Many DSOs have employed new methods to recruit and retain providers as staffing continues to be one of the biggest roadblocks in the dental industry.
Here is what three executives recently shared with Becker’s about their approach to staffing:
Bob Rubino. CEO of Qualitas Dental Partners (Sharon, Mass.): We look at all of our partnering practices with the opportunity to expand because there’s no lack of patient demand. The only thing that’s inhibiting us is capacity, either in provider and staff or in physical plant. So, as we look around, we’re trying to figure out how we expand each of our locations to benefit the area. It’s tricky because to find providers, you really need to have good connectivity with universities. You need to understand where dentists have been out for a period of time and are looking for a better home. You really have to work the recruiting angle very hard and build these alliances. That’s what we’ve been working on, and it’s bearing a lot of fruit.
We’ve also spent a lot of time marketing New England in order to attract dental talent out of major cities. For instance, we have three large dental universities right in Boston. Many of those [graduates] want to stay in Boston. Their whole socio-economic fabric is all in Boston. It’s only later in life that they want to come out into the suburbs. Well, the suburbs have a lot of people and they have a lot of need, but they don’t have a lot of access to that care. Part of our mission is to try to attract people into these wonderful places. We have a video that talks about New England. We have pictures of snow and skiing, we have pictures of beaches and boating, we have pictures of food — all of those things to lure people and say New England is a really wonderful, cosmopolitan place to live.
If you go to any of the Chambers of Commerce and say, “Give me your best marketing materials to talk about the area,” they’re not great. We have had to go out with our own money and our own time and resources to build some quality materials to convince people that coming to New England is something special. So far, we’ve added many providers that way. We’ve transplanted many people who didn’t necessarily give New England its due, but it’s every day we have to do it. We’re adding a valuable service to the area because we don’t want to see practices go dark. We don’t want to see providers leave the area or retire without replacing them. Eventually, there’s a whole crop of dentists who are going to retire. They must be replaced, or the problem of access-to-care is going to get worse. We are organized to help alleviate this problem.
Kirsty Leyland. Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Heartland Dental (Effingham, Ill.): We offer many things smaller employers in dentistry aren’t able to offer because we’re a very large organization, but we do have a family environment. We try to keep that kind of environment similar to a small group practice. Some of the types of benefits we offer are all related to a broader culture that prioritizes care for our employees, balance and their personal growth. We offer an extensive curriculum of education and development through our Heartland University to all employees, and a tremendous amount of continued professional credits are provided every year to our employees who participate. We support team members both personally and professionally with the basics that you’d expect of an organization of our size, and then some benefits that go beyond those basics to attract certain segments of employees. We launched a daily pay, which is an on-demand pay so employees can access their earned wages in real time, which gives them a lot of flexibility and peace of mind financially. We have a holistic employee assistance program with free and confidential counseling and resources for legal, financial and emotional support. And we have a big wellness program that supports physical, mental and financial well-being. We’re really proud of that range of benefits we’re able to offer all of our team members.
Dylan Bates. CEO of Salt Dental Partners (Phoenix): We have approximately 240 doctors at Salt right now, of which one-third are partners and they have meaningful equity in the platform. I think first and foremost, we have the right structure, so the aligned incentives. The partners own a large majority of the equity of Salt Dental Partners. We’ve never had a partner doctor leave. So we have 80 partner doctors, and we have 100% retention, and some of those partner doctors go back six years. I think it’s the culture that we’ve created [and] the events we have. We have an event every September, a partner doctor summit. We [also have] our spring event. We get 90 plus percent partner doctor participation in those events. I think that speaks to the lean forward nature of our partner doctor roster, folks that join for the right reasons, they feel the support and they see the resources we provide to them and their teams. [There is] a lot of focus on technology and tools we’ve created where they see that their practice that has continued to grow on their own gets a lot better after joining Salt. We also have great associate doctor retention because they feel the support, and the partner doctor at the practice level very much supports the associate doctors. It’s a very different approach than many DSOs out there. I would put ours up against anyone in the industry.
