Lexington, Ky.-based PepperPointe Partnerships has affiliated dental practices throughout Kentucky, New York and Virginia.
Greg White, DMD, the organization's president and CEO, connected with Becker's on the DSO's roadmap for 2024 as well as this year's growth.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are your DSO's top priorities in 2024?
Dr. Greg White: I think 2024 brings on some unique opportunities for us. Anticipating a little bit slower rate of growth gives you an opportunity to really work on some of the internal aspects of the business, primarily making sure you have the right people in the right seats. We also plan on reviewing all of our internal processes and optimizing for greater efficiency. In every process you really have to either be optimizing for efficiency or optimizing for customer satisfaction, and if you're not doing one or both of those things then you probably have the wrong process. Lastly, this is a good opportunity to identify the obstacles that are in the way for growth and come up with a plan to remove those obstacles.
Q: What are two to three key strategies in place to expand and grow your footprint?
GW: I look at that in two different ways. One is expanding the external footprint beyond where we currently are, and then secondly, how do we fill in the footprint of where we currently are? Our model is a little different in that we're aggregating individual solo practices into group practices and uniting them and then secondarily help guiding them through once they're united. Our primary focus is to seek out like-minded individuals that place high value on the things that we value such as legacy, doctor ownership and control and coming up with a plan for them to achieve their very best financial outcome or that that outcome creates alignment for all the stakeholders, which are the patient, the communities where those patients live and the doctors. From an internal standpoint, I would say working with the doctors that we currently have within the groups to recruit more doctors in to serve more patients, and then working collaboratively with them to build specific actionable plans for each of those practices that we serve to help them become the very best version of themselves as they see it.
Q: What are the biggest challenges facing DSOs today?
GW: All other DSOs that require intensive capital would probably answer along the lines of the rising interest rates, the limited access to capital and the employment issues are probably going to be their biggest barriers. Since our model is not capital intensive, those would not really apply to us. Our biggest challenge related to higher interest rates and inflation is going to be the limited discretionary income that the patients have to be able to take advantage of services that they need for treatment plans. Coming up with alternative financing options for those patients, keeping our cost to the consumer down, and growing same-store sales will be crucial for us.
Q: What is your proudest accomplishment of 2023?
GW: It's really been the refocusing on getting the right people in the right seats and that dedication to refocusing on the refining of the internal processes. The reason I say that is because it is really hard to shift from grow, grow, grow to let's slow down for a minute and build our infrastructure in advance of that growth. At the end of the day customer service really matters.