Hello, and welcome to the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
My name is Chanel Banger, and I'm recording
live at the Becker's Healthcare
Futurist history roundtable in Chicago. And sitting right
now with Tim North, the CEO of P3
Partners Inc. Tim, thank you so much for
joining me today. Chanel, thanks for having me.
It's great to be here.
Well, to get us started, could you please
introduce yourself and tell us a bit about
your background? Yeah. Absolutely.
So personally, I've got about 14 years in
this industry.
I was the,
ops guy at Aspen Dental for 7 years.
After that,
I went on to Simply Beautiful Smiles, which
was a startup in the mid Atlantic.
I was CEO there. And now,
starting this spring, I've been the CEO of
this this new venture, P3 Partners. Right? And,
we're an oral care,
surgery organization oral surgery organization.
And, I'm we're happy to start expansion.
We recently were acquired by HealthEdge, which is
a PE firm in Florida.
And, HealthEdge is partnering with us to drive,
the growth. And so we've got really cool,
situation going on. We're right in the middle
of the beautiful Appalachian Mountains down there in
West Virginia.
And,
you know, we have 14 practices in West
Virginia, Virginia,
North Carolina, and,
Kentucky.
So we, really feel like that we're doing
what we need to do based out of
West Virginia to provide, you know, world class
oral surgery health care solutions to
what is pretty much traditionally underserved areas of
the country, you know, Appalachia
and the broader mid Atlantic region. So,
our business model is targeted growth through strategic
acquisition and talented development, you know, with top
flight oral surgeons.
You know, we take care of the back
end operations, like, you know, revenue management and
purchasing, accounting so that our surgeons can just
do surgery all day.
So, that's what they like to do, and
that's the services that we provide. Together, we
make a really good team. So
that's how that works. Alright. Perfect. Thank you
so much for that introduction.
Now moving forward,
can you share,
some key experiences that have shaped your leadership
journey in the dental and DSO industry?
Sure. I did, a stint in the Navy,
for 7 years, not as, anything to do
with medicine, but as a serve surface warfare
officer. So,
that had a lot to do with sort
of my leadership style today.
My parents were, big influencers too. And me,
personally, my dad ran his own business. He
had a he had a little wool mill
a wool mill in,
Columbia County in upstate New York, and he
ran that successfully until he sold it. And
so, I learned how to be a good
business guy and how to take care of
the people that work for you,
how to,
market and sell your products,
and then find something most importantly, find something
that you like to do.
So for me personally,
you know, dentistry has been a a real
win. I was in restaurants before that.
Had a great career.
I was the COO at, you know, Papa
John's for 7 years. It was a a
great great job. I loved it. But you
know what? Dentistry
is a real
real nice profession. I'm proud to be associated
with this. I'm proud to help doctors achieve
the goals that they wanna achieve
when they can't necessarily do it on their
own because they don't have the resources.
They maybe they don't have the investment capital
that they need or that this is a
new area, the whole business end of dentistry.
So I'm happy to be able to take
that away,
let them do what they do best, especially
in the oral surgery world, and then, and
then bring that back home to, to the
patients that need it the most. So
so that's,
those are the big influences. I also wanna
throw out that Aspen was a big influence
on me. It was my first dental experience.
I learned a lot. I mean, gee, they're
the top one of the top 3. Right?
Number 2 in the world.
And so,
nothing to be, you know, ashamed of there.
They are wonderful competitors,
and they do a fantastic job, you know,
taking care of of the same kind of
patients that we do.
So I liked, learning from Bob Fontana and
Aspen. I'll give them a lot a nod
and a lot of credit.
Got it. Now, you've already mentioned something about
or a little bit about your expansion, but
could you maybe dig a little bit deeper
and tell us about, your guys' growth strategy
at p 3? Sure. You know, there's been
a lot of activity in oral surgery and
and oral surgery practices. And we've known for
a long time,
in all of dentistry that we were gonna
face a 10 year period here where maybe
half of the dental offices in the United
States, be it oral surgery or orthodontics or
or, you know, endo, they're all gonna probably
turn. And it's not because the economy or
we don't have enough docs. It's it's
because they're older. It's because the baby boomers
are getting older. So we hear about that
every day. I feel like we forgot about
that back during COVID, and we tend to
kind of talk about the economy now. But
the fact is
folks are getting older, and half of the
population of the dentists, in the United States
today are over 50.
