Dental implants, specialty fields, doctor equity and medical-dental integration are some of the many trends DSO executives have been paying close attention to this year.
Becker's has spoken with several DSO execs this year about growth at their organizations and what they're seeing in the dental and DSO industries.
Here is what six execs shared with Becker's.
What made a DSO critic switch sides
Gary Kadi. Founder of NextLevel Doctors Group (New York City): We're right now looking at the mid-adopters. They're much more analytic. They have a lower threshold for risk tolerance. So we're creating ways for mid-adopters to understand the decisions and the steps they need to go through. So we're paying attention to who is buying now or who wants to sell now. We're also looking at the age groups. We're seeing more mid-career practitioners thinking they don't have to wait until the end of their career and make moves now. It makes sense no matter where you are in your career to do this because we have doctors who are in their early 40s and late 30s doing this, and that's unheard of as well, but it makes a lot of sense for them. But most early or mid-career doctors don't understand why they would sell now. We have an educational process that does that as well.
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Jonathon Jundt, DDS, MD. Chief Medical Officer at Allied OMS (Southlake, Texas): If you look at the dental implant utilization rate globally, we have an adoption rate in the United States that is well below other countries like South Korea, for example. We really haven't even begun to see the full market potential of dental implants in the United States. As our population ages and as the adoption rate through all age ranges increases, we're going to see a continued trend towards increased adoption of replacement of teeth with dental implants.
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Kristen Cusack. CEO of Phase 1 Equity (Southlake, Texas): In orthodontics, there are a few things. There's definitely been an ongoing shift to more adult patients. Some people call it the Zoom effect, that there's been a lot of people who like us are sitting here looking at each other and seeing teeth and thinking, "Oh, mine could be straighter, mine could be whiter," those kinds of things. I think it's almost more awareness that's happened as more adults have gotten into orthodontia.
A lot of different things [are] happening with aligners, too. We're just starting to see some things on the aligner front. There are so many people who have gotten into that market, but I think now [there is] more advancement that hasn't necessarily happened. A lot of it was just the same thing. So I'm seeing some interesting things there, too.
Pacific Dental Services to surpass 1,000 offices in 2023: Q&A with CEO Stephen Thorne
Stephen Thorne IV. CEO and Founder of Pacific Dental Services (Irvine, Calif.): One of the trends I'm closely following is the shift towards a more predictive and preventive approach in dentistry. There is growing awareness about the Mouth-Body Connection, where people are realizing that oral health is closely linked to overall health. CMS's inclusion of medically necessary dental services in Medicare plans and the growing pull from Medicare Advantage plans demonstrate the increasing recognition of the importance of oral health in overall healthcare. I call this the convergence era of dentistry, where the medical and dental fields are collaborating more closely to provide better, more efficient care.
What's next for Sage Dental after hitting 100 offices
Jim Mizouni. Chief Development Officer and Senior Vice President at Sage Dental (Boca Raton, Fla.): There's a significant trend towards doctor equity. A lot of groups have come to the realization of "How do we keep our doctors long-term?" Well, we do that through various equity programs. It could be equity in the practice or within the company. It used to be that there were a lot of groups that did that through acquisitions. They would acquire a practice and as part of that selling price, the doctor would keep equity in the new venture or get equity within the company. What you're now seeing across a lot of major groups is that they're now going back for doctors who were employed dentists and providing equity programs for them as part of their long-term retention strategies. So they didn't come to those practices as acquired doctors. They may have come to them as employed doctors and now they're going back and transitioning them into equity doctors. So I think from an internal standpoint, there are about 100 different ways to go at it.
What 1 specialty dental group is focused on in 2023
Nate Mote. COO of Specialty1 Partners (Houston): As a specialty-focused DSO, we’re keeping a close eye on trends around relationships across specialties and with general dentistry. We’re closely watching the evolution of the space, especially the emergence of larger multispecialty centers (versus more traditional, single-specialty practices).