Dental practice owners and executives have spoken with Becker’s recently about a range of topics, including artificial intelligence, policy changes, DSO investments and staff burnout.
Here is what nine dental leaders told us in June:
The legislative changes that could boost dentistry
Bridgett Jorgensen, DMD. Dentist at North Gwinnett Dental Care (Sugar Hill, Ga.): Being able to transfer licenses to different states effortlessly would make dentistry as a career much more competitive. If a dentist [would be] able to accept a position in any state after obtaining a license in one state and passing all the boards, especially for couples in which one spouse needs to move for their job. Currently, it can take two to six months to obtain a license by credentials. Staying in one position or owning a practice right out of school might have been the norm in the 1960s, but that is not true anymore. Dentists need the ability to move as easily as their counterparts in other professions.
Where Allied OMS is headed next after its 1st capital investment
Daniel Hosler. Founder and CEO of Allied OMS: It’s increasingly feeling like a field of capital structure differences. The DSOs that are not over-levered, that have free cash flow to further invest in their businesses, those [DSOs] are doing really well. They’re growing. They’re continuing to add more services to their patients. But if your capital structure or your capital partner is a little bit long in the tooth, your interest rates have gone up, so all you’re using your cash flow for is to just service your debt, it really makes it hard to invest in the business and invest in a great experience for your patients.
The marketing strategy boosting 1 DSO’s doctor recruitment
Bob Rubino. CEO of Qualitas Dental Partners: 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.
Dental school trends concerning dentists
Mike Davis, DDS. Dentist of Smiles of Sante Fe (Albuquerque, N.M.): The overwhelming concern is the cost of education and debt incurred by students. Today the average student loan debt is $300,000 and much higher in some cases when other debt is added in. Many if not most of these students will serve in some form of debt bondage after graduation. This debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Recent grads too often are forced into horrific choices for employment in order to meet monthly debt obligation payments.
Secondly, the quality of education at numbers of programs has seen a steep decline. It has degenerated to the point that the State of New York now requires a post-grad GPR prior to licensure. Much of the education for today’s dental students is dependent upon volunteer clinical faculty and extremely low-pay faculty. Salaries are top-heavy at the administration level.
Finding balance in dentistry: How 1 dentist tackles burnout
Colby Sowers, DMD. Endodontist with Aspen Dental: Looking at mental burnout, I think one of the biggest things that I see is pressure in the sense that you’re trying to obtain perfect outcomes and achieve perfection when it comes to your patients, and that’s not something that you can always achieve. We go in and give our best every single day, and even though we might be doing everything the right way, we’re not always going to achieve the most perfect outcome, unfortunately, and I think that’s very difficult to reconcile sometimes. I think that can have some contribution to mental burnout.
Dentistry’s biggest misconceptions
Jamie Burks. Director of Operations of Providence Dental Partners (Atlanta): In my opinion, a major misconception in dentistry today is that all DSOs are inherently bad or that they compromise the quality of patient care. The reality is, while not all DSOs operate the same way, many provide invaluable support that allows dental teams to focus more on patient care and less on the administrative burden of running a practice. A well-run DSO can provide structure, resources, training and consistency to clinical teams creating an environment where providers can thrive, and patients can receive high-quality, efficient care. Like any organization, success relies on leadership, core values for patients and team members and empowerment. When a DSO prioritizes clinical excellence, team development and a strong patient-first culture, it can enhance the quality of dentistry delivered, not diminish it.
The technology middle-market DSOs are using to get ahead
Florian Hillen. Founder and CEO of VideaHealth: It’s not so easy anymore [for middle-market DSOs] to get a lot of external financing to grow their footprint further. Usually middle-market DSOs would grow a lot by acquiring practices, but that has become much more expensive. The other big growth lever is to do same-store growth, and that’s where Videa AI is a perfect solution. The problem is they cannot grow as much anymore inorganically, so they need to grow organically.
The other [reason] is that many middle-market DSOs have more than one practice management system, and it’s really hard for them to get unified data in terms of how their offices are performing because they’re in these different systems. Videa AI enables them to get this unified data across the entire footprint because we just launched a product called VideaInsights, and that gives you business and clinical metrics across your footprint, independent of what PMS systems you are using. When you talk about the top market, like Aspen or Heartland, they have everything standardized or they have people on staff who do this, but the mid-market [DSOs] don’t have analysts and all of that, so they lean into our technology in order to get this done.
Dentistry’s most overhyped trends
Len Schiavone. CEO of CORDENTAL Group (Cincinnati): AI in diagnostics is still very much in development. The tools are there for reading radiographic images and are often being marketed as time saving and improved diagnostics. The reality is that it is an added tool and not a replacement to clinical judgement. False positives/negatives are still a concern and while AI is evolving, it is often overhyped. It is a case where the marketing and excitement around AI is ahead of its day-to-day impact.
What Heartland Dental gets right about workplace culture
Kirsty Leyland. Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Heartland Dental: 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.