So it's just a it's not if, it's
when. And so as a DSO, we can
really help those folks monetize,
get credit for all that hard work that
they put into their offices, and then take
the office to the next level and and
give an opportunity for maybe ownership or partnership
with a new dentist that's coming out of
school or a new surgeon, in my case,
a new oral surgeon coming out of school
who might not have the resources on their
own to be able to buy their own
office, but they still wanna run their own.
They still wanna be on their own. So
we can help them with that. So that
I like. So our strategy is to find
those opportunities to maybe do some de novos
where we have a a provider that doesn't
have an office, and I don't have one
there, but also to target those offices where
I can monetize, and it's the right way
to say it, to monetize the the selling
dentist, give them give them something for all
their years of hard work and all that
they built up, and then either leave them
there and have them, you know, sunset their
careers,
or maybe, they can leave immediately, and we
find a new provider, and we start from
scratch.
So it's,
it's really important that our dentists have good
oral surgeons to refer to. Otherwise,
too much work is put on the dentist.
They don't have time to do their prime
jobs. And and if they don't have referral
docs, it can get pretty frustrating. I I
ran general dentistry, you know, with, Aspen, so
I understand that. So having a good reliable
referral network is is, I believe, a real
important and honorable mission. So Absolutely. And can
you talk about what significant challenges,
dental and DSO leaders are facing today, and
how are you addressing them at p 3?
So I think one thing that, I feel
strongly about is the labor force. Right? Not
so much the doctors. You know? I like
to tell people, no dentists were braided or
destroyed during COVID. We really, really didn't lose
too many. I mean, we had some tough
times like the rest of the country. But
the fact of the matter is dentistry as
a profession and oral surgeons as a profession
came out of that pretty much the same
way they went in. They're not making more
or less. They're making about the same. And
then they had the regular pressures that the
rest of us had. They had all the
support staff, the hygienist, the dental assistants, in
in my case, the surgical assistants, all needing
more money
and needing better working and conditions, better scheduling.
And so the labor piece has been a
focus, and it should be because, you know,
we were probably pretty antiquated in our in
our profession and in our industry.
We needed to kinda modernize and get with
the program. And, you know, we can't let
them work at home until we figure out
a way to do dentistry with a cell
phone. We're gonna have to touch the patient.
They're gonna have to come in. So that
means our staff has to come in, and
that's hey. Right there, that's not ideal today.
Right? A lot of companies would a lot
of individuals coming out of school today would
say, I'd like to do a little bit
at home and a little bit hybrid. Well,
not here. You gotta do a 100%. So
we needed to adjust to that to think
about ways to be flexible.
And so that that's been a challenge for
an industry that, you know, didn't think they
had that.
The the other one is as, you know,
I've seen technology improve. You know, implants,
were in a thing 20 years ago. I
mean, they existed.
But, man, today, if you're not doing implants,
you're a little bit out to lunch.
And, and so you can choose not to
and outsource everything, or you can refer to
everything, or you could start doing them. But
by golly,
you know, the technology has changed. And so
you can't just, you know, do what your
father did in dentistry
25 years ago. That won't work. So that's
a big change, and that's a challenge. It's
a challenge for a 50 year old dentist
that has never done an implant
to figure out how do I teach myself,
how do I get trained,
and then how do I feel comfortable about
doing this with my patients. Right? So,
so that's a challenge. And and there's not
enough, you know, folks doing implants and or
oral surgeons to make up for that gap.
We just have to we're gonna have to
rise to the occasion.
The third thing is the interest rates. You
know, we we went for 20 years with
really easy interest rates, and the private equity
was really reigning supreme. Right? Well, now,
with interest rates being higher, it's harder. Right?
