Summary
Toothaches are one of the top reasons people end up in the emergency room, where there’s no dentist to treat them.
In this entrepreneur interview, Dr. Maria Kunstadter, dentist and founder of The TeleDentists, shares how a national conference on the opioid crisis sparked the idea for virtual dentists. She also explains how COVID drove 1,200% growth in a single year, and why she’s now taking teledentistry into emergency rooms, rural communities, and countries with only a few hundred dentists. Whether you’re a startup founder in health tech or a healthcare leader working on access to care, this founder story shows what it takes to build in a space that’s been slow to change.
What you’ll learn:
- How teledentistry consultations work
- Why toothaches cost ERs nearly $3 billion
- The link between oral health and chronic disease
- Scaling a telehealth startup across states and countries
- Why dentists gain patients, not lose them
⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 “You saved my life that day”
0:22 Introduction
0:48 How teledentistry works
2:11 Why toothaches end up in the ER
4:11 COVID and 1,200% growth
5:29 The $3 billion ER toothache problem
6:41 Why dental is separate from medical
7:58 Oral health and chronic disease
9:32 Teledentistry in rural communities
14:08 Health care is cultural: going global
15:48 Why dentistry is slow to innovate
17:45 Scaling telehealth across borders
18:36 When a dental emergency isn’t an emergency
19:30 Why dentists should welcome teledentistry
21:11 Fuel, Northwest Arkansas, and how to connect
About Dr. Maria Kunstadter: Dr. Kunstadter is the CEO and founder of The TeleDentists, a teledentistry platform offering virtual dental consultations, e-prescriptions, and next-step appointment scheduling. She is a member of the Fuel health tech accelerator cohort.
🔗https://www.theteledentists.com/
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