New York dental startup Tend first patient office entryway
New York-based Tend opened its first dental office in Manhattan’s Flatiron District in early October with a goal to reinvent the patient experience.
Co-founded by former SmileDirectClub CEO Doug Hudson, Tend has raised $36 million from OneMedical, Warby Parker and Flatiron Health and others to make the dental experience more patient-friendly and financially transparent.
“We’re not really trying to reenvision dental care, but we are trying to reenvision the dental experience as a whole,” said Marc Schlenoff, Tend’s vice president of clinical development, in a phone interview. “Traditionally, healthcare in both medicine and dentistry is focused on a disease model. We’ve tried to create more of a wellness model. Instead of the relationship with patients being episodic, we want to create and maintain a relationship.”
Tend recognized that nobody likes going to the dentist, and they wanted to make it less onerous – at least where that’s possible. Rather than filling out paperwork on the first visit, patients can take care of that online. Insurance is handled in advance as well. Tend wants patients to know their out-of-pocket contributions before they walk in the door.
Tend is also taking a more value-based approach towards paying their dentists. Rather than compensating based on procedural volume; the company’s dentists will receive a base salary plus bonuses.
“There tends to be a certain amount of distrust in dentistry,” said Schlenoff. “You get diagnosed, and maybe you’re totally asymptomatic and thinking: I know that dentists make money by doing things – do I really need these things? Instead of compensating dentists based on what they produce, we are compensating them based on NPS (net promoter score), the amount of treatment plans that are accepted, Yelp reviews, patient surveys.”
Schlenoff notes that many dentists work in isolation and may not always be guided by the latest research. This is an important point for him. Before devoting all his attention to Tend, Schlenoff directed the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program at Columbia University for three years. He wants to bring a similar, evidence-based approach to Tend.
“I’ve created clinical protocols, from diagnosis through crowns, veneers, extraction,” said Schlenoff. “The way we approach diagnosis and care is that everything is going to be evidence-based, working with research studies that, hopefully, are less biased than others.”
Tend will add other refinements that might not be part of a normal dental visit, such as taking blood pressure to identify patients with undiagnosed hypertension. They are also talking with patients about smoking and diabetes, which both contribute to dental disease.
Tend’s first office opened in early October and has already exceeded expectations. “Our goal was to generate 300 appointments in October,” said Schlenoff. “At the end of the first week, we’d generated 400.”
Their next office will open soon near Wall Street. After that, they have one slated for Brooklyn’s Williamsburg area. Eventually, they hope to have eight to ten offices in and around New York, with possible locations in other cities.
The company has invested a lot in technology and office aesthetics, though Schlenoff freely acknowledges that little of what they are doing is really new. However, he believes this configuration of capabilities and services will provide a better overall experience for patients.
“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” he said, “but we’re certainly modifying the wheel.”
