporate dentistry to spread its wings aggressively to go in areas where they had not ventured before, creating a whole new ecosystem with a new set of unexpected challenges, including how to attract or retain highly specialized human resources [professionals]. The impact of rising inflation, change in patient choices and difficulty in recruiting and maintaining large pools of [dental professionals and] a large support team to run thousands of corporate dental offices will become even more competitive in the coming years.
A myriad of dental players, including dental technology companies, dental products/other dental manufacturers, dental investors, various private equity players and even corporate dentistry are either underestimating or overestimating each other's potential, and this can have untoward consequences.
The big question mark is the motivation of the dental patient population to opt for profit-making dental procedures while they are going through all the various stressors of the current economy, including incoming job losses, the inflation-induced high cost of living and a host of other reasons that make them shrink their discretionary spending drastically on dentistry. The biggest worry is that when a lot of outsized investment sources start chasing a very limited, increasingly saturating dental industry, then everyone that is part of this huge group can be heading for an unexpected surprise.
With most of the investors, including private equity, rapidly moving towards corporate structures of dental enterprise, the friction between the various ambitious players, both the emerging and the established ones, is going to create very unanticipated results. The dental insurance industry is going to take its pound of flesh by taking advantage of this uncertain situation by keeping the dental compensation levels low and rejecting millions of claims due to outdated insurance limitations at a time when the cost of doing business has already gone up substantially and is still going up.
Due to the increasing cost of living, patients in insurance-contracted dental practices may opt only for procedures that are easily covered by the insurance industry with minimal, low or no copays placing stress on all insurance-contracted dental practices and the whole dental industry that so precariously depends on thousands of these dental practices for their revenue and profits.