5 Dental and Medical Social Media Case Studies, By the Numbers

Dental and medical social media advice is everywhere. Verified numbers are not. Every case in this round-up carries a real, attributable metric — a dated platform count, a local-press profile with named figures, an encyclopedia entry with dated statistics, or, in one clearly labelled case, our own first-party experiment. They run from an orthodontist whose braces comedy outgrew his day job to a family-medicine physician whose debunkings reach one of the biggest health audiences on YouTube.

An honesty note before the numbers: none of the four external cases below is a small independent practice, and presenting them as “what a dental clinic achieved” would be bait-and-switch. Ben Winters is a 16-million-follower creator who happens to practise orthodontics; Will Flanary is a clinician-satirist with a growing commission from a top medical journal; Mikhail Varshavski is a 15-million-subscriber YouTube educator; Milad Shadrooh is a UK practice owner with a decade-long media career. Each case here is a mechanism proof, and each ends with what that mechanism looks like for a two-chair practice or a small medical clinic. Our own first-party case at the end shows what a small local business can realistically expect without a viral moment. This is the dental and medical deep dive in our case-studies series: the case-studies hub already tells five cross-industry stories — from Lay’s and Chipotle to Sephora and Glossier — so nothing here repeats them.

The stakes have moved, too. A KFF tracking poll fielded February 24–March 2, 2026 among 1,343 US adults found that 32% turned to AI chatbots for health information in the past year — and that people are “about as likely to use AI as social media to find health information.” That is demand-side context, not an outcome claim: patients are already looking for health answers in these channels. The supply side is shakier. A peer-reviewed analysis of 69 TikTok videos under #oralhealtheducation found oral health professionals detected false or incorrect information in 11.6% of them, and concluded that involving health professionals in writing and validating videos “could be an added value” (Int J Environ Res Public Health, 2021). A separate study of 148 TikTok dental-implant videos concluded that the videos “provide low to moderate quality information” about implants (J Stomatol Oral Maxillofac Surg, 2023). Read those two together and the gap is the opportunity: an audience that already seeks health content on social platforms, and a feed where credentialed practices are scarce enough to be an “added value.”

The five cases at a glance

Why the tiers matter: a live platform count is served by the platform itself but drifts by the day; an encyclopedia entry carries its own dated statistics; a magazine profile is the subject’s own account, on the record. When a consultant pitches you a healthcare case study with no visible tier, the tier is the first thing to ask about — and any number attached to a patient outcome deserves the hardest questions of all.

Case 1: The Bentist — from “worst office in the state” to 16 million followers

Ben Winters, an orthodontist practising in Plano, Texas, posted a braces-comedy video in early 2019. “The next day around lunchtime, I looked at it expecting 5 or 10 likes, and in the very first day we had a million likes,” he later told Plano Magazine (January 2023). That interview is his own account, given to a local magazine — but it is the most detailed on-the-record version of the story, and the platform counts around it can be checked independently.

The practice-level detail is what makes the case. Winters started at a corporate office in Bentonville, Arkansas, and by his own telling: “Within that first year, we were probably the worst office in the state of Arkansas. After one year with me, we actually won the best office in Northwest Arkansas Award.” He gave up a company TikTok account of 500,000 followers to start from scratch as “The Bentist,” became “one of the very first ambassadors for TikTok as a company,” and eventually founded his own practice, Wincrest Orthodontics, in Plano — where, he says, “We get people that drive three hours just to have me do their braces.” The trajectory is datable from press coverage: WFAA and The Dallas Morning News had him at 8 million TikTok followers in March 2021 (both headlines are indexed on Google News), Arkansas TV had already profiled him as “TikTok famous” in October 2020 (KATV, via the same index), Plano Magazine reported 13 million in January 2023, and his TikTok profile showed 16 million followers, 648.8 million hearts and 2,348 videos when we checked in October 2026. He has since extended the brand into oral care products with a company called Something Nice.

