Hiring an AI Automation Consultancy for Your Dental Practice
A dental practice should look for a consultancy where the engineer building the system is the person on the discovery call. They must also verify the firm delivers full source code and uses standard, non-proprietary cloud services.
The project's complexity depends on your Practice Management Software (PMS) and the volume of documents you process. A practice using a modern PMS like Dentrix Ascend with API access is a faster build than one on an older, on-premise system requiring custom data extraction.
We built an insurance verification system for a 3-dentist practice processing 120 claims daily. The system launched in 3 weeks and reduced manual data entry for their two office managers by 10 hours per week.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Most practices rely on the built-in features of their PMS, like Eaglesoft or Dentrix. These tools are excellent for scheduling, but their "automation" modules are rigid. They cannot parse a non-standard insurance EOB PDF or intelligently route a new patient inquiry from a website form based on the requested service. They often lack APIs, forcing staff into manual copy-paste workflows between the PMS, insurance portals, and patient communication tools.
A 5-operatory practice gets 40 new patient inquiries a week through their website. The office manager spends 15 minutes per inquiry: copying data into Dentrix, calling the patient to confirm details, then manually logging into the insurer's portal to verify coverage. This 10-hour weekly task is a bottleneck, delaying patient booking by up to 48 hours. The process is also error-prone; a typo in a policy number can lead to a rejected claim weeks later.
General IT consultants might suggest a generic document scanning tool, but these systems don't understand dental-specific forms like ADA claim forms or Explanation of Benefits (EOBs). They extract raw text but cannot reliably identify a procedure code versus a diagnosis code, making the extracted data useless without manual review. This is not an IT problem; it is an engineering problem that requires a custom AI system.
How Does It Work?
We start by connecting to your Practice Management Software (PMS) API or setting up a secure, automated data export. For a system processing insurance eligibility, we use 200 sample EOBs and ADA forms to build a data extraction model. Using Python and the Claude API, we fine-tune this model specifically for your top 5 insurance carriers' document layouts. This process identifies over 50 distinct fields, from patient CPT codes to subscriber group numbers.
The core logic is a FastAPI service that orchestrates the workflow. When a new patient form is submitted, a webhook triggers the service. It uses httpx for an asynchronous call to the Claude API to parse the attached insurance card image. The extracted data is then used to automatically query the insurer's eligibility portal. The entire verification process, which took 15 minutes manually, completes in under 12 seconds.
We deploy this FastAPI service on AWS Lambda, which keeps hosting costs under $25 per month for most practices processing up to 5,000 documents. We use Supabase for a small PostgreSQL database to log every transaction and store the structured results. This provides a full audit trail and allows for easy debugging if an insurer's portal changes its format or API.
The final result is written directly back into your PMS, creating a new patient record or updating an existing one with a note confirming eligibility. We set up structured logging with structlog and configure CloudWatch alerts. If the system sees a new, unrecognized document format or the parsing error rate exceeds 2%, it sends an alert for immediate review.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Launch in 3 Weeks, Not 6 Months
From PMS data connection to a live production system in 15 business days. Your office staff sees immediate relief, not a prolonged IT project.
Fixed-Price Build, Not Per-Seat SaaS
A single, scoped project cost with an optional flat monthly maintenance fee. Your bill does not increase when you hire more staff or dentists.
You Get the Keys and the Blueprints
We deliver the complete Python source code to your private GitHub repository. You have full ownership and control, with no vendor dependency.
Monitors Itself, Alerts on Errors
The system logs every action and sends an alert if a new insurance form breaks the parser. We often fix issues before your team notices.
Writes Directly Into Your PMS
The system integrates with your existing Practice Management Software. No new tools for your team to learn or manage.
What Does the Process Look Like?
Week 1: System Access and Workflow Mapping
You provide secure, read-only access to your PMS and 100 sample documents. We map out the exact manual workflow you want to automate, step by step.
Week 2: Core AI Model and Logic Build
We build the Python service and train the document processing model on your samples. You receive a link to a test environment to see it parse your documents.
Week 3: Deployment and PMS Integration
We deploy the system on AWS and connect it to your PMS. Your team processes the first 20-30 live documents with our direct supervision.
Post-Launch: Monitoring and Handoff
We monitor the system for 4 weeks post-launch to tune for accuracy. You receive the full source code, a system runbook, and a final handoff call.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom AI automation project cost?
- Pricing is a fixed fee based on scope. Key factors include the number of unique document types to process and the integration method for your PMS (API vs. direct database access). A typical document processing build is a 2-4 week engagement. Book a discovery call at cal.com/syntora/discover for a detailed quote based on your specific needs.
- What happens if an insurance company changes its form layout?
- The system is designed to detect this. If it encounters a format it cannot parse with high confidence, it flags the document for manual review and sends us an alert. Under our flat-rate maintenance plan, we update the parsing logic for any of your top 5 carriers within 48 hours at no extra charge.
- How is this different from hiring a general IT managed service provider (MSP)?
- An MSP manages your existing software and hardware; they do not write production code. We are engineers who build new software from scratch. An MSP might install off-the-shelf OCR software; we build a custom AI pipeline with Python, FastAPI, and the Claude API that integrates directly with your PMS and understands dental billing codes.
- Our practice uses an old, on-premise PMS. Can you still automate it?
- Yes. While a modern, cloud-based PMS with an API is ideal, we have worked with many on-premise systems. We often use a secure agent installed on your local server to read from and write to the PMS database directly. This requires coordination with your IT provider but is a common and reliable integration pattern for legacy software.
- Is our patient data secure?
- Yes. We follow HIPAA guidelines for data handling. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest. The system runs in your own dedicated AWS environment, not a shared multi-tenant server. We never store PHI (Protected Health Information) long-term; it is processed in memory and then passed to your PMS, with only a transaction log remaining.
- Who is actually building this? Will it be outsourced?
- The founder of Syntora, a hands-on engineer, writes every line of production code. The person you speak with on the discovery call is the same person who will architect, build, and deploy your system. We do not use project managers, sales teams, or offshore developers. This direct model ensures clear communication and high-quality engineering.
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