Social dental care is a social enterprise providing dental healthcare services to Lower income group population in urban areas that was founded in 2017 by 2 doctors, Dr. Nadeem Nazeer & Dr. Asgar Hussain. since then it has expanded and added 2 branches in an attempt to offer their services to more people.
although presence of dental clinics in urban cities is widespread, they believe accessibility to affordable dental treatments still remains a challenge for the urban poor. city suburbs and slum areas have witnessed a rapid growth and although several have been uplifted from poverty, accessing healthcare is still a luxury for most dwellers.
most corporate dental chains target either the wealthy or the general middle income groups and yet those who cannot afford are expected to carry insurance or some sort of credit worthiness to access treatments in EMI loans.
the lower income group and those without access to credit are neglected in this scenario.
social dental care clinics solves this problem by unique propreitary model of low capital investment clinic setups , elimination of receptionist, elimination of non contribution operating costs like those found in general urban clinics such as aircon, TV, furniture and ambience, this helps them to price treatment upto 20% cheaper while maintaining quality treatment and keeping it affordable to the masses.
there is no expenditure in marketing as they rely on treatment discounts that lead to word of mouth publicity that draws a higher footfall to the clinic centres.
they have been exploring and tuning the model for more than 2 years now by tying up with better dental labs, recruiting staff,etc while debating to limit centres or expand on a hub and spoke model.
while they consider themselves a social healthcare enterprise for profit, the focus has been on combating the high rates of dental diseases affecting the population.
as per the data they have compiled and drawn insights, the worst affected population is of paediatric patients.
a typical adult molar tooth erupts at around the age of 6 years and is expected to last lifelong, but they counter several cases who complain of decay and pulpitis already by the age of 7.
Dr. Nadeem says this is a difficult problem to treat as the parents of many patients are ignorant and uneducated and believe these are milk teeth that would fall off and be replaced naturally and refuse treatment.
Dr. Asgar who supervises all endodontic treatments spends most time in convincing and educating these patients who are very non cooperative.
they also believe this challenge can be solved by educating and running campaigns across to take preventive measures against tooth decay just by simple brushing and maintaining good oral hygiene.
at present to solve this key challenges, the team continues to optimize their operations and discuss their strategy ahead to counter poor oral hygiene in the population.