Welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. My name
is Chanel Bunger and I'm recording live at
the Becker's Healthcare
Fall of 2024
Future of Dentistry Roundtable. I'm currently sitting down
with Frank Balcom,
the CEO and Managing Director of Xpert
DSO Advisory Group. Frank, thank you so much
for joining me today. Oh, thank you very
much for having me. Well, I appreciate it.
And to get us started, could you please
introduce yourself and tell us a bit about
your background?
Sure. Thank you. My name is Frank Balcomb.
I am the, the CEO of Expert DSO
advisory group.
We are
a advisory group in the DSO space
made up of folks who all have at
least 30 years experience
running
as many as 380
dental
offices,
managing them. And we have folks who address
all aspects
of that.
And we work with emerging dental groups
to help them
to increase margin expansion,
reduce expenses.
We really look to
create the model
that they want to duplicate
with best practices
across the entire platform.
I owned a healthcare finance company for 28
years.
Been doing
m and a
since,
and for the last 12 years,
primarily in the northeast, but with clients all
over the country.
The you know, so that's the piece I
handle. And as I said, we have
someone who is dedicated to each area
to
instill best practices.
Again, shore up the gaps and look to
increase
best practices across the platform.
Love to hear it. And
moving forward, what key experiences have shaped your
leadership journey
in regards
to revenue cycle management or consulting in the
DSO space? However, you would like to answer
that. I hate to say it, but the
the things that have shaped me the most
are mistakes
that having
gone through
the economic downturn. If you look at the
landscape of lending
where, you know, I operated for so many
years,
every company that was in this space
is no longer in existence.
They're all
bank owned. It's Wells Fargo, Bank of America,
US Bank,
and, it's it's entirely
different, and and it has changed.
The way that
doctors
are able to finance,
growth if you're not PE backed.
You know, and I see this big movement
to groups that
what I feel overcome the difficult challenges
of getting
3, 5, 8, 10 locations.
And then someone comes along and convinces them
that now's a good time to sell.
And and my belief is Heartland is a
perfect model.
In 1997,
they started that organization.
And 20 years later, they sold it for
north of $1,650,000,000
And then
fast forward 2 more years, the Ontario Teachers
Credit Union
sold
65%
for
north of $1,870,000,000.
Oh. And and if you're a dentist
and you're still chairside,
you're driving
a lot of the revenue. You're controlling
the most expensive labor cost. And I know
those numbers are up. But dentistry's profitable.
And the ability to continue to run your
model,
you're going to make money.
And if you run into struggles or growing
pains
for a fraction of the cost, you could
vertically integrate
an organization like ours
to give you a track to run on,
identify the gaps,
identify the opportunities,
and
continue to do what you're doing
and get to a point where when you
do so,
the first letter after those numbers is a
b.
Love to hear it. Well, you've already kind
of touched on some strategy. But going a
little bit further, could you tell us a
little bit about, like, what specific strategic initiatives
you are prioritizing
for growth in patient care?
One program that we have is DSO one
loan program.
And that is geared to allowing
DSOs and emerging dental groups
to
find a lending partner
as opposed to having to rely on third
party and turning the keys to their dream
over to someone else and hoping that they're
gonna follow that same road map or that
you're gonna achieve the recap that is getting
sold, control your own destiny.
And it's it's a model of perfect practices
across your platform
that will allow you to not have limited
growth when you're relying on bank financing to
make it happen.
And and I did kinda skip over the
the revenue cycle management aspect that you mentioned,
and I'll go back to talk about that.
Because
3 years ago, I was sitting in an
Amplify conference
and they started to talk about AI.
And I thought to myself about the Terminator,
and I thought the war with the machines
has started, you know,
but when you look at it from the,
from the inception
of the very first phone call that you
get, Right? When when when that prospective patient
picks up the phone
and calls,
AI is affecting
your revenue cycle management.
Because you now you're into a situation where
we need to convert that phone call
to an appointment.
And when you convert that phone call into
an appointment, now you want to convert that
appointment into a treatment plan and you want
to sell the treatment plan. And along the
way,
there's an AI product that will
evaluate
the incoming phone calls and how they're handled.
And it'll focus on keywords
and what'll instruct
ways that you can better address the questions
to increase the likelihood
that that phone call is gonna convert to
an appointment.
And it and it just moves on from
there. It,
there there's not a single aspect that once
you make the appointment,
there's
AI that allows you to help diagnose,
improve
the, the visualization
that the patient sees
to sell the case.
So you can take a look at
exactly what's going on with the tooth
as opposed to having someone explain it to
you. So the visual
aspect to help sell
may overcome
And the diagnosis
may help overcome
either an inexperienced
practitioner, which we see a lot of in
the
DSO market
and,
the patient's
comprehension of exactly what's going on and, and,
you know, for case acceptance.
So not quite as scary as Terminator, right?
But moving forward, what significant challenges do you
think that most dental or DSO leaders are
facing today and how would you suggest
addressing them?
Well,
one of the the challenges
that I see is capitalizing
growth
internally.
And I I think what we're trying to
do as a DSO one loan program
to address that and to change the mindset
where you're not just asking someone to help
you finance and grow your operation. You're really
identifying a lender
who's going to be your partner, who understands
what your model is. And as long as
you can demonstrate
superior growth
in
what you're doing and show the trajectory
remains consistent, as they say, the secret sauce,
then you should be able to continue
to grow without limitations.
And if you take a step back,
then you shouldn't continue to grow. You should
identify
what causes of that deficiency
are bringing about, you know, the, the need
for correction.
And before you look at growing, the, the
idea that we're just gonna go
acquire additional practices,
if you haven't shored up all of your
processes,
it just pushes off a problem until
it's gonna become a larger one.
Got it. And
I feel like you've already shared so many
great pieces of advice so far, but if
you could wrap it all up into a
tiny little package and
if you could tell the listeners anything right
now, what pieces of advice would you give
to emerging leaders in this industry?
I would say, you know, know thyself.
Right? Decide
what type of operation you want to have.
Be committed to it.
If you're going to be a CEO,
run your business. You can't get involved in
personalities.
You can't get involved in these other issues.
If you have a difficulty
dealing with
personnel issues,
then bring someone in who can. You know?
Capitalizing
growth,
is going to be something that's a challenge.
So
I would just say,
be true to yourself,
invest in your business,
and stick with it. You know, get through
the difficult challenges that you have. There's folks
like us that you could vertically integrate into
your operation
for
a a virtual c suite for a fraction
of what it would cost, and someone who's
been there and done that that can guide
you through
each one of the steps
as you grow. You know, when do we
get into
a centralized function? Right? When do we
take these steps
at the next level and having someone who's
been there and done that, As we say,
experience makes all the difference.
Love to hear it. Thank you so much
for that advice. And thank you so much
for sharing your insights with me today on
the Becker's Healthcare podcast. I appreciate so much,
Frank. Thank you very much for having me.
It's a pleasure being here.