Hey there, dental professionals and industry enthusiasts.
Picture this. It's October, and you're in the
middle of one of the most transformative
experiences of your career. You're at the Becker's
Fall Future of Dentistry Roundtable in the vibrant
city of Chicago, fresh off an incredible 3
days at the Hyatt Regency. Imagine yourself inspired
and invigorated
after attending captivating keynote sessions by none other
than the legendary boxing world champion and CEO,
Lila Elite, and the extraordinary
professional basketball player, Caitlin Clark. See yourself engaged
in lively discussions,
exchanging ideas, and collecting a stack of business
cards from fellow dental experts and potential partners.
You've networked with over 350
attendees and learned from more than 80 speakers
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. Get ready to transform your career
and don't miss out on this incredible
opportunity. The Becker's fall future of dentistry roundtable
is from October 30th to November 1, 2024.
Get registered by going to beckersdental.com
and clicking on the events page.
Hello. This is Cameron Cortejano with the Beckers
Dental and DSO review podcast.
I'm thrilled to be joined today by doctor
Mark Doherty of South Coast Endodontics,
CEO of Commonwealth Mobile Oral Health Services, and
CEO of d 4 Practice Solutions.
Doctor Dougherty, thank you so much for being
here today.
Cameron, thank you so much for having me.
This is great. I'm I'm happy that you
reached out, so thank you.
You're welcome. Just to start us off today,
can you introduce yourself and and tell us
a little bit about your background?
Sure. So, I have been in dental practice
now for about 20 years,
and a lot of my dental career has
been in both the private practice
in the public health,
dental practice environment.
And, within those, I wear a few different
hats.
So I am a full time endodontist, a
root canal specialist and have 4 locations here
in Massachusetts.
Also have 2,
dental business partners and 2 dental associates. And
we all kind of rotate through our different
locations each day providing
endodontic services to our patients.
Totally separate from that. I do have a
large portable dental practice.
And what we do is we have dental
teams that go to about 350
schools
throughout the state of Massachusetts,
providing comprehensive dental care to underserved populations,
mostly to children who have Medicaid.
And lastly, I do have a dental consulting
firm where we have about 10 or 11
dental consultants now that do consulting for a
wide array of of dental environments anywhere from
dental practices of federally qualified health centers and
community health centers
to DSOs and private practices,
even dental schools and and foundations.
Great. Thanks for that.
Kind of our first question today is what
are some of the biggest issues that you're
following in the dental industry this year?
Sure. So,
you know, in trying to keep up with
the data and the reports and the surveys
and, and, you know, really looking at that
through the lenses of both a private practice
and public health dentist,
I would say the 2 biggest issues for
me that I tend to follow are the
continued workforce shortages
and the access to care issues.
And, with the continued workforce shortages since the
pandemic,
again, when you look at the literature,
it really shows us that about a third
of the dental practices are still trying to
hire
those quality dental assistants and hygienists.
And, you know, if we look at that
though, that's only one piece of the puzzle
because the other piece of the puzzle or
the other problem is actually retaining
those quality
staff members.
And, I think it's really forced dental practice
owners to rethink
how their practices operate
and how they can really combat this issue.
So we're seeing more practices, more dentists, more
administrators
being, you know, aware of things like the
importance of addressing burnout, which is still out
there,
you know, promoting that work life balance,
creating that upbeat optimistic,
culture within the dental practice.
And I also say, you know, given the
opportunity for the dental staff members to have,
the opportunity for advancement,
within their positions.
The other issue that I really tend to
follow is again, is access to care. And
when I say access to care, I mean
the ability to get a dental appointment.
And certainly,
when we talk about dental practices of federally
qualified health centers and community health centers, there's
a large challenge there and there always has
been.
And with that patient population, we tend to
see a higher no show rate.
Most patients tend to have more issues
with transportation,
but we also look at it from the
perspective
of that dental practice at that FQHC
and how much demand there is. And, we
look at the capacity of those dental practices,
right? And it's like how many locations do
we have? How many operatories do we have?
And how many,
seasoned dental providers and staff members do we
have, which can all affect access to care?
When we talk about access to care for
the private practice,
really when you look at it, the number
one barrier is cost of care.
And certainly, the price of dental care keeps
rising
as dental inflation rises.
