Heartland Dental's new Conuity platform aims to close a specialty referral gap where up to 85% of patients never complete recommended follow-up dental care.
Heartland Dental has launched Conuity Care Coordination, a technology platform designed to keep patients from falling through the cracks between a general dentist's referral and a specialist's treatment. The KKR-backed dental support organization says only 15% to 30% of patients who are advised to seek follow-up specialty care actually complete it, a gap that can turn manageable problems into more invasive and expensive ones. Founder and Executive Chairman Rick Workman framed it as part of the company's broader doctor-led support model.
Referral breakdown happens in any dental practice, but the stakes multiply across a network supporting more than 3,000 doctors and 1,900 practices that logged 11.5 million patient visits last year. More than 80% of Heartland's general dentists actively refer patients to specialists, so a fix at the coordination layer touches nearly the entire system rather than a handful of offices.
Conuity combines software with dedicated care coordination services, giving practice teams tools to identify specialty options, track referral progress and stay in touch with patients as they move between providers. That closes gaps left by the traditional model, where patients are often expected to book their own specialist appointment and report back on their own.
Heartland has not disclosed adoption numbers, development costs or a target improvement in completion rates, so the near-term payoff is unclear. But the move shows how large multi-location healthcare networks are treating care coordination as core infrastructure worth building centrally, a lesson that applies just as directly to franchise brands managing referrals or handoffs across hundreds of locations.
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