New dental technology developments, changing market dynamics and the competitive labor market are three major points of interest on this dental group's radar for 2025.
Specifically, recruitment and staffing in dentistry has been a consistent and constant challenge.
Irving, Texas-based U.S. Oral Surgery Management is one of the largest specialty management organizations, supporting more than 250 oral and maxillofacial surgeons across 28 states.
COO Alisa Ulrey and CFO Henry Moomaw recently connected with Becker's to share the developments and trends that they are closely watching in 2025, as well as reflect on their 2024 accomplishments.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What new dental technology developments are you interested in 2025?
Alisa Ulrey: In the last number of years, have built a solid foundation of solutions that we deliver today to help provide that patient care, but we do recognize that things move very fast in the technology world, and to that end, we've actually engaged a third-party company to come in and help us identify and prioritize.
You look on every website, or every communication that comes through, something is tied to an AI-generated technology solution, and we needed to bring someone in that helps us to be able to identify, what are the best tools that are out there that are road tested, that meet the needs of our business, that help align with our strategies, as we continue to look at 2025 and beyond.
Q: Are there any broader dental and healthcare trends that you are following this year?
Henry Moomaw: We expect to continue to closely monitor changes in the regulatory environment and any shifting market dynamics to ensure we maintain a competitive edge and set us up for long term success, as we've all seen the tight labor market.
We expect it to remain competitive for us, so to ensure retention of our team members we continue to be proactive, we continue to invest in training for them, continue to foster a positive workplace culture and we try to stay competitive with compensation.
We will also soon see an increase in the competitive environment for the recruitment of surgeons and the practices. Our dedicated team of in-house recruiters will continue to differentiate USOSM, and we're offering compelling opportunities in practices where the prospective surgeons will be well supported, strongly mentored and well compensated with those actions. We expect U.S. Oral Surgery Management to remain the premier platform in oral surgery.
Q: What is your proudest accomplishment of 2024?
AU: We are very proud of the fact that we've grown and kept key factors around successful surgeon recruiting, our expansion into new states, our ongoing quality initiatives and also our focus on building our infrastructure and investing in our infrastructure. Finally, our growth wouldn't be possible without the strong engagement of our surgeons, who are truly our partners in this.
I think we continue to strive to build those collaborative relationships, to really be the voice of what they need to very much listen to the trends that are happening within the market, and react to those really quickly, and also be able to do that in a manner that we can explain kind of the whys behind it, the changes of the things that we're doing.
We remain very committed to alleviating those administrative burdens and helping them realize those patient care initiatives that they want to do. I'm super proud of our team and the work that we've done and investments we've made, and I think we're positioned ourselves for a very successful 2025.
Q: What are you seeing when it comes to the retention side of staffing?
HM: For us, we've got 100% retention of our partner surgeons. As far as the workplace, other than the surgeons, it's been a challenge for us, just like everyone else, to retain them. A lot of competition. Good people are hard to find, but we're making strides.
We have lowered our turnover rate throughout 2024 from where it was in 2023 and again, it's because of the training and we stay competitive with the compensation and just fostering that very strong workplace culture that we believe we do have, both at the practice support center and at our individual practices across the U.S.