And, you know, we as dental practice owners
are paying more for equipment, we're paying more
for supplies,
we're paying more for for good staff, and
this puts a lot of pressure on the
dental practices and ultimately it puts more pressure
on the patients
And certainly dental insurance reimbursement, you know, it
hasn't kept up with inflation
and, you know, depending on what resource you
deferred to and and what numbers you look
at,
certain data will show us that about 60%
of adult patients have dental insurance.
So, you know, again, what about the other
40% that don't have it? You know, those
patients are looking at to pay out of
pocket. And again, we know that cost is
high. And even with the patients that do
have that dental coverage, you know, a lot
of them will use up their reimbursement levels
within the 1st few months of treatment, and
then they're left with nothing. And, also, they
still have to pay out of pocket.
So, you know, again, the the big things
that I follow are the workforce shortages and
and the access to care issues.
Yeah. Definitely. I think those are 2,
important topics in in the space right now.
Do you think that
the workforce shortage
is,
I guess, improving
at all, or do you think it's still
kinda,
where it was, like, right when we were
getting out of the pandemic?
Yeah. So, you know, it's funny because when
you look at the data prior to the
pandemic,
we saw that dental assistant numbers were going
down and hygiene levels were okay.
Since
then,
we saw a decrease in hygiene, but now
we're starting to see a little bit of
a bump in hygiene levels at least for
those
people going to school and getting into the
trade. For dental assistance, you know, it still
does not look great for that.
That's definitely interesting. I feel like there's been
a lot more, colleges and and schools and
universities that have kinda added those dental hygiene
programs at least within the past couple of
years that, hopefully,
will kinda help bring
more hygienists back into the workforce after, you
know, so many left the field because of
COVID.
Yeah. Absolutely. And and that's a great point,
Cameron. And, you know, I think it's a
great time
for, people to get into hygiene because it's,
you know,
financially,
you know, they can make a pretty good
darn living.
And, you know, not only as working as
a hygienist, you know, in a private practice
or even at a public health setting, but,
you know, we tend to see hygienists,
at least in Massachusetts
running their own portable dental programs, which is
great for them. And, you know, it's it's
helping solve that that issue to access to
care.
Yeah. Absolutely.
But something I'm curious to get your thoughts
on are,
what are some things that are making you
excited
about dentistry
right now, and and what are some things
that are making you a little bit nervous
or a little bit concerned?
So, I would say one of the things
that's really exciting me right now is the
potential
for better interoperability
and integration
of systems
so that since systems can communicate
and exchange information,
I'd say, at a higher and more efficient
level.
And, you know, we say that dental is
siloed for medical and it has been and
it continues to be. But if we think
about it and really the lack of integration
with our current systems, our current platforms, our
current
softwares,
dentistry or dental practices are really siloed among
each other. And, you know, there's really some
some poor standardization
right now with that. But with better interoperability,
which the future is looking to and better
integration,
you know, I think we have better, you
know, ability for these these systems to communicate.
I think we'll be able to get a
better ability,
for real time information on our patients,
a better ability to get real time referrals
and updates on our patients in that regard.
And, you know, honestly, when you think about
it from the patient's perspective, and and I
see this all the time as an endodontist,
but a patient might go see their dental,
their general dentist because they have a toothache.
And, you know, maybe that patient hasn't been
there in a couple years or a while,
or maybe it's a a new patient to
that practice.
That patient has to go in there and
fill out their medical history and fill out
their dental history and that general dentist might
say, you know what? I want you to
go see the endodontist because I think this
is a root canal problem. And then maybe
I see that patient. And, you know, I
do the same thing. I do my evaluation.
They have to fill out their medical and
dental history forms again. And maybe I deemed
the tooth is not restorable and I sent
it to an oral surgeon. So now the
patient is going to a 3rd office. And
again, having to fill out all the medical
and dental histories, having to give their spiel
about, you know, what's happening with their tooth
and and the history of their present illness.
It'd be so great if we as dental
providers and in separate entities and offices
would have the ability to have a centralized
location where we can just get all that
patient information.
We can see what was done, you know,
what what maybe diagnosis the other dentists had.
And, of course, for the patient, they don't
have to go through all this time to
fill out all this information.
So, you know, I am really looking towards
better integration and interoperability.
I would also say I'm really looking forward
to artificial intelligence and AI and certainly,
we're starting to see it already. We're seeing
it as a diagnostic tool for dental providers
to help us better diagnose dental disease associated
with the teeth. We're seeing it with front
desk management for billing, scheduling, revenue cycle management,
answering patient questions.
