Enterprise patient access infrastructure for DSOs: One operating standard. Across every practice.
Blackstar brings inbound patient communication, scheduling execution, and front-desk workflows into a consistent operational system. Capture more patient demand, reduce administrative friction, and give your organization a more scalable way to manage inbound operations.
- Direct PMS integration
- Configurable workflows
- Human escalation
Not an AI employee. An infrastructure layer.
Blackstar improves how patient demand becomes completed operational work. Everything on this page comes back to four outcomes.
- 01
Capture more revenue opportunities
Reduce the inbound patient opportunities lost to unanswered calls and incomplete scheduling.
- 02
Improve operating leverage
Ease routine phone workload, so every increase in demand doesn't have to mean more administrative capacity.
- 03
Standardize execution
Apply one approach to patient access while preserving each practice's scheduling requirements.
- 04
Make performance measurable
Cross-location visibility into call handling, completed bookings, escalations, and operational outcomes.
The cost of a missed opportunity doesn't stop at one practice.
Small inefficiencies at a single office are easy to absorb. Repeated across 10, 30, or 100 locations, they become a portfolio-level constraint on growth.
Unanswered calls
Peak hours, lunch coverage, and after-hours gaps look different at every office. Across a portfolio they add up to a steady loss of patients who were ready to book.
Inconsistent intake
Each front desk develops its own way of handling the same request. Outcomes vary by location, by shift, and by who picks up the phone.
Administrative bottlenecks
Phones compete with check-in, insurance, and patients in the chair. Growth adds calls faster than it adds front-desk capacity.
If each location leaves 15 patient calls a week unresolved:
Simple multiplication to show scale, not industry data or a Blackstar result. Use your own figures in the financial model below.
An answered call is only valuable when the work gets done.
Answering services take messages. Basic voice agents talk. Orbit completes the scheduling work inside your practice-management system, during the call.
- Step 01
Answers and understands
Orbit holds a natural conversation and works out what the caller actually needs.
- Step 02
Identifies the patient
Finds the existing patient record in Open Dental, or creates a new patient where enabled.
- Step 03
Executes approved actions
Checks live availability against the practice's rules, then books, reschedules, or cancels in Open Dental.
- Step 04
Escalates exceptions
When something can't be verified, Orbit routes it to staff under the practice's escalation rules.
A message is taken, a callback is queued, and the scheduling work lands back on a front desk that was already at capacity.
The appointment is written to Open Dental and confirmed only after Open Dental reports success. What can't be completed is escalated, not dropped.
Consistency at the group level. Precision at the practice level.
The operating standard
- One approved set of patient-access workflows
- Consistent conversation quality and call handling
- The same confirmation boundary at every location
- Shared escalation and failure-handling principles
- Group-level roles, permissions, and configuration governance
- Cross-location reporting and portfolio analytics
Local operational controls
- Providers and operatories
- Appointment types and durations
- Scheduling rules and booking windows
- Office hours and call routing
- Escalation contacts and transfer rules
- Practice information patients ask about
Practice-level execution. Group-level control.
| Practice level· Live | Group level· Live |
|---|---|
| Inbound voice handling | Multi-location provisioning and management |
| Open Dental patient lookup and scheduling | Group-level configuration governance |
| Practice-specific booking rules | Cross-location reporting |
| Call logging and human escalation | Portfolio-level operational analytics |
| Practice-scoped system access | Group-level roles and permissions |
Measure what better patient access is worth to your organization.
Your assumptions
$39,408 per month at steady state, after operating costs.
- Contribution, yr 1
- $616,896
- Blackstar cost, yr 1
- $144,000
- Break-even / practice
- 8 visits/mo
- Modeled / practice
- 31 visits/mo
Monthly volume chain
- Inbound calls12,000
- Unanswered or unresolved18%2,160
- Additional bookings20%432
- Additional completed visits85%367
A hypothetical model built entirely from your inputs. It is not a Blackstar result, benchmark, forecast, or quote, and the default values are placeholders. It excludes staffing changes, patient lifetime value, and referral effects, which a pilot can help you measure directly.
Built to work within your operating environment.
Direct PMS integration
Orbit connects to Open Dental through a direct, credentialed integration. Dentrix and Eaglesoft are in development.
Open Dental integrationClient-scoped access
Each practice runs only within its approved configuration, with isolated credentials and group-level roles controlling who can manage which locations.
Bounded client scopeConfirmation boundary
A booking is confirmed to the patient only after the PMS reports success. Timeouts and rejections are never treated as confirmations.
Confirmation boundaryFailure handling and escalation
Failed or unresolved workflows are reported and follow the practice's configured recovery and human-escalation rules.
Failure recoveryAuditability
Bookings, system calls, and logins are logged with timestamps and outcomes for operational and compliance review.
Security architectureHIPAA safeguards and security review
Business Associate Agreements before PHI is handled, a public HIPAA program, and client-specific security review before production write access.
HIPAA documentationOpen Dental is the current live integration. Production read and write access requires a client-specific integration and security review, and is limited to the workflows approved for each deployment.
Prove the economics before expanding the footprint.
Not a network-wide gamble. A defined pilot at one or two eligible locations, measured against your own baseline, so the case for expansion is built on documented results.
- Call coverage
- Scheduling completion
- Exception and escalation rates
- Retained human involvement
- Appointments verified in the PMS
Best suited today to groups running Open Dental. Emerging and mid-market groups of roughly 5 to 50 locations are our current focus.
- Step 01
Operational discovery
Confirm PMS compatibility, call-handling requirements, existing processes, and current patient-access performance.
- Step 02
Controlled deployment
Launch Orbit at one or two approved practices, with specific scheduling and escalation rules.
- Step 03
Performance evaluation
Review call coverage, scheduling completion, exception rates, retained human involvement, and verified appointments.
- Step 04
Expansion decision
Evaluate documented results, integration readiness, and the investment needed to support additional locations.
What DSO leadership asks first.
Anything else, including procurement and BAA review, we'll cover in the consultation.
Yes. Multi-location provisioning, group-level configuration governance, group roles and permissions, and cross-location reporting are live. Each practice still runs on its own approved configuration, so group standards never override local scheduling requirements.
Open Dental is the live integration, covering patient lookup, new-patient creation, availability, booking, rescheduling, and cancellation where enabled. Dentrix and Eaglesoft integrations are in development. Groups with mixed systems typically start with their Open Dental locations.
Yes. Providers, operatories, appointment types and durations, booking windows, office hours, call routing, and escalation contacts are configured per practice, while the group sets the shared workflows and standards.
A pilot starts with operational discovery, then a controlled deployment at one or two approved practices. Call coverage, scheduling completion, exception rates, human involvement, and verified appointments are measured against your baseline before any expansion decision.
Start from your own call volumes and unresolved-call rate, then separate booked appointments from completed visits and production value from contribution margin, net of Blackstar costs. The model on this page does exactly that, and a pilot replaces the assumptions with measured results.
Blackstar signs a Business Associate Agreement before handling PHI, publishes its HIPAA security program, isolates credentials per client, and logs bookings, system calls, and logins. Production write access requires a client-specific integration and security review.
Orbit never confirms an appointment until the practice management system reports success. Requests it cannot verify or complete are escalated to staff under each practice's configured transfer and escalation rules, rather than dropped.
Let's evaluate your patient access operation.
Choose a time below to discuss a DSO pilot: your locations, your call volume, your PMS environment, and what a measured first deployment would look like.
No prep needed. You'll get a calendar invite with a Google Meet link.