Doug Drew is using critical concepts from the veterinary field to lead in his new role as CEO of Irving, Texas-based U.S. Oral Surgery Management.
Mr. Drew succeeded Richard Hall, who became chair of the company’s board of directors. Mr. Drew has more than 30 years of experience leading businesses, including multi-site organizations. He previously served as global president of Mars Veterinary Health, an organization with more than 3,000 veterinary hospitals and 12,000 veterinarians in more than 20 countries.
Mr. Drew recently spoke with Becker’s to discuss his new role and goals for the company.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What inspired you to join USOSM?
Doug Drew: I’d been in the veterinary industry for quite some time. As I was thinking about joining another company, I wanted to be as thoughtful as possible when you’re making a big decision like that. For me, it all started with understanding the OMS specialty. When oral and maxillofacial surgeons have such a life changing impact on the lives of patients, that was something that intrigued me quite a bit. OMS is that specialty that kind of bridges medical and dental, and it’s the only one I’m aware of that really does that. As you talk to oral surgeons and why they do what they do, there is that kind of purpose-led part that stands out. I’ve always been attracted to purpose-led professions, organizations and specialties. I had that on the veterinary side [and] it’s what had me leave other areas that I worked in finance and consulting. It’s really about finding what’s a good fit, so it started with the specialty itself.
USOSM was first in the oral surgery space to start putting practices together at a larger scale. I really like the partnership model where our surgeon partners own over half of our company. We really put that lens on how we work with them to make sure they’re really clear on what they should be focusing on, which is clinical outcomes, patient experience, providing great leadership and opportunities in the practice for all the team there, and then us in the support center and in our regional field teams can really focus on how to run a great business.
You meet people along the way in a process, and you either connect with them or you don’t. It was really great to hear Rick Hall’s perspective and how he kind of set the culture of the company in the beginning, what was important to him, and how that’s carried through. For me, it was really important to have the right private equity partner because I’m somewhat familiar with the private equity world, and I think there are partners that fit more with how you’d like to do things as a CEO than others who may have a different way of doing it. Bringing that all together just made it really clear to me and to my family that this was just a great opportunity for me to pursue.
Q: How do you plan to use your experience in the veterinary space to succeed in your new role?
DD: Sometimes things translate more than one would think in the beginning. There are obviously clear differences between the veterinary world and the dental profession, and certainly as you get into the OMS specialty, but there are similarities that I think [are like] a string that you kind of pull through together. I think [with] a lot of medical professional businesses, and certainly, if you’re putting them together into corporate structures, it’s really important to have a great culture across a multi-site healthcare organization like that. As you get smaller to bigger, it’s easy to lose touch, and it can be very challenging to stick to your roots and make sure you’re doing things the way you want them to be done. It’s really important to be intentional about decisions you make, be clear about why you’re making those decisions, and be able to communicate very well across a diverse organization, both geographically as well as at different levels, whether it’s an oral surgeon, other clinical staff or people in our support office.
I had the privilege of dealing with veterinary specialists. When you’re dealing with specialists, especially because they’ve gone to school for so long and trained for so long, clinical autonomy has always been critically important, at Mars or at BCA, it starts with what is best for the patient. In the case of a dog or a cat or in the case of a person, everything has to be done to say, “Is this going to get us the best outcome?,” and then everything can flow from there. There are ways of making processes smoother. There are ways of using things more efficiently, or using certain products that may give you a cost benefit, but it all starts with making sure you’re creating a great outcome for the patient. While pets are very different from people, a lot of people consider them a part of the family, so it’s really important for them to make sure their pets are getting the right care, and it’s obvious you need to do that with every patient that comes to one of our practices.
