Boca Raton, Fla.-based Sage Dental has found continuing education opportunities to be an advantage for recruiting and retaining staff.
More than 60 dentists affiliated with the DSO recently completed dental implant training at the Academy of Modern Implants & Dentistry. The training was provided through the Sage Academies program, which was launched in 2021 for dental professionals in the DSO's network to receive training in areas such as prosthodontics and orthodontics. The program’s curriculum features 100 hours of continuing education that includes hands-on treatment and in-person and online courses.
Sage Dental's Cindy Roark, DMD, senior vice president and chief clinical officer, and Natalie Curtis, director of learning and development, recently spoke with Becker's about the Sage Academies program and how it benefits employees.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: How did the concept for the Sage Academies program come about?
Dr. Cindy Roark: Natalie and I leveraged our learnings from other organizations. I had been the DSO dentist where an industry partner would come in and say, "Effective immediately, everyone's going to learn rotary endodontics." While that sounds like a great thing, I was the case of "I can't stand endodontics." It doesn't matter how many times you use your resources and train me, I do other things better and more efficiently. Dentists are all very different. Some wish they had been an orthodontist but didn't go to school for that. A ton of people want to place implants but weren't taught that in school.
We worked together and came up with the four biggest asks of our doctors as we were hiring. Am I allowed to do endodontics? Can I do clear aligners? Can I place implants? Can I restore All-on-Four? We took a look at those four [questions] and created a full academy with an industry partner in each one and created an opt-in. You have to do CEs for your license, but you don't have to do these. If you want to learn something, we're willing to upscale and train you for free.
The enthusiasm and the excitement about it and frankly, for them, being great at something they didn't think they could do in a controlled environment has been huge in terms of payoff for our retention of doctors and for growth and revenue for them.
Q: Does providing this training help Sage Dental set itself apart from competitors?
CR: Absolutely, and the more the word gets out, the better quality of candidates we get. It's creating buzz out there and it should because it's a great program.
Q: What has some of the feedback been from dentists who participated in the implant training?
Natalie Curtis: The feedback we have received over and over again is they're so thankful [and] it is the best training they have ever received when it comes to implant placement. They say they learned so much even though they were already training to place implants.
Q: Are there plans to conduct more implant training in the future?
CR: If we have the interest there. Think about Sage being based in Florida and Georgia. We have a demographic that skews a little bit older than some other states. What we have now are the Medicaid Advantage plans for the very first time in the history of the country covering implants. The problem is there aren't a lot of general practices out there that know how to do it well. That's the gap we're looking to solve for. We're looking at how quickly but competently we can get people trained and how many should. I want people to want to capitalize on this training.
NC: As we offer these extensive education programs, the hope is that our doctors stay. The hope is that as we grow, newer people come on and want to take them.