Dentistry was filled with challenges and opportunities as providers dealt with emerging technology, shifting patient expectations, federal policy changes and financial pressures. Dental leaders faced obstacles head on and paved the way for continued innovation.
Here are just a few of the guiding principles leaders shared with Becker’s this year:
Dan Burke. Chief Enterprise Strategy Officer at PDS Health (Henderson, Nev.): I think we’re seeing a clearer divide between DSOs that truly add value and those that don’t. The ones that will thrive are focused on improving clinical care and clinical outcomes, helping patients get the best care and doing it on scale. The value creators talk about lifetime patient value, care quality and long-term impact. They put clinicians and patients first, knowing that business results will follow. Those organizations will continue to play an important role in shaping the future of healthcare in neighborhoods around the country.
The DSOs that will have the biggest challenges are those that still see themselves primarily as aggregators — trying to grow by simply cobbling together more practices. That model isn’t built for long-term success. The real challenge isn’t interest rates or other external pressures. It’s whether or not they’re adding real value to the clinician and the patient. At the end of the day, that’s how DSOs need to judge themselves when they look in the mirror.
Doug Drew. CEO of U.S. Oral Surgery Management (Irving, Texas): 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.
James Jones. CEO of Cal Dental USA (Los Angeles): I’ll be honest — even though AI is exciting, I’m still a believer that patients want more human interaction. I’m a hands-on CEO. I’m in the offices every day. I literally had a patient tell me recently, “Do you guys actually answer the phone?” I said yes. He said, “Good — I’m coming here. My dentist has robots and I can never get through.” That told me everything. Technology is powerful, but the human connection is irreplaceable. The DSOs who master both will win the next decade.
David Pallaschke. CFO at Salt Dental Partners (Phoenix): I think the biggest thing is having a really good partnership with operations. [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.
Julia Richman, DDS. Dentist at Dino Kid’s Dentistry (Covington, Wash.): Culture determines how we approach patient care and has a huge part to play in the morale of the team. Culture determines: do we see a difficult patient as a challenge or a headache? Do we work together as a team or do we get embroiled in interpersonal disputes? Do we have an identity as an organization that we are proud to be a part of? Do we agree on office policies and management? Of course, a dental office is not a democracy, but any good manager knows that if the team does not buy in, nothing is going to work well. Culture means a culture of psychological safety as well where people can freely ask questions and admit to mistakes, and where we can debrief after a difficult appointment to see what we could have done better or if there is anything we can learn.
Chris Salierno, DDS. Chief Dental Officer at Tend (Nashville, Tenn.): We have a constant, never-ending improvement philosophy. We want to innovate in healthcare. We want to innovate in hospitality. We’ve just completed a multi-year process of getting real operational excellence, and we’re ready to hit the gas pedal on real growth in terms of number of locations, but also really making good on our promise to innovate in healthcare and hospitality. Innovation means change. It means new, exciting technologies and investments we’re making, and we need a top team to do that. I think it made so much sense to start with, “Hey, it’s been a little while since we’ve reviewed the compensation structure.” Our retention is good. Our dentists really enjoy the culture we build at our practices. They love playing with the technology we have, but we’re in growth mode. To take on that change and those innovations, we really need to make sure we continue to just always dial up attracting and retaining top talent.
Nick White, DMD. Owner of Lake Mary (Fla.) Pediatric Dentistry: We’ve always taken pride in really treating our staff very well, whether it’s through pay, whether it’s through bonuses [or] whether it’s through just fun stuff we do in the office. We have staff outings we like to do. I’m lucky because I live in Orlando, so we have amazing theme parks where we’ll have some staff training days to go have some fun but also pay attention to how certain theme parks interact with their customers and try to bring some of those concepts back to the office.
[We make] sure the staff gets in and out on time. We’re not keeping them over way past their lunch hour [or] way past the end of the day. A lot of my staff have families of their own and kids they need to get to. So, we really take great pride in being a family-oriented office and really making the staff feel like they’re part of our extended family. That’s always helped. It gets more competitive with so many offices fighting for a short number of staff that we’ve really seen a significant increase in Florida as far as pay scale goes for both assistants and hygienists.
