This month, several dental industry leaders spoke with Becker's about cost-effective strategies to support staff, private equity's impact on dentistry and new technologies.
Here are is what 10 dental leaders told us in October:
Optimism in dentistry: Higher standards + challenging insurers
Jennifer Bell, DDS. Dentist at Signature Family Dentistry (Holly Springs, N.C.): I continue to be optimistic about the passion and commitment dentists have toward their profession despite the many obstacles they are experiencing daily. Many are still pursuing higher levels of knowledge and education to provide the absolute best care for their patients and that commitment seems unwavering. I am also optimistic that dentistry in general is moving into a more holistic approach, and patients are the great beneficiaries of this movement. Unlike medicine which is moving to even more compartmentalized and subspecialty care, dentists are taking on larger roles in the overall health management of patients. For that reason, it continues to be an exciting time to be in dentistry.
Things to know before joining a DSO
Andrew Goldsmith, DDS. Owner of Northshore Dental (Houston): Dentists are an independent lot. I have often said that building an organization of dentists is like herding cats. If you are independent and want to be your own boss, then a DSO is potentially not for you. Having said that, not all DSOs are the same and there are many hybrid models that now offer equity in your clinic or in the group. If you are tired of making the big decisions, tired of sleepless nights worrying about staff issues, business issues and income flow, and really want to just focus on dentistry, then a DSO is for you. Within a DSO, you can build your own practice within a practice that includes a support structure that wants you to be empowered and successful. Ultimately it comes down to whether you want all the responsibility and privileges of practice ownership. Make sure you do your homework because there are many hybrid versions of traditional DSOs and not all DSOs are created equal.
The most cost-effective strategies for supporting dental staff
Catrise Austin, DDS. Owner of VIP Smiles Cosmetic Dentistry (Flint, Mich.): One of the things I used to do, and still do, is I am not afraid to go outside of the office and just have some team building activities. It may be going to a top restaurant or going roller skating or bowling — some of those things will just take the stress off. If a staff member is feeling burnt out, [make sure] there is a level-headed person in the organization who they really feel confident they can go and talk to. A lot of times they hold that stress in and it's just festering, so making sure the doors are open [and] that it's okay to bring suggestions to the leaders in the business and that the business leaders are not afraid to make changes. Maybe it's an anonymous suggestion box, but we have to know what our team members are feeling, and anything that can make our businesses run better, we should be open to doing it, especially if it's a cost-effective measure we put into place. It's all about just treating each other like family members because we do spend probably the majority of our time in the practice, more than with our families, and we have to open up the communication and make sure we are openly communicating and solving problems together.
PE needs a 'balanced response' to dentistry
Robert Rubino. CEO of Qualitas Dental Partners (Sharon, Mass.): From a purely objective and clinical perspective, private equity investors have brought fresh, third-party capital into the dental industry. This capital has supported investments in new and expanded practice facilities, dental equipment and services, continuing education, and direct-to-patient marketing. It has also been used to acquire existing practices, often at purchase prices higher than those offered by associates. Private equity-facilitated acquisitions have enabled more rapid scaling of business operations. Leveraging that scale has allowed dental practices to achieve greater buying power in negotiations with suppliers and service providers. Additionally, private equity has introduced greater reporting requirements, increased oversight, consistent examination of business metrics, and financial transparency in the dental industry.
The operational warning signs DSOs should watch out for
Ibrahim Jarjoura, DDS. President of Dental Care Team Group (Flint and Grand Blanc, Mich.): [Marketing is] the easiest thing to cut when things are not going as well as you want them to and your bottom line is not where it needs to be, but what you're doing is reducing the amount of patients who are coming through the organization. So you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Marketing can be a million different things. It doesn't have to be something that costs you $20,000 a month. There's a term that I coined, and it's "outbound communication." Outbound communication equals inbound attention. The more you outbound communicate, the more attention you get, and that could be just sending letters to your patients, sending emails to your patients, sending newsletters for your existing patients. There are really two populations that you need to care about. One is your inside population, and the other one is your outside population. So the outside population is definitely marketing, social media, and then don't ignore your existing patients.
What dental leaders see for the future of AI
Steven Jones. Co-founder and Chief Growth Officer of Cordental Group (Cincinnati): We're already seeing that our case acceptance has gone up. We said from the beginning to our doctors, we will never replace your clinical and diagnostic skills. I think the Overjet overlay within the radiographs has really presented an opportunity for them to be better presented to patients, and how the patients better understand it. That's where this really gets exciting for us is that we're not changing how we're diagnosing, we're just changing how we're treating and producing and presenting it to the patients.
What dentists want from Medicaid, Medicare next
Andrew Wang, DDS. Olympia Fields Dental Associates (Matteson, Ill.): I believe Medicare and Medicaid programs should increase their reimbursements for bread-and-butter dental procedures. Medicare dental reimbursement rates have not increased since the pandemic. Dentists are observing an increased cost from dental suppliers after the pandemic. Unfortunately, we cannot increase the cost to our Medicare patients.
The pandemic's 'far-reaching' impact on dentistry
Barry Lyon, DDS. Chief Dental Officer for the Division of Orthodontics and Pediatric Dentistry at Dental Care Alliance (Sarasota, Fla.): The pandemic’s effect on the ability of dentists to provide care greatly affected earnings. According to the American Dental Association, the average general dentist saw a 17.9% decrease in net income in 2020 compared to 2019, with specialists somewhat less affected. Older general dentists, those age 65 and older, saw a 27.5% decrease in net income. Clearly, this explains the boom in general practices seeking affiliations with DSOs in the following years.
The next technology that could revolutionize dentistry
Laurence Gaalaas, DDS. The University of Minnesota School of Dentistry (Minneapolis): MRI in dentistry is new and exciting, and the patient images are so fun to look at because image quality has improved so much in recent years. I remind myself and all of my students though, that just because an image is high quality doesn't automatically make it diagnostically useful to the patient. What is most motivating for me is now that we have a system which uses many of the latest technological advancements and produces high quality images, we can put it to work and see what real clinical questions it can answer for dentistry. In other words, what treatment decisions it can help dental professionals make to support improved patient outcomes. Everything we're doing comes down to just that: helping clinicians get better answers and make better decisions, which leads to better treatment outcomes.
How a fourth-generation dentist uses her family legacy to lead her practice
Ilona Casellini, DMD. Owner of Swiss Quality Smile (Los Angeles): One of the things our patients love is that we offer them a hot towel after every visit. It's always our patients' favorite thing. They're always looking forward to it. They're like, "Oh, it's like the spa experience." We have a very small boutique-style office, so basically we see one patient at a time. I do my own hygiene. We spend a lot of one-on-one time with our patients, so that just really makes them feel comfortable and well taken care of, and they're not just feeling like the dentist is popping in for five minutes after they've had their teeth cleaned. So I have really great relationships with my patients because I spend a lot of time with them. So those are the kinds of things we do to make them feel more comfortable. We offer them blankets and pillows, so we try to make it as stress free as possible.