Sharon, Mass.-based Qualitas Dental Partners is tackling accessibility challenges in the Northeast head-on with the help of a renowned oral surgeon and a new oral surgery center.
The DSO recently opened Bayside Oral & Facial Surgery in Seekonk, Mass., with the goal of alleviating workforce shortages and increasing the availability of services for patients in the region. The center is one of the largest free standing oral surgery centers in New England.
The facility is led by Constantinos Laskarides, DMD, DDS, PharmD, a diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is one of only 20 oral and maxillofacial surgeons in Massachusetts.
CEO Bob Rubino and Dr. Laskarides recently connected with Becker’s to discuss the center’s growth and how they are working to enhance oral surgery services in the area.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What inspired the opening of this center?
Bob Rubino: It was a joint project with a retiring surgeon. The biggest challenge facing Southeastern Massachusetts-Rhode Island dental care is an access-to-care problem. There just aren’t enough dentists, even fewer oral surgeons in our area. [The surgeon] had been a provider for many years, he ran a study club in Rhode Island for oral surgeons, but he was retiring. He said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could help out with this whole access-to-care problem?” He was actually the one who found the new facility location. The key to success of a new facility is having the best oral surgeons. When we met Dr. Laskarides, we knew we found the right fellow. Dr. Laskarides, along with our team of world-class surgeons, started building out the vision for what this center could be. How do you build it so patients would have a wonderful experience? How do you make it warm, inviting, and have all the modern amenities? How do you benefit all the referring doctors in the area and ensure they are comfortable with the care their patients are going to receive? How do you staff it? What does the digital workflow look like? It was a great collaboration between dentists and Qualitas.
The facility is called Bayside Oral & Facial Surgery. It has seven operatories and three recovery rooms, [and] it’s all digital workflow. It was designed with warm, earthy tones. Several patients have commented that it “looks like a spa.” If you’ve had any oral surgery, you know it’s not a spa, but the feeling was intended to be that way. We have a wonderful staff. We have nurses. Not many oral surgery facilities have nurses anymore, but we do. To Dr. Laskarides’ credit, he really wanted to elevate the experience to university standards. We’re actually having meetings for dentists. We’re hosting study clubs for the dental community. That’s one of the achievements we’re proud of because the area really was devoid of leadership in those regards, and we’re trying to at least be the conduit for a lot of that. We have three surgeons who we’ve brought into this area from Boston. The area hasn’t had new surgeons in years. We really did it for our patients and for our referring doctors because the wait times for appointments were painfully long. Some people in the market are waiting three months for oral surgery. To us, that’s not acceptable. If you’re going to live the Qualitas mission, you have to believe patient care comes first. That’s why we built such a wonderful oral surgery center and brought in world-class surgeons.
Q: What does the patient flow look like right now, and how has that evolved since the center’s opening?
Dr. Constantinos Laskarides: When we opened, we were met with enthusiasm from both patients and referring doctors. As a professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery and former program director of the advanced residency program for Tufts University, I was known to many Tufts graduates in the area, so it became easy to form trusted collaborations early on. The patient flow is increasing, as anticipated, but we built Bayside Oral and Facial Surgery center with a model of timely provision of the highest level of care. Before we opened our surgical center patients had to wait two to three months, or more, to get oral surgery. Dentists were calling and pleading with oral surgery practices to squeeze patients in. There was a problem in timely quality care, [but] we’re addressing that quite successfully.
BR: We stay open later too so patients can schedule a later appointment if they need to. We stay open four nights a week until six o’clock. This is new to the area. We’re open five days a week, so it’s a very big radius we pull from because of the inherent shortage of surgeons in the area. We’re seeing patients from the Cape, patients from Southeastern Massachusetts and deep into Rhode Island. It’s an easy place to get to. The parking is plentiful. It’s right off the highway, so that’s helped too. We [also] added a third surgeon. We didn’t think we were going to have to add one as quickly as we did, but we did. We wanted to be thoughtful as we launched. We wanted to get any kinks out of the flow. The practice is running full bore right now.
Q: What are the benefits of having nurses at your facility?
CL: You usually see an RN being employed in an academic/teaching center or at the hospital, but you don’t see that in the usual outpatient setting of an oral surgery facility. There are many benefits of having a nurse. Between anesthesia services, recovery, medication management, post-operative care — all of that can be done way better and more effectively by a registered nurse. Our nurse is unlike others. Before becoming a nurse, she was a dental assistant, so she’s actually cross-trained. She has a deep understanding of the procedures and can assist with surgery, apart and beyond her RN responsibilities.
Q: What goals do you have for the center?
CL: We aim to raise the bar. For instance, you may be aware of certain certifications like [Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support] or [Pediatric Advanced Life Support.] Usually, only the surgeons are certified in those types of resuscitative components, but here the staff is also certified, which is not the standard in oral surgery practices. Anesthesia is one of the services we provide here, and we wanted to elevate it to a safety level that is unprecedented. We approached it with the same mentality as other elements, like technology and equipment, digital innovations, and overall patient experience and outcomes. We have elevated every single aspect of oral surgery services.
BR: That’s one of our big goals with the center, not only to continue to serve the patients of the area, but also to provide some type of leadership in the area for other dentists. A place they can come and learn, feel good and expand their own businesses. Dentistry works much better when there’s a community of dentists. Since Covid-19 hit, the community has been lost in a lot of markets, but there is a real need for community, a real need for education, and we’d like to help.
