Hey there, dental professionals and industry enthusiasts.
Picture this. It's October, and you're in the
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who are at the forefront of dental innovation.
You sat in on educational
sessions exploring topics that elevate dental care as
a critical element of whole person health. You've
witnessed firsthand how digital technology is revolutionizing
patient outcomes
and how both large DSOs and independent practices
are flourishing.
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miss out on this incredible opportunity. The Becker's
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Get registered by going to beckersdental.com
and clicking on the events page. Hello. This
is Arianna Portolatin with the Becker's Dental and
Dia Silverview podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined today by Ray
Caruso, the CEO of Lone Peak Dental Group.
Ray, thank you so much for being here
today.
Yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks for the
invite.
Yeah. To start us off, can you introduce
yourself and tell us a little bit about
your background?
Yeah. Sure. So my name is Ray Caruso.
I'm the CEO of Lone Peak Dental Group.
I've been the CEO
for 7 years with this group. Before that,
I was the COO
of
Decision 1 Dental in Chicago with AJ and
his brother, Mike Acierno.
Mhmm. And,
I was with him for about 5 years
and helped them grow from very small DSO
to
oh, I don't know, 17 to 20 before
it, it moved over to the Smile Brands
operation.
And, before that, I was the well, I
started out actually at the front desk of
a dental office
in, in Springfield, Illinois, my hometown, and it
was a a Heartland office.
And back then in 2000, they had
29 practices, I think. And by the time
I left, I was the regional director, and
we had around 375.
So,
really great run-in that 11 years. I learned
a whole lot, which really helped me,
propel to, you know, go work with AJ
and Mike, and then, of course, to be
the CEO of this group. So lots of
fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Thank you for that. And
what are some of the biggest issues that
you're following in the dental industry this year?
No. When I'm around my peers,
a lot of things that we're talking about
is growing same store sales.
At this time, there's not a whole lot
of dental offices for sale
and people are very cognizant
of EBITDA and what last year's revenue numbers
were
and are you being compressed
in your margins because of salaries and all
the other expenses that continue to go up.
And most of us were contracted with payers
and we rarely see increases in their fees.
So the only way to increase the revenue
is either add more patients to the day
or provide additional services. And
that could be challenging in both cases, adding
more patients per day,
could be just as easy as stopping no
shows, but I mean, most of us know
that's never gonna happen.
So we need to work on being more
efficient with our time
and not lower the quality of our service
because patients will feel that pretty quickly. And
I'm not talking about the actual dental treatment.
I'm talking about the quality of service that
they feel, the customer experience, if you will.
And then additional services that sounds great, you
know, like, oh, let's add an endodontist or
let's add an ortho day or or any
of those things,
which is a great long term strategy. It
does help grow revenue,
but you have to be super diligent
and execute extremely well
because you may get the additional revenue and
you may get the additional services,
there's a lot of talk about same store
sales and how are we growing, how are
we improving
what we currently have between our four walls,
you know, adding doctors, adding more days, adding
more hours, you know, any of those things
that can be done easily,
you know, we're we're all looking to to
see how we can improve that.
Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
Moving on to our next question here. I'm
curious. What are the, what are you most
excited about when it comes to dentistry right
now, and what makes you nervous about the
field?
Yeah. Well, it's
it's funny. The the thing that I'm most
excited about, I'm also most nervous about, but
that's part of my strategic vision that I
really can't share that on the podcast. But
what I what I can share as far
as like my excitement
in in this industry and in dentistry
is the
is the ability for us to to continue
to grow and provide better opportunities for doctors
than they can get if they were just
on their own.
We
I know what my company does, I know
what the 2 companies that I worked with
before does. You know, they they ensure that
that the doctors have patients, that the got
that the doctors have training. They have great
CE.
They have,
plenty of patients
and patient flow. They've got great team that's
trained and
and ready to go. So I just love
that that's gonna continue and the consolidation is
gonna continue.
And you're gonna find that more and more
dental companies focus on their people
and ensuring that they're investing in people more
than just, hey, how can I create EBITDA?
Because really, if you invest in your people,
you're gonna get the EBITDA.
It just might take a little bit longer,
but at least it's the right way to
do it.
