Hackensack, N.J.-based Max Surgical Specialty Management is prioritizing its oral surgeon partners to help drive its success.
The organization, which launched in September 2023, has expanded in several states and expanded its leadership team to provide the best support to its partners.
MSSM supports more than 20 locations in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Co-CEOs Jason Auerbach, DDS, and Mark Censoprano, and COO Jeff DeBellis recently spoke with Becker's to discuss the company's goals for the rest of 2024 and how the company's mission and values stand apart from other DSOs.
Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What are Max's top priorities for the rest of 2024?
Mark Censoprano: We've been very fortunate as of late that we've attracted some great new partnerships with some wonderful new practices that will be joining the Max family. We'll be making a number of announcements coming up. We've been very busy, and it's been great. Our priorities are to integrate those practices really well and take very good care of those surgeons and their teams. That's always our first priority, making sure people come first and that those practices are welcomed into the family the right way. Our mission statement is to passionately support and serve our surgeons in their delivery of the optimal patient experience each and every time. That's something we have now really solidified. As we think about our priorities for the remainder of 2024, it's all about taking care of our surgeons and the new ones who are joining the family.
Q: What key strategies are in place to expand and grow your network?
Dr. Jason Auerbach: We have a team within the organization that is focused directly on surgeon recruiting. We've been very fortunate to have been able to attract some of the best and brightest surgeons in the country to some areas that some would think would be difficult to attract surgeons to in more rural or remote areas in the Northeast. I really cannot give enough credit to our team, specifically Megan Dwier, who really heads that. We really show what differentiates Max from any of the other platforms out there, which is to say that we focus heavily on the surgeon-led concept. We spend a lot of time with mentorship and we spend a lot of time focused on how to optimize the surgeon experience so the surgeons themselves can optimize the patient experience. So mentorship, collaboration [and] shared ideas are things we focus on and develop ideas and systems around so our surgeons feel and know they're part of a very special organization.
Q: What are some of the biggest ways Max has evolved since its launch last year?
Jeff DeBellis: There are a couple of key areas. The addition of Mark joining Dr. Auerbach as the Co-CEO has ultimately galvanized our senior leadership team and our regional management and operating team. They've managed to galvanize everyone around them very quickly and aim us all [toward] the vision and mission in pretty fast order. The general evolution of the mission, vision and values, and applying that to the regional operating model we deploy — dedicating human resources to going out in the field and being very high-touch and visible to our surgeon partners, engaged in ensuring that they're succeeding on a daily and weekly and monthly basis — has really been a positive evolution of the business from its genesis. Beyond that, it's our focus on investing a lot of time and effort in surgeon engagement, continuing to make sure we're communicating effectively outward to our surgeons, listening very carefully to their needs, what's going on with them and what's challenging in their day-to-day, and then answering that call.
JA: Max has always been proud to be surgeon-led, and we speak about that in much of what we do, but the level of excellence we hold ourselves to is matched by the administrative support network of executives and individuals who support us day to day. The mission to passionately serve and support the surgeons is something that is really the mission of the support organization. Our vision and our mission is to provide that high level of care as surgeons, because we're directly interacting with the patients. We have an organization of excellence, and we hold ourselves to a very high level, but they [do] too, and we work together to create this amazing experience at the practice level, all the way through the organization. I think that's the way we've evolved the most, that we have really focused on building as professional a team within the support organization as we have within the patient care organization.
JD: The only thing I will add is that, operationally, I think we've proven very quickly in the past few months to take a leap that a lot of organizations don't necessarily execute effectively, which is to go from very nuclear and single state-focused to delivering management support services in multiple states. That happened for us at the beginning of this year in very short order, and we're really proud of our integration team and the partnerships we've worked and the fact that we've complemented the partner practices we've been lucky enough to have join us through those efforts.
Q: What are some of the challenges that come with expanding across multiple states?
JD: You would imagine immediately that there are some concerns simply because of the geography. The way Max grew in the beginning of this calendar year, we went from New Jersey into Vermont, into Pennsylvania and into New York in that order. One of our immediate concerns is, are we going to be visible enough? Are we going to be able to meet the demands and expectations of our new partners? We're very fortunate that the process afforded us the opportunity to partner with people who were really interested in partnering with us. It really came down to us investing time and communicating effectively with those potential partners through the diligence process, clearly understanding and defining what we believe to be their needs in advance of partnering with them and then just working cooperatively in very short order to address those things and bring them the value they were looking for.
For the people who got the opportunity to get involved, they were excited about it. It's an exciting career growth opportunity for some of the people inside the organization to get involved in integrating businesses in other states and go to places where maybe they haven't been. One of the advantages we have in today's day and age is technology. We have the capacity to jump on a Teams call, even though we prefer to be in person. I would be a liar if I didn't admit we had some jitters about making it happen in Vermont, but I think we're really proud of the outcome thus far.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges facing DSOs and MSOs right now?
MC: Some of the larger organizations that have specialties, whether they're specialty-focused or they have specialty in their mix, have run into some trouble with being over-leveraged. Whether it's fact or fiction, some tremors have gone through the industry about some of the ways these DSOs have built themselves, and that causes some concerns among the doctors and some concerns among the practice owners and surgeons. We've actually had folks who have said to us, "I don't know if this rollover equity is going to be worth anything in the future because I hear about some of these organizations failing," and that's not good for the industry. It's not good for the doctors.
Generally, this model has proven over time to be a very successful one, but I think some folks might have made some missteps, and whether it's that they grew too quick or they didn't have the right financial structure when they were putting these deals together, you have to be very careful that the organization you're building to support the surgeons truly has their best interest always in mind. If you always have their best interest in mind, you can navigate some of these waters and not get yourself into that kind of trouble.
JA: I'll speak to it from a clinician's perspective. There's a lot of talk about some of the existing DSOs, specialty and general dentistry, that have had some pressures on them given the macroeconomic piece that's going on [with] high interest rates and the over-leverage that we've seen maybe through elevated multiples in the very high-paced few years we just exited. We have differentiated ourselves in so many different ways, but one of the ways is with our financial partners. They're smart, they're thoughtful and they want to grow. They have strong financial acumen and a strong financial presence, so we're in a very good position. It's very important for me to continue to speak to my contemporaries and those who would consider partnering with us [and] to have them understand the wherewithal of our financial partners because that's huge. Not everybody is the same, no two DSOs are the same and no two backers are the same, so it's important to see the differences.
Q: What will DSOs need to be successful and finish 2024 strong?
JA: Not to speak disparagingly about any specific DSO, [but] a lot of DSOs have taken this concept of scale just for scale. At Max, we're very focused on building a cohesive network of practices, something we can be proud of, something where, irrespective of what's to come over the course of the next X number of years, we're building something that is going to grow, that is going to provide value to our surgeons and patients, and overall, build a very good company. That's really, to a great degree, why we brought Mark in. Jeff has been with us since before we had outside investments and has done an exceptional job of systemizing and taking a little bit of my craziness to the next level, and really organizing things. So having an amazing team of people who really believe in the vision and who can actually make those things come to fruition, that's what you need.
MC: My mentor and friend from when I was at Guardian Dentistry Partners would always say, "Build a great company, and the results will come." That's really it, and that's honestly what we're trying to do day in and day out. Dr. Auerbach and our clinical advisory board really spent a lot of time together thinking about the surgeons and what they can do to enable the surgeons to be able to take the best care of their patients possible. That absolutely comes first and trumps everything else.