The mechanic to copy: be the practitioner, not the practice. Winters filmed “on lunch breaks and in between seeing patients,” and the comedy came from his actual specialty — braces, retainer mishaps, dental life. A practice account that films the clinician’s real world, in a repeating format, is copying the part of this that worked. You will not post your way to 16 million followers; you can post your way to being the most recognisable orthodontist in your postcode.

Case 2: Dr. Glaucomflecken — satire so good a medical journal commissioned it

Will Flanary, an ophthalmologist at EyeHealth Northwest in Oregon, has been making and uploading medical-satire skits since 2016 under the name Dr. Glaucomflecken — first on Twitter, then TikTok and YouTube, according to his Wikipedia entry. The dated numbers stack up: by June 2022 his Twitter account had over 573,000 followers and his TikTok over 1.5 million with 58 million likes; his TikTok profile showed 2.6 million followers and 899 videos when we checked in October 2026; and his YouTube channel lists 1.22 million subscribers and 596 million views with statistics dated April 18, 2025. He has spoken at Yale School of Medicine’s 2022 commencement, hosts the “Knock Knock, Hi!” podcast with his wife, and has survived testicular cancer twice — first diagnosed at 25 — an experience that feeds directly into his material.

The most interesting number here is not a follower count. Since April 2026, the New England Journal of Medicine has been running a recurring segment, “Dr. Glaucomflecken Explains,” in which he turns new clinical trials into short, funny explainers — eight dated segments are currently indexed, from early septic-shock fluid strategy (ARISE FLUIDS, June 2026) to multiple sclerosis treatment comparisons (OVERLORD-MS, July 2026), each verifiable through the journal’s syndicated headlines. A peer-reviewed journal commissioning a satirist to explain its research is institutional endorsement of exactly the mechanism a small practice can use: expertise, delivered in the audience’s native format.

The mechanic to copy: system satire, not self-promotion. Flanary’s skits are about how healthcare works — the pager, the prior authorisation, the EHR — which is why clinicians share them and patients recognise themselves in them. A GP or dentist who can gently satirise the shared experience of waiting rooms, insurance forms or dental anxiety is using the same muscle. No patient data, no clinical claims — just the comedy already sitting in your working day.

Case 3: Doctor Mike — the 15-million-subscriber educator

Mikhail Varshavski is a family-medicine physician whose Instagram went viral after a BuzzFeed feature, and whose ignition moment was being named People’s “Sexiest Doctor Alive” in 2015 — both events, and his Atlantic Health System residency, are covered in his Wikipedia entry. What matters for a case study is what he did with the spike: rather than monetising a moment, he converted it into a durable format. His YouTube channel — listed as active since 2016 in the same encyclopedia entry — carries 15 million subscribers and 5.5 billion views with statistics dated August 19, 2026, and is built on recurring formats — medically themed entertainment and debunkings of false medical claims. His TikTok profile showed 3.1 million followers and 735 videos when we checked in October 2026.

The mechanic to copy: convert a spike into a slot. A viral moment — a press feature, a shared post, a local-news segment — is worth little on its own; a repeating format (“I react to medical scenes”, “I debunk this viral claim”) is worth years. Notice also what he does not do: he does not guarantee outcomes, and his content stays in the lane of general education and reaction. That lane — general education, no patient specifics, no promises — is the defensible lane for any clinician building an audience.

Case 4: The Singing Dentist — a decade of parodies, zero published follower counts

Milad Shadrooh, a Basingstoke dentist and practice owner of nearly 19 years, became “The Singing Dentist” when a patient failed to attend an endo appointment and he passed the time playing with lyrics to a Drake song on the radio. His team persuaded him to post it; “‘The Singing Dentist’ became an internet sensation,” Dentistry.co.uk reported in April 2023, in a profile that also covers his parodies of Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You” and his book “The Whole Tooth.” By May 2026 the same trade title was describing him as “better known to millions online as The Singing Dentist,” in a podcast episode recorded live at the North of England Dentistry Show about authenticity and burnout.

