Easy, we ensure that same dentists don't work on the same case. Patient can choose who will do the clinical examination, but can't choose who does the diagnosis (they can only set the minimum ranking position of diagnostician. Similarly, patient can choose dentist who will do the treatment, but this dentist can't change the recommended therapy.
Yes, dentistry is in many ways different from the rest of medicine. It's kind of separated from it.
However, that is not the source of the problem. It's the fact that average person uses dental care more often than any other medical care, and dental treatments are in vast majority medical operations rather than drugs.
Let's focus on the second part of that statement. It means that majority of cost of dental care goes to the practitioner, rather than to drug makers. This means they have more reason to cheat. The payoff is higher.
We are not aiming to change the way you purchase dental services. Rather, we focus on ensuring you don't buy unnecessary dental services.
Let's say you are Delta Dental, these 28% are basically an insurance fraud. If you could get rid of it, you would save billions. You could offer lower premiums and full coverage without any copays.
The cost of material is only smaller part of the price. High price has more to do with the imbalance between the supply and demand. Supply growth is limited by the number of orthodontists. This is due to the fact that every orthodontic treatment requires human expert to oversee and manage it. SmileDirectClub is trying to disprove this last assumption, and we still have to see if they manage it.
One of the reasons I keep working on this project is that I am in a similar situation. When I started researching this topic, I did a test. I made x-rays, and my friend dentist took dental photographs of me. Then I had sent these over email to 7 independent dentists.
Recommendations I got where as diverse as the ones from "How dentists rip us off" article by Readers Digest. I haven't done any of recommendations except for 2 fillings that even I was able to recognise on the images. For the rest, I am going to use my app to find the best solution.
I don't think that's necessary. Most people living in urban areas have x-ray practice in a close vicinity.
Even for those who don't, a home kit wouldn't justify the cost. You want to make a standard high quality x-ray set 2 times a year. Professionally done. Most of people on the planet can make a trip to a city 2 times a year.
I call it "verified diagnosis". We use game theory to extract the truth. Think prisoner's dilemma for dentists.
Edit: Not in US, but building planning to launch there. You can't practice dentistry in US if you haven't got US diploma. However, diagnostic dental work (at least in some states) is exception to this.
Dental treatments, besides being very expensive, are often (up to 28%) unnecessary. This happens because no-one keeps dentists in check. I am trying to make dental treatment and diagnosis reviews easy, cheap, reliable and fast.