Ask George: How to Master Dental Practice Management and Scale Profitability Using AI
Shared Practices | Your Dental Roadmap through Practice Ownership
Dr. George Hariri | Shared Practices Network
4.9 • 559 Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The transition from clinician to CEO is often paved with unexpected roadblocks: wage inflation, shrinking insurance reimbursements, and a staffing crisis that makes 2026 feel like a battleground for private practitioners. In this episode of Ask George, Dr. George Hariri breaks down why traditional dental practice management is no longer enough to stay profitable. If you are a future owner, you must realize that the "Golden Age" of dentistry has evolved into the "Golden Way"—a high-tech roadmap where artificial intelligence acts as your digital co-pilot.
George moves beyond the hype of AI to provide a tactical survival guide for the modern dental entrepreneur. He explores the sequential flow of a patient's journey, identifying specific bottlenecks where technology can replace manual labor. From AI receptionists that mitigate missed call rates to radiograph software like Pearl and Overjet that revolutionize co-diagnosis, this episode explains how to reduce your dependency on a shrinking labor pool while increasing case acceptance.
True dental business ownership requires becoming a "technological champion." George emphasizes that while the dentist must provide the vision, the team must drive the implementation. You will learn how to use dental growth strategies that prioritize objectivity, such as using AI to audit phone calls or scribe treatment notes, allowing your staff to focus on high-level patient care.
This is more than a discussion on software; it is a masterclass in dental business strategies for the current economic landscape. Whether you are navigating an associate to owner transition or looking to scale your first acquisition, understanding how to negotiate the "how" while remaining firm on the "why" of technology is critical. Stop struggling with 20th-century systems in a 2026 world. Learn how to lean into the unique strengths of the technological revolution to ensure your practice isn't just surviving, but thriving. Success in dental practice management today requires more intentionality than ever—it’s time to build your roadmap.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to another episode of Ask George on the Shared Practices podcast, and I'm here by myself talking about technology. |
| 0:10.7 | And I'm fresh off of recording an episode that's been released at this point with Adi Agarwal from Practice by Numbers. |
| 0:17.4 | And that episode was great. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to it because this conversation is somewhat of a follow-up from that one where, you know, I was on the episode with her and we were going back and forth talking about technology and AI and the importance of embracing technology and also how to get your team to really, you know, use technology to the highest level. |
| 0:55.2 | And I just thought, man, I have so many thoughts now. I have so many things that have come to mind that I'd like to discuss and share. And sometimes when you're on with a guest, you want to be the one asking questions. And so I kind of just scribbled down all of my notes from that episode and would like to just have the opportunity to kind of walk through the different things that I was thinking about as we were recording. And I think that one of the |
| 0:59.3 | things that was a theme throughout the episode that is kind of something I want to introduce early |
| 1:03.2 | is this concept of why embrace technology and why is that important in the modern day. |
| 1:09.0 | And I think that there's a lot of challenges that |
| 1:11.2 | dentistry is facing. So I think that in general, the world is changing at a faster pace each year |
| 1:15.4 | that passes, right? And I really think we noticed that since 2020. Since 2020, each year that |
| 1:20.1 | passes, there's just so much change. And I think that AI and technology and the technological |
| 1:25.9 | revolution that we're in with AI driving that with robotics, |
| 1:29.9 | the world is changing at a rapid rate. And what does that mean for dentists? What does that mean |
| 1:35.0 | for dentists owning practices? And how do we use that technology in a way that advances us? |
| 1:40.9 | And I want to kind of revisit this concept where when I was in dental school, |
| 1:49.3 | we had professors and they would talk about the golden age in dentistry from their perspective. |
| 1:53.9 | They had the golden age was where they put out a shingle. There was nobody doing advertising. |
| 1:59.5 | There was an abundance of patients. Insurancees were paying very well. Team members were easier to manage than they are today. A lot of things that |
| 2:02.4 | you could say, maybe some people would say private practice had better days in the past than it |
| 2:07.3 | does today. And I think that with the rising competition of DSOs, the insurance reimbursements |
| 2:12.6 | and the challenges there, wage inflation and cost inflation as a whole, I think that you could say pretty definitively |
| 2:19.6 | that there are more challenges facing the private practice owner today than there were in the |
| 2:24.6 | past, right? |
... |
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