Notice what this case deliberately does not contain: a follower number. We could not verify an exact, current figure for any of his accounts, so none appears here — “millions,” per the UK trade press, is the ceiling of what can be said. That is a feature of this round-up, not a gap: an honest case study reports the number that exists, and no other.

The mechanic to copy: personality is the differentiator. Two dentists can post the same clinical advice; only one of them can sing it. Shadrooh’s content works because it is unmistakably his — and the longevity (still making trade-press headlines in 2026 off the back of a video habit that started with one parody) shows what a distinctive format compounds into. The trade-press corroboration is also a lesson: consistent creators eventually get covered by their industry’s own media, which is free, credible distribution.

Case 5: our own bakery experiment — the realistic small-business numbers

Finally, the first-party case, labelled as such: our own experiment with a bakery in Ljubljana. Using Picmim to draft and schedule the owner’s posts, the 30-day summary reads: “212 new followers, 90% higher engagement, €890 in attributed revenue, and a process that fits into the time it takes bread to bake” — in under 2 hours per month of the owner’s time. No viral moment, no paid spend, no third-party audit — which is exactly why it sits last, under a “first-party, weigh accordingly” label, while the externally verifiable cases above carry the credibility load.

The mechanic to copy: consistency. A bakery is not a dental practice, but both are local businesses whose customers arrive on foot; the realistic analogue of The Bentist’s 16 million followers is not 16,000 followers — it is a feed that reliably reaches the people who live nearby, at a time cost a working owner can actually sustain.

How a dental or medical practice applies all of this

Mapped to decisions rather than admiration:

• Film the practitioner, not the practice. The person and their craft is the format (The Bentist). Start with the formats in our dental Instagram content guide.
• Satirise the system, not the patient. Shared experience — waiting rooms, forms, dental anxiety — travels without any patient data (Glaucomflecken).
• Debunk responsibly. 11.6% of sampled #oralhealtheducation videos contained false or incorrect information; credentialed correction is an “added value” the research literally asks for (Doctor Mike, plus the PubMed studies above).
• Let personality carry the format. A recurring, unmistakable bit compounds for a decade (The Singing Dentist).
• Pick a posting rhythm you can sustain. Under 2 hours a month moved real numbers for a local business (our bakery); our 7-day plan for dental practices is the starting grid.

If you want the vertical-specific groundwork, the blog already has a social media guide for dental practices, a healthcare practices edition, a bank of social media ideas for dental clinics and a guide to using AI without losing the human touch. For the platform mechanics underneath — how distribution actually decides who sees you — read our Instagram algorithm guide and our TikTok trends piece; for the strategy layer, the user-generated content guide, the influencer marketing guide and our comparison of small business versus big brand social media apply to clinics the same as to any local business.

Two caveats to carry out of this list. First, the metrics are snapshots: platform counts were live when we checked in October 2026 and will have drifted by the time you read this; treat every number above as evidence that a mechanism worked once, at scale, somewhere. Second, the privacy line: none of the verified cases above trades in patient data — the comedy is about the system, the education is general, the singing is the dentist’s own — and if you film anything involving a patient you need explicit, written consent (in GDPR-regulated countries) and HIPAA-grade caution in the United States. Our GDPR-compliant social media tools guide covers the European side; verify current HHS guidance directly before publishing anything patient-adjacent.

The five cross-industry stories that anchor this series — Lay’s Do Us a Flavor, Chipotle’s lid flip, Sephora’s Virtual Artist, ASOS’s #AsSeenOnMe and Glossier’s community playbook — are on the case-studies hub.

Ready to write the next case study? Picmim drafts on-brand posts, schedules across every platform, and keeps your practice consistently visible for €29/month — start with a free preview of what your own feed could look like.