The other thing is, it’s very stressful to bring a pet into an animal hospital. It’s very stressful for somebody to go to an oral surgeon because you’re typically going to a specialist because there’s something wrong and there’s a medical problem that needs to be fixed. Taking the stress out of it and creating a great client experience on the veterinary side, we spent a lot of time understanding what are the pain points a client experiences, from scheduling an appointment to coming into the practice, to having enough knowledge to make a good decision, to understanding the treatment plan. Those things are very similar, whether it was a client in vet or a patient in oral surgery. There’s just a lot of similarities. Focusing on that patient experience and patient journey to make sure you’re making a very stressful process as least stressful as possible is super important. What I learned [at] Mars and my time at VCA before Mars acquired VCA is how to scale a business without ruining what made that business great. It’s not about growth for growth sake … You’ve got to grow in a way that aligns with your principles, partner with oral surgeons who share your values and how you want to do things. USOSM has really stuck close to that because that’s what allows you to have the long-term success that makes companies really strong and prosper.
Q: What goals have you set for your new role?
DD: My first goal was to learn as much as possible about the OMS specialty. I’ve been visiting with our surgeons, our practice leaders, going to dinners with surgeons because they’re working so hard during the day, so that I can understand their challenges and really start thinking about how we can do an even better job of solving them, and working with our practice support center to make sure we’re focusing on the right things. It’s easy to lose focus on what’s most important for our practices, unless you’re in there a lot and really having open communication, so I wanted to make sure I was getting involved and really understanding that.
The second thing was, when you’re investing in a business for the long term, you do have to make important decisions about the areas you want to invest in, and how you’re going to deploy the capital you have. In an environment like today, capital is expensive, so you have to be really careful about where you’re allocating it and spending it. IT, marketing, remodeling and equipping practices and M&A — there are so many different places where you could be allocating capital, but it’s really important for us to make sure we’re investing in a way that gives us the outcomes we want to see, so making sure we’re balancing investments in our existing surgeon practices and the development people expect when they join an organization like ours, while still making sure we’re doing the right thing and finding the right surgeons to partner with. That balanced approach to capital allocation in today’s world is more important than ever, so I really want to make sure that we as a team are being as thoughtful as possible about that.
Q: What is most exciting to you about oral surgery?
DD: There have just been a lot of investments in technology, which I think is great because there’s a lot going into clinical technology to help surgeons do a better job and get better medical outcomes. Some of that could be AI related. Some of it could be implant related. There are so many different technologies on the clinical side that are helping advance what we’re doing in our specialty, and certainly then on the operation side as well … We’re really focused on our practice management systems and making sure they can help us do what we need to do in our practices, and then downstream, making sure we’re collecting well and working with our payers the right way. There’s so much technology out there, and it can be a little overwhelming, and it’s a little bit like a complicated puzzle. You have to put the pieces together, but what’s nice is the pieces are all there, or mostly there, and now it’s just making sure we’re putting it together in a way that paints the picture we want to see.
The second thing is, you always hear stories about how specialists can sometimes be difficult, and I just haven’t experienced that at all. The oral surgeons I’ve met, some of them have been practicing for decades, some of them a few years, and then even meeting oral surgeons in residency programs — it’s just a great group of people that have passion for what they do. And whenever you interact with people who have passion, it just excites you and motivates you to do what you can do on the business side to help them be more successful in what they want to do. To me, it’s really exciting to be working with such a great group of people.
Q: How would you describe your leadership style?
DD: I’ve been doing this for quite a bit, and I’ve learned from a lot of great people along the way. I think it’s really important for a leadership style to match your personality in order for it to be authentic. If you’re trying to act in a way that doesn’t naturally fit how you are as a person, I just think people don’t necessarily gravitate to something like that. I’m a relationship-oriented person, whether it’s in my personal life or professional life. I’m careful who I surround myself with because I want to get to know people, spend a lot of time with them, and for me, building those great relationships leads to having collaborative discussions to get to the right answer. I know I’m not going to have all the right answers, certainly in a new specialty for me, but surrounding yourself with great people and creating that culture where there’s mutual respect and people feel comfortable sharing their opinions is really important. If you can do those things well, it helps people understand you’re doing this not only to help build a great company, but you’re doing it to create great opportunities for people up and down through the organization, whether it’s at the PSC where we support our surgeon practices or at the practice level. I think businesses like the one we’re in are really relationship based, and if you put that first, everything follows fairly easily from there.