And again, going back to workforce shortages,
you know, I think this is a great
time to be introducing
AI because it can alleviate some of the
burden that we have as dental practice owners,
as dentists, so we don't have to rely
as much, I'm sorry to say it, but
on on people. And, you know, if this
AI can help out a bit and, you
know, alleviate some of those burdens,
that would be fantastic.
I would also say in kind of the
same sentence that what scares me the most
and and I wouldn't have said this a
couple weeks ago, but after going to a
recent technology summit,
I would say AI is scaring me a
bit as well because of with,
things like all the ransomware
attacks that seeing, cybersecurity
issues,
and, you know, it's so interesting to learn
that there's actually
AI out there trying to hack into
our systems, our practices, like 247.
So, you know, the thing that makes me
most nervous is is AI as well.
Yeah. I think that's definitely a valid concern.
It we talk a a lot of times
about how great, dental AI programs and and
those types of things are for dentistry,
which, they definitely are, especially if you talk
about, like, the diagnostic things and the front
office things.
But I think that a lot of times,
we forget that it is still so new
to the space that,
it's not just all positives. There are still
some some potential drawbacks of it.
Yeah. I agree a 100%. And, you know,
but with the AI, you know, it tends
to learn just as humans do, which which
I think is great. And and, you know,
we're starting to hear more about that. And
I think, you know, we as dentists need
to be better educated,
to that to to implement into our practices
successfully.
Yeah. I think that the implementation
of AI is gonna be crucial for for
dentists and dental practices,
so they can they can use it effectively
and get the most out of it.
Sure.
So our last question today is,
what will the most effective health care leaders
need in order to be successful in the
next 2 to 3 years in your opinion?
You know, it's funny. In in in dental
school, you know, we're not taught leadership skills.
And usually as dentists and younger dentists, we
kinda have to learn it on the fly.
It's kinda like baptism by fire.
Although some people, of course, have had experience
with with leadership roles and skills with, you
know, other positions or, you know, maybe even
with with sports or athletic teams.
But, you know, I think really to be
successful,
in the next few years, you know, we
really have to be
open to change, we have to be progressive,
we have to be up to date on
the trends and shifts that are happening in
this industry, which as we've seen over the
past several years, there have been a lot.
I would also say, we have to have
good
and reliable
resources
that we can defer to, to get good
information.
You know, I'd also say, and I always
like to preach about, you know, as leaders
to have a good team, we have to
be good mentors. You know, we really have
to empathize and not criticize.
You know, we really need to engage our
team members to have them or to give
them a somewhat of a sense of ownership
within the practice to allow them to make
decisions again. And, you know, with that, we're
trying to build that that positive culture, that
positive environment
within our practices
and great communicators as well and
communication is a two way street. It's not
all about
us communicating
or as leaders, not us communicating or delegating
our visions. It's about, you know, listening to
what our staff has to say and, again,
implementing
some suggestions that they have.
You know, what I also say we have
to be mindful of, you know,
some people call it patient centered care. I
like to refer to it as person centered
care,
especially of the future. And, you know, when
we talk about that, when we talk about
person centered care, we're talking about, you know,
the patient experience. What does that look like?
What are the outcomes of our patients? Do
we actually measure how we're making our patients
healthier or we're just saying that we're making
our patients healthier?
And certainly when we talk about that, it's
really a focus on quality of care.
Lastly, I would say for us to be
good leadership, we're good leaders and and have
success in the future,
you know, always be mindful,
that we as humans were very visual learners.
And, you know, really leading by example,
is important to do because, you know, the
people that that work with us, they're always
watching us. They're watching how we, how we
carry ourselves, how we deal with adversity, how
we speak to our patients, how we treat
our patients. And they're gonna probably duplicate
what they see. So again, if we wanna
create that strong environment, that strong practice culture,
you know, be
cognizant, be mindful that, you know, our staff
members, our team members, even our patients, they're
gonna be watching us and probably duplicating our
efforts.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think those are are great
points about practice culture and practice leadership.
Thank you.
Yeah. Absolutely.
I wanna thank you for joining us today,
doctor Daugherty, and for sharing your valuable expertise
and and insights into the dental space.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you today,
and I look forward to connecting
with you again in the future, hopefully.
Cameron, again, thanks so much. Thanks to Becker's,
and, this was great. I appreciate it.