What I'm most nervous about
is
not everybody plays by the same rules
in in our space, and,
not everybody thinks that way. Now it can
be very helpful because if people don't like
where they're working, they'll typically go elsewhere.
But
the rack and stack
of of EBITDA,
the putting together dental practices
and
trying to take it to market
and selling it at a high value
and having it fail doesn't work out real
well for those of us who are doing
it great, and I think the majority of
us are doing it the right way.
But anytime a dental company doesn't go well
or it gets handed back over to the
bank because they can't
beat their covenants,
it doesn't doesn't play well for the rest
of us. So that's what I'm most nervous
about.
Okay.
And last question here. In your opinion, what
will the most effective health care leaders need
to be successful in the next 2 to
3 years?
Loaded question.
Everything.
I mean, you have to know your business.
You have to know,
your external and internal environment.
I mean, you even need to have
your your hand on, or or your your
thumb on the trigger of technology.
There's so much changing so quickly
that,
we have to keep our eyes open to
every single thing.
I will tell you and I'll tell every
leader that's in my space,
stay in your lane,
be the best at what you do. Don't
try to be everything for every
everyone.
You do not have to have every single
specialty under your under your belt. You don't
have to if you're a general dental and
you've got 15 or 20 or 50 or
a 100 general dental offices, don't go jumping
in the pedes thinking it's gonna work. We
buy pedo practices from general dental companies all
the time because they fail. So just stay
in your lane, do the best of what
you be the best of what you do,
and,
and then, yeah, keep your eyes on the
trigger of how can you make your company
and the 4 walls that you have as
great as possible as you're adding and growing.
But too often people just
want to grow at the sake of growing
and
they're adding EBITDA while they're losing EBITDA at
the backdoor
of their
current operation. So I think that's where
our, effective leaders in health care are gonna
have to always be. Like, look internally
as you're looking externally.
Don't grow too fast.
Okay. Yeah.
And just a quick follow-up question. I know
you mentioned technology earlier. Are there any particular,
pieces of new technology that you're paying attention
to right now in the dental field?
Yeah. Sure. I mean, RCM is all over
the place. Anything that can
that that can take monotony,
eliminate monotony from our people
because people don't like doing things that are
monotonous. There's very, very few people that like
that.
And so what happens is those things get
kinda pushed off to the side and they
don't get done.
And therefore, you have accounts receivable problems or
you have general exchange problems or whatever it
is that you have because of that monotony.
So anything
whether it's and I I don't need to
name name companies, but any of these AI
tools where they can write back into your
system, they can post and payment payments for
you automatically,
they can submit
remits and do all of that stuff for
you automatically.
I'm all for,
I don't think anybody
even in our AR team
really loves what they do.
They love the people that they work with,
but I don't know if posting payments all
day long is the most fun thing you
can be doing.
Okay. Yeah. And I know you mentioned, you
know, not growing for the sake of growth
and kind of staying in your lane. When
you're thinking about that, when does a leader
such as yourself
know the exact time when it might be
good for a company to add additional services
or expand in some form?
Yeah. Expanding
in some form, like, first of all, like,
when you have 75 practices, you're always gonna
have a couple that are needing help, and
you'll never be finished. It's the whack a
mole game. We're constantly playing it. You know,
as soon as this one's fixed and this
one breaks, it's happening, you know, whatever.
So you're still, like, growing
continuously
is is the right move.
Growing at a rate that's faster than you
can integrate, not the right move. Okay. Growing
at the rate that's faster than you can
handle,
grow and say, okay. We'll figure it out
later.
Yeah. Sometimes it works. I wouldn't say that's
the best way to to go. You know,
make sure that you've got the ability to
integrate and manage what you're bringing into the
group before you bring it in. And that
can be a 2 edged sword because sometimes
people build up
their corporate team to handle things and then
they don't bring it in. So they're extracting
EBITDA because of all these people. And then
sometimes you bring in something too fast and
you don't have anybody
to fulfill those roles. So it it can
definitely be a 2 edged sword.
Okay. Well, thank you so much for joining
us today, Ray. It's been a pleasure speaking
with you, and I look forward to connecting
with you again in the future.
Alright. Well, thanks a bunch. It was my
pleasure. Appreciate you asking.