COMPARISON
OraCore vs Heidi Health: Why a General Medical Scribe Falls Short in the Dental Operatory
Heidi serves 200+ specialties. Dental practices aren’t one of them — they have CDT codes, perio charts, and PMS integrations that require a tool built for dentistry.
Heidi Health is a well-reviewed AI scribe. It serves over 200 healthcare specialties, has a free plan, and saves clinicians real documentation time. If you’re a general practitioner or a specialist in a medical field, it’s a reasonable tool.
But if you run a dental practice, you’re not a general practitioner. You’re charting tooth numbers and surfaces. You’re coding CDT procedures. You’re running perio charts. You’re working inside Open Dental or Dentrix, not a generic EHR. And none of those things are things Heidi was built for.
That’s the core issue. And it matters more than you might think when you’re mid-appointment and a note reads “the doctor did something on tooth fourteen” instead of “D2392 on #14 MO.”
Heidi added dental support through a partnership with CareStack — that integration is real. But CareStack is one PMS. The majority of dental practices run on Open Dental, Dentrix, or Eaglesoft. For those practices, Heidi has no native integration. You get copy-paste. That’s not a workflow. That’s extra work.
Beyond the integration gap, Heidi simply wasn’t designed around how dentistry works. There is no perio charting. There are no CDT code suggestions. There’s no tooth-number or surface-code awareness. You can configure Heidi to produce better dental notes than a generic scribe — but you’re building something that should already exist.
FEATURE COMPARISON
Where OraCore and Heidi Actually Differ
| Feature | OraCore | Heidi Health |
|---|---|---|
| Built for dentistry | ✓ Yes | No (general medical scribe) |
| Open Dental integration | ✓ Yes | No confirmed integration |
| Dentrix integration | ✓ Yes | No native integration |
| Perio charting | ✓ Detection & analysis | None |
| CDT code inference | ✓ Yes | Not documented |
| Tooth-number / surface awareness | ✓ Yes | Not documented |
| PMS integrations total | ✓ 10+ major systems | 1 confirmed (CareStack) |
| Full team workflow | ✓ Yes | Primarily clinician-focused |
| Insurance narratives | ✓ Yes | Not documented |
| Post-visit follow-up email | ✓ Yes | Not documented |
| Front desk task signals | ✓ Yes | Not documented |
| Pricing | $299/month unlimited providers (Pro) | ~$110/clinician/month |
| 5-provider practice cost | $299/month | ~$750/month |
| Free plan | No (14-day trial) | Yes (10 Pro Actions/month) |
| EHR write-back on standard plans | PMS read on Pro; notes reviewed by team | Enterprise add-on only |
THE DIFFERENCE
Built for Dentistry vs. Built for Everyone
PMS Integration
OraCore works with virtually every major practice management system. On Scribe Pro, it reads patient context and appointment data directly from your PMS before the appointment starts.
OraCore integrates with:
→ Open Dental
→ Dentrix
→ Eaglesoft
→ Carestream & Curve Dental
→ 10+ major systems
Heidi has one confirmed dental PMS integration: CareStack. Everything else requires manual copy-paste or an enterprise upgrade.
Perio Charting
OraCore detects when a perio chart is being completed and analyzes findings in real time. Hygienists don’t have to stop and document separately.
→ Real-time perio detection
→ Automatic findings analysis
→ No workflow interruption
Heidi has no perio charting capability. For most practices, this is a daily workflow gap that Heidi leaves open.
Full Team Workflow
OraCore is built for the whole team — dentists, hygienists, assistants, and front desk — each with workflows tailored to their role.
→ Hygienist documentation
→ Front desk task signals
→ Insurance narratives
→ Post-visit follow-up emails
Heidi is primarily a clinician documentation tool. Team-wide workflow automation is not a documented capability.
CDT Code Inference
OraCore automatically infers CDT codes from natural clinical language. “DO on 18” becomes D2392 without any manual lookup.
→ Automatic CDT inference
→ Tooth number awareness
→ Surface code recognition
CDT code inference is not a documented Heidi capability. General scribes don’t understand the language dentistry uses.
Pricing Model
OraCore Pro is $299/month for the entire practice — unlimited providers, unlimited operatories, one flat price per location.
→ $299/month flat (unlimited providers)
→ 5-provider practice: $299/month
→ No per-seat scaling
Heidi’s Clinician plan is ~$110/clinician/month. A five-provider practice pays ~$750/month — before enterprise add-ons for PMS integration.
HONEST ASSESSMENT
The Honest Trade-off
Heidi’s free plan is genuinely useful if you want to try an AI scribe with zero financial commitment. If your practice runs on CareStack, the native integration is real and the stats Heidi cites — 1.5 hours saved per day, 51% documentation reduction — come from a documented partnership. We’re not going to pretend that’s nothing.
But if you’re running on Open Dental, Dentrix, or Eaglesoft, those benefits don’t transfer. You’re getting a general scribe with a copy-paste handoff to your PMS. And you’re getting no perio support, no CDT code recognition, no team workflow automation, and a pricing model that scales against you as you add providers.
Dental practices aren’t general practices that happen to have teeth in them. They have their own terminology, their own billing codes, their own charting conventions, and their own team dynamics. The tool that serves dentistry well is the one built to understand all of that.
THE COMPLETE WORKFLOW
What OraCore Is Built to Do
OraCore listens during the appointment. Every provider. Every operatory. When the appointment ends:
→ Clinical note drafted, structured, and ready for your team to review and enter into your PMS
→ Insurance narrative written, with the attachments list
→ Front desk task summary with everything that needs follow-up
→ Post-visit follow-up email drafted and ready to send to the patient
Your team doesn’t spend evenings catching up on charts. Billing moves faster because narratives are complete from day one. The hygienist’s perio findings are captured. The dentist’s exam notes are done before the patient reaches the front desk. That’s the complete workflow — not just the note.
GET STARTED
Ready to See the Difference?
If your practice runs on Open Dental, Dentrix, Eaglesoft, or another major PMS, OraCore is built for you.