Dental practice owners and executives spoke with Becker’s this month about a range of topics, including growth strategies, staffing challenges and tariffs.
Here is what eight dental leaders told us in July:
What The Aspen Group gets right about leadership development
Laura Sage. Director of Learning and Development at The Aspen Group (Chicago): I think the biggest misconception we hear is that we’re telling the doctors how to doctor, like how to do things. We are offering consultative guidance on a lot of these things. We have many experts who were top in their field that helped build a lot of the curriculum, but we’re never going to tell them what to do and how to do it. It’s up to them to adopt whatever it is they want because at the end of the day, they’re the provider. They can utilize our services however they would like to. We get a lot of doctors who come in and they’re like, “Well, I heard I can’t manage my own schedule. Aspen runs my schedule,” or “I have no control over what I treatment plan,” and that’s just simply not the case … we’re just helping them with the tools to make it happen.
The growth plans for dental leaders in 2025
Sibera Brannon, DDS. Dentist and Owner of Affordable Dentures and Implants (Sun City, Ariz.): For the second half of 2025, I’m focused on scaling both clinical innovation and community impact. Professionally, I’m integrating digital workflows for full arch prosthetics across my practices while mentoring young dentists in leadership and surgical excellence. Beyond the U.S., I’m expanding Project NicaRisas, a dental and literacy outreach initiative in Nicaragua that partners with local clinics and schools to provide sustainable care and education. My goal is to model what it means to give from overflow — believing that generosity is a strategy, and transformation begins when we assume we can help.
Dentistry’s breaking point: What happens if staffing woes don’t ease?
Thomas von Sydow. CEO of Cornerstone Dental Specialties (Irvine, Calif.): Unfortunately, I do think this problem will persist. Dental assistants and hygienists have always had turnover issues. The DSO sector has the most issues with that. I don’t think it’s a pay issue. DSOs pay well. I believe it’s the “local” feel of private general practices and specialty offices, as well as, more flexible time off. There is nothing as valuable in a practice as tenured staff. While I don’t believe the quality will be less, the patient wait times, their dislike of change, seeing new faces, etc. could impact their loyalty. Lastly, I believe dentistry needs to follow the healthcare sector and get staff to work at their highest level of certification/licensure. We know mental stimulation increases engagement. This also necessitates expanding training and looking at ways to increase scopes of responsibility. We need more expanded functions.
Why a strong finance-operations partnership is crucial for DSO success
David Pallaschke. CFO at Salt Dental Partners (Phoenix): [There are other companies] where finance is a little bit more commanding. It’s not partnering with operations. It’s kind of telling operations what to do. I think it is super important to establish a partnership because once you can establish a partnership and you’re able to provide insights, it’s a lot easier to drive the business through the insights and partnership than it is to have a finance team that is sort of commanding and telling operations what to do.
The danger of the DSO ‘buying spree’
Sami Webb, DDS. CEO of Epic4 Specialty Partners (Scottsbluff, Neb.): One of the biggest problems in our industry is the revolving door of doctors, where in some of these DSOs, you have a doctor come for two years, they leave, and you have this cycle of doctors coming and going. That does not provide great care to the patients … The last thing any of us want to see is this deep decline in patient care. We’re all about legacy, and when those kinds of things happen, pretty soon, everything you work so hard to build goes away. This is really about maintaining that legacy and having quality doctors at the chair who are there for the long haul.
Why dental brokers could be on the way out
Bridgett Jorgensen, DMD. Dentist of North Gwinnett Dental Care (Sugar Hill, Ga.): I think going through a dental broker to sell a practice or to find opportunities is over. Brokers and their 10% fee to sell a practice is unneeded in today’s social media and anonymous posting era. A person can decide to sell their practice, post anonymously on one of many sites available for free or a small fee, gather all interested parties, and sell to the best choice completely on their own. A valuation is usually done by a CPA or CVA, and an attorney will be needed to write up the purchase agreement, but those professionals charge less than $15,000- $20,000, a far cry from the six figure fee charged by dental brokers.
The dental specialty in danger of Trump’s tariffs
Barry Lyon, DDS. Dental Director at Main Street Children’s Dentistry and Orthodontics and Chief Clinical Auditor for Dental Care Alliance (Sarasota, Fla.): The on-again, off-again threat of tariffs places a dark cloud over the industry in general. Let’s assume for the moment that all things are equal and families are not impacted by layoffs, inflation and the loss of health benefits. For orthodontists, the prime concern is the increased cost of orthodontic supplies — most of which come from China, Mexico and Canada, economies zeroed in by the current administration. It takes little imagination to see whether the costs of operating an orthodontic practice will be heavily impacted. On top of this, the recruiting and retention of dental assistants continues to be a challenge, and dental assistant salaries are expected to continue increasing.
How dentists can fix their patient acquisition systems
Rob Odell. Owner of wpDuo: One thing I’m still noticing with practices is fragmented patient acquisition systems. Some leads get emailed in, some people call on a phone, and then they get managed in a different way. I think there’s still a lot of opportunity to create a more concise way for people to reach out to your practice and really just start the first conversation. That’s kind of being ignored. It’s almost an accepted fact that some leads come from emails, some from phone calls and others from social media and there’s just not a central way to collect all that, which creates a lot of chaos for the practices.
