Dental Group Overview
Excel Dental is a modern, doctor-led east coast DSO founded by Dr. Chad Patel, a Boston University School of Dental Medicine graduate who has built a reputation for advanced, multi-specialty dental care and a relentless focus on patient experience. Excel Dental uses Dentina for after-hours and overflow call handling with staff transfer for escalation. By answering calls that would otherwise route to voicemail or go unanswered during peak times, Dentina helps capture bookings and reduce front-desk workload.
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Results at a glance
| Metric | Result |
|---|---|
| Avg calls handled by Dentina per month (after-hours + overflow) | 1,512.5 |
| Avg appointments booked by Dentina per month (53.2/mo new + 47.8/mo existing) | 101.0 |
| Calls transferred to staff for escalation | 18% |
| Hours of front desk time saved per year | 1,663.8 |
| First-year production potential from Dentina booked appts | $2,694,048 |
| Wage time value savings (excluding taxes, benefits, and overhead) | ~$34,107 |
A DentistryIQ analysis of 12,500+ practices reported average gross production per new dental patient receiving a comprehensive exam of roughly $4,016-$4,220.
What other dental groups and practices can take away
The DSO-level win: consistent coverage + measurable outcomes (calls handled, bookings, transfers, schedule changes) without adding headcount at every site.
- Replace “voicemail + callbacks” with Tier-1 automation: Dentina answers first, handles routine requests, and escalates only exceptions—reducing leakage across locations.
- Reduce dependence on costly answering services/call centers: standardizes patient access and quality without adding headcount at every office.
- Give teams time back where it matters: front desks stay focused on in-office patients, insurance/collections, and treatment coordination while Dentina absorbs call volume spikes.
The challenge
Like many dental organizations, Excel Dental faces a familiar front-office reality:
- Calls spike when the team is busiest (patient check-in/out, insurance questions, chair turnover).
- After-hours calls traditionally go to voicemail—creating follow-up work the next day and a higher chance the caller simply moves on.
- Multi-location teams need consistent, scalable coverage without adding headcount at every site.
This matters because phone calls still drive a large portion of dental scheduling. Industry data suggests that the average practice misses 30-40% of inbound calls, and a large portion of bookings happen outside business hours.
Excel Dental wanted a solution that could:
- Answer after-hours and overflow calls instead of sending callers to voicemail
- Book common appointment types reliably and consistently
- Escalate to staff when needed through transfers
- Work across a multi-location footprint with minimal operational burden
The solution
Excel Dental deployed Dentina.Ai across all locations to answer calls that would otherwise have gone to voicemail (after-hours) or been missed during high-volume periods (overflow).
Appointment types supported included:
- New Patient Exam + Cleaning (Adult/Child)
- Existing Patient Exam + Cleaning (Adult/Child)
- Emergency appointments
- Rescheduling and cancellations
- General consultations
- Cosmetic consultation
- Implant consultation
Dentina was also configured to transfer calls for escalation when appropriate – giving Excel Dental a safety valve for complex requests, urgent needs, and edge cases.
Example transfer scenarios, include a patient wanting to:
- Discuss a recent bill.
- Talk through their treatment plan options.
- Request a prescription.
- Speak with a live representative, when it’s an emergency.
Implementation approach
Excel Dental’s configuration prioritized optimized front desk coverage:
- After-hours + overflow routing: Dentina handled calls when the front desk could not.
- Standardized scheduling flows: A consistent patient experience across locations and appointment types.
- Escalation transfers: Dentina transferred calls to staff when needed rather than forcing every call into a self-serve workflow.
Estimated value impact
For DSOs, call centers can come with additional headaches: lack of consistency, quality, reliability in calls handled. While any missed calls aren’t just “voicemails” – they’re patient leakage, inconsistent access across locations, and higher overhead (extra front-desk staffing, answering services, or call centers). Excel Dental used Dentina as Tier 1 for after-hours and overflow calls across their locations, with live transfer escalation when needed.
Based on recent averages, Excel Dental saw:
- Capacity created: 1,663.8 hours of front desk time saved per year equates to ~$34,107/year in receptionist wage‑time value saved (MA $20.50/hr, excluding taxes/benefits/overhead). This is money that would have been spent on the same tasks that Dentina is handling.
- New-patient growth: 53.2 new patient appointments booked per month, up to $2,694,048 first‑year production potential (using $4,220 per new patient).
- Kept-appointment sensitivity: If 60–80% of those booked new-patient appointments are ultimately kept, the estimated first-year production captured would range from ~$1.62M to ~$2.16M (excluding the incremental value from existing-patient bookings).
- Schedule protection: ~61.9 reschedules and cancellations per month handled by Dentina – less phone tag and faster backfill across sites.
As Dentina’s performance optimized over time, monthly volume and outcomes increased:
- Monthly inbound calls grew from 1,415 (Mar 2025) to 2,024 (Jan 2026) (+43%)
- New-patient appointments grew from 39 (Mar 2025) to 67 (Jan 2026) (+72%)
This pattern is common when practices expand routing confidence and patients learn that calling after-hours still gets a real response.
How to read these results
These metrics are designed to show how much inbound demand was captured (after-hours + overflow) and how much routine scheduling work was handled without interrupting staff.
- Inbound calls: calls routed to Dentina during after-hours and overflow coverage windows.
- Interaction rate: % of inbound calls where the caller engaged with Dentina (excluding immediate hang-ups/abandoned calls).
- Appointment booked: an appointment placed on the schedule; the kept rate is tracked separately in the practice management system.
- End-to-end resolution: the caller’s request was completed without a live staff transfer.
- Transfer (escalation safety valve): calls connected to staff when a human should step in (e.g., urgent clinical concerns, complex billing/insurance questions, or unusual scheduling requests).
Dentina is an AI receptionist built for dental practices – designed to capture more opportunities while reducing front-desk burden.
