Custom AI Automation for Your Dental Practice
The cost to hire an AI agency for dental workflows is a fixed-price project based on scope. It replaces manual data entry and repetitive tasks with a custom AI system you own completely.
A project's complexity depends on the number of document types and integrations. Automating insurance verification from scanned PDFs into a standard Practice Management System (PMS) is a typical 3-week build. Connecting that system to multiple third-party insurance portals and a custom patient communication tool extends the timeline.
We built an AI document pipeline for a 15-person dental group with 3 locations. They processed 250 insurance eligibility forms per week. The system went live in 4 weeks, reducing a 6-minute manual verification task to an 8-second automated process.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most dental offices rely on their Practice Management Software, but systems like Dentrix or Eaglesoft have limited automation. Their built-in tools can check a clearinghouse API but cannot read a scanned PDF from a new patient or parse a non-standard explanation of benefits (EOB). This forces office managers to spend hours each day manually keying in data from forms and insurance web portals.
A practice manager might try a general screen-recording automation tool to navigate an insurer's website. These tools are brittle. When Cigna updates its portal layout, the recorder breaks, and the entire workflow must be re-recorded. These tools also fail on low-quality faxes, misreading a $50 co-pay as $500, which creates billing nightmares and erodes patient trust.
This approach doesn't scale. As the practice grows from 100 to 200 patients a week, the administrative overhead doubles. Hiring more staff for repetitive data entry is expensive and doesn't solve the root problem of inefficient, error-prone manual work.
How Does It Work?
We begin by collecting 50-100 sample documents, including insurance cards, EOBs, and patient intake forms. We use Amazon Textract for OCR to convert these PDFs and faxes into structured JSON data. A Pydantic schema then validates every extracted field, like patient ID and policy number, to ensure data quality is above 99% before processing.
The core of the system is a Python service built with FastAPI that orchestrates calls to the Claude API. For each document type, a specific prompt instructs Claude to extract information and structure it according to the Pydantic schema. This entire process, from document upload to structured data output, takes under 8 seconds. For verifications requiring portal access, we use httpx to build resilient clients that log in, submit patient details, and parse the HTML response for eligibility.
The FastAPI service is deployed on AWS Lambda, where it runs on a pay-per-use model. A practice processing 1,000 documents a month typically sees a hosting bill under $30. We use a Supabase database to store the extracted data and an audit log of every transaction. New documents arriving in a designated S3 bucket automatically trigger the Lambda function for processing.
The extracted and verified data is written back to your PMS. If the PMS has an API, we integrate directly. If not, we generate a CSV file for a one-click import. We configure structured logging with structlog, and any critical error, like three failed login attempts to an insurance portal, sends an immediate alert to a designated Slack channel.
What Are the Key Benefits?
From 6 Minutes to 8 Seconds Per Form
Reduce insurance verification time by over 95%. A 2-hour daily administrative task becomes a 5-minute automated background process.
One Fixed Price, Zero Per-Seat Fees
You pay a single project fee for the build. There are no recurring user licenses or fees that increase as your practice grows.
You Receive the Full Source Code
The complete Python codebase is delivered to your practice's GitHub account. You own the system and can have any developer modify it.
Alerts When an Insurer's Portal Breaks
The system monitors for login failures and unexpected website layouts. You receive a Slack alert immediately, not after a patient complains.
Connects Directly to Your PMS
We build integrations for systems like Dentrix, Eaglesoft, and Open Dental. Your staff's workflow remains inside the software they already use.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Workflow Audit (Week 1)
You provide sample documents and temporary, read-only credentials for your PMS and insurance portals. We map the entire manual workflow and deliver a technical specification document for your approval.
Core System Build (Weeks 2-3)
We build the data extraction pipeline using Amazon Textract and the Claude API, then deploy the FastAPI service on AWS Lambda. You receive weekly progress updates with demos.
Integration and Testing (Week 4)
We connect the AI system to your PMS and test it with live, anonymized data in a staging environment. Your team validates the output for 100% accuracy before we go live.
Launch and Handoff (Post-Launch)
We deploy to production. For the first 30 days, we provide daily monitoring and support. You receive a complete runbook detailing system management and how to interpret alerts.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What factors determine the final project cost?
- The price depends on two things: the number of unique document types (e.g., insurance cards vs. EOBs) and the number of systems to integrate with. Automating a single PDF workflow into a spreadsheet is straightforward. Integrating with five different insurance portals and a custom-hosted PMS requires more engineering time, increasing the scope.
- What happens if the AI misreads a patient's co-pay?
- The system is designed with a confidence threshold. If the AI's confidence score for a critical field like 'co-pay' is below 98%, it flags the document for human review in a simple dashboard. This prevents errors from reaching your billing system. The system logs every extraction for easy auditing.
- How is this different from using a Virtual Assistant (VA) service?
- A VA performs the manual task, but they are still human, work limited hours, and can make errors. This AI system works 24/7 with a verifiable error rate under 1%. A VA costs a recurring monthly fee forever. Syntora builds an asset that your practice owns after a one-time project cost. Book a discovery call at cal.com/syntora/discover to learn more.
- Our practice still receives a lot of faxes. Can this system handle them?
- Yes. We connect the system to your e-fax service's API or an email inbox where faxes are delivered as PDFs. The OCR technology we use, Amazon Textract, is specifically designed to handle low-resolution, scanned documents like faxes and can effectively extract the necessary data for processing.
- Do we need an IT person on staff to manage this?
- No. The system runs on serverless infrastructure (AWS Lambda) that requires no server management. We provide a runbook that explains how to handle common alerts. For ongoing peace of mind, we offer an optional flat monthly maintenance plan that covers all monitoring, updates, and fixes.
- How do you handle patient data and HIPAA compliance?
- All processing happens within a dedicated, secure AWS environment we provision for your practice. We can sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). We use Supabase for its HIPAA-compliant database options and ensure all data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Patient data never leaves this secure, isolated environment.
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