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- This is Grace Lynn Keller
with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast,
and we are live at the business
and operations of ASC in the Future of Dentistry Roundtable.
I'm joined right now by Santo Patel, who serves
as the president of Complete Specialty Solutions.
Santosh, thanks so much for joining me,
and I would love to start our conversation
with having you introduce yourself
and telling us a little bit more about your
background. Wonderful
- Grace, thank you so much for having me.
So my name is Santos Patel, president
and Co-founder of Complete Specialty Solutions.
Uh, we are a traveling specialty DSO,
where we bring in specialist and operations teams
and clinical teams into group practices.
So allowing those practices to serve as a multispecialty
organization and really helping those patients
and, uh, the, the services rendered
within that one location.
So the mindset there is refer in, not refer out.
Now, a little bit about my background.
So I actually came from the medical world.
I'm not a clinician. I'm, I'm really just an operator.
So I came from the medical world building
multi-specialty physician groups.
My wife's a general dentist, learn more about the dentistry,
uh, space and the, the, the trend.
And notice that the in-house specialty model
was a bit fragmented.
You know, large DSOs, large groups were able
to figure out that solution.
They had specialty recruiters, they had
operation teams dedicated to the integration of specialty,
but the solo practices
and the emerging groups, they didn't have access to
that information and they didn't have access to being able
to understand the systems when you're only bringing in a
specialist once a month.
Right. So really that's where the idea was born is
how do we integrate a model that's allowing practices
to serve as a multi-specialty,
but in a capacity where it's utilizing their space
and teams, um, but not creating a burden for them.
- Absolutely. Well, thank you for expanding on that.
Um, and my first question for you today is,
what are the biggest issues
that you're currently following in dental?
- Uh, that's a great question. So, you know, I,
I would probably have a different
answer three or four years ago.
Uh, I would say the answer now in the state
that we look at is really ultimately margin
compression, right?
So margin compression is
tied into multi different layers from the fact
that staffing costs have increased
by 30% over the last two years.
Uh, the cost of supplies
and goods have gone up at least 10
to 15% in several scenarios,
but the reimbursement rates, uh,
from payers have remained a relatively flat.
So we've not seen a, a shift in payment reform,
but we've seen an increase in overall costs.
And so even the cost of building a, uh,
location has increased substantially.
Um, and then just the cost
of money has increased substantially for interest rates.
So, calculating all that in, you really think about
where practices may have had a,
a 2020 5% EBITDA margin in the past are now hovering
around a 14 to 16% EBITDA margins simply
because of those areas and, and, uh, cost constraints
- A hundred percent.
And my next question kind of has a two, two parts to it.
So first, what are you most excited about
in the dental space?
And then second, what in the dental space
makes you the most nervous?
- So what, what am I most excited about actually?
So, you know, coming from the medical world
where the medical world is heavily consolidating at,
at a pace that is now similar to
what is happening in dentistry now,
we're still probably about 10, 15 years back, um, in,
in terms of the, the consolidation speed.
But the, the excitement is that it's happening
and there's some benefits with economies of scale.
There's some benefits of organizations.
Um, there's, there's the benefit of the fact that, you know,
for example, Becker's is creating a, an avenue now
for dental leaders to come in and talk.
Um, so it's creating that, that highlight of, uh, education
and, and really operational excellence.
So I think that's what excites me is
that there's more like-mindedness.
There's more understanding of the industry
and the opportunity of the industry.
What makes me nervous is almost a similar kind
of response is the consolidation, right?
And so sometimes when you're consolidating too fast,
you can make errors and you can make,
uh, you know, missteps.
And what that ultimately does is that that loses credibility
back to the provider aspect, right?
So doctors and dentists, if they start to hear stories
of consolidation efforts that have failed,
then they pull back.
And by pulling back, either they're not
invested into growing an organization,
they're now jumping from organization to organization.
So you have the lack of stability and lack of consistency.
So I, I think that's what makes me nervous is, you know,
being able to, to build
and consolidate appropriately, have great use cases, um,
and then really focus on the retention of, of the providers.
'cause that's ultimately where you have effectiveness
of, of scalability.
- And my final question for you today is
what will the most effective healthcare leaders need
to be successful in the next two to three years?
- So, leadership has talked a tremendous amount in,
in the medical world and healthcare space.
And so I, I've been fortunate to learn from,
from that arena first.
And the way I I view leadership is, you know, you have
to be able to inspire, instruct, and inspect, right?
So inspire team for a vision
and a goal, instruct your team knowing how to get
to certain, um, milestones and checkpoints
and then inspect to, to make sure we're course correcting
and make sure we're all on the same page, right?
But in order to do that successfully, I think leaders have
to be able to demonstrate
and understand empathy if they do not understand empathy,
and they struggle with, um, being able to empathize
with their doctors that they're bringing in who have
three times the amount
of student loan debt than they've ever had before.
If they're struggling to empathize with their clinical, um,
their dental assistant team,
and why, you know, maybe as dental assistant doesn't want
to, to work more hours, drive across town
for a job that pays the same, if not less than retail
restaurants, Starbucks that's offering insurance, right?
So as a leader,
I think empathy is gonna be critical in understanding
how are you gonna build a culture around, uh,
understanding your team.
We're still a team business. We're not,
we're not a hundred percent, you know, AI focused.
We we're, we're still, um, reliant on, uh,
doctors and assistants and, and operators.
So that, that, I think that's the biggest component
where leaders need to be able to move and,
and be open-minded to is, uh, the empathy side.
- Very good point. Well, Santosh, thank you so much
for joining me today on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
Again, we're live at the business and operations of ASCs
and the future of Dentistry Roundtable.
- Yeah. Glad to be here. Thank you.
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