And so we've seen the number of transactions
decline in the last couple of years, but,
that should end now. Seems like we've peaked,
and we're coming in the opposite direction. So
I anticipate
the log there's a log jam. There's pent
up demand. There's a lot of practices waiting
for someone to come along and make the
right offer, and there's, you know, private equity
that's ready to grow. So
I think, we're a couple months away from,
you know, a a real watershed
breaking of the dam, and we ought to
see some stuff really start flowing and some
transactions, which will be good. It's good for
the doctors that, you know, wanna monetize. It's
good for the patients.
But what I hate to see, and I
saw this in general dentistry as well, you
know, you'd come into town, and you'd you'd
maybe buy one office because that's all you
needed to buy.
And the other 3 would just close. And
they they, you know, they have no debt.
These are baby boomer dentists. They've worked their
whole lives, and they've they're very proud of
what they've got, and they should be. But
there's no reason to work one extra day
after that. They know they're not gonna sell,
so they have that meeting with the staff.
And thanks for 42 years, and I'm moving
to Florida.
So I think,
that's a challenge. Don't like to see that.
And so I'm happy to come in, especially
on this side now, on oral surgery side,
and be the, you you know, the referral
docs that you can rely on. We're gonna
be there for you. And, and that makes,
you know, young dentists feel good about coming
into a market. So
Absolutely. Well, Tim, I wanna thank you for
your time today. But before I let you
go, with your unique career trajectory leading up
so many different types of organizations, I think
you're the perfect person to ask this question.
What would you say are some essential qualities
or skills
emerging leaders in this industry should cultivate?
Yeah. I think that's a great question.
You know, we've got to be people centric.
We really do. And you can't just run
this thing like a finance company. We have
to be thoughtful
about,
how we're managing our organizations. And, you know,
an organization like mine, we have a probably
10 people
that aren't even in the office to support
every one of,
every one of the surgeons. Probably
not
too
different at, Aspen or anywhere else. Right? And
so,
then there's the people in the office. There's
probably 10 there too. Right? So that's a
whole lot of really good folks. We talk
about living wage. We talk about all those
things, and and these are good careers at
town. I mean, these are you work at
a dentist office. You've got a good job
in that town.
So I feel like,
you can't sort of skip the people skills.
You gotta really go back, think about it,
have a strong HR department. We need to
be reactive and thoughtful.
You know, we took a big hit with
hygiene in my general dentistry days
when, you know, COVID hit. And,
a quick story. It took me took me
a while to figure out what was going
on. You know, we were we were offering
crazy amounts of money to have a hygienist
come back, and they just weren't coming.
And we couldn't figure out why. And, it
took, if you're from the northeast, a company
called Wawa,
which is a gas convenience store. Right? And,
I saw they were paying people just to
apply. They get $50 just to fill out
the application.
So I called a buddy of mine that
works there, and I said, what's the deal
with that? And they they had termination date
of
15th June. I said and, you know, offer,
whatever, ends June 15th. I said, why is
that? And he said, well, what do you
think happens June 15th? I said, I I
don't know. He said school's out. And so
so what does that have to do with
anything? And he says because the schools during
COVID have been an an unreliable
place to put your kid,
that at any minute your kid was told
he had to stay home for 3 weeks.
And he's like, who what family was gonna
let the 9 year old, the 7 year
old stay home belong?
Grandma didn't wanna come over during COVID. There
wasn't childcare,
and so someone had to stay home. And
guess what? A lot of times, it was
a hygienist.
So what we should have done, right, is
been thoughtful and smart about it and said,
wow. We we should just ask, like, what's
the problem? And I think what hygienists would
have loved if we did was say, look.
You got a job here whenever you can.
And if you have to stay home for
a month because your school is quarantined,
stay home for a month, and then you
come back. And and I know some people
are gonna freak out when they hear this,
but that that's the way to handle that
problem. And just say, you got a job
here, but I understand you also have a
job at home, instead of saying, well, how
about $60 an hour? You know? Because that
doesn't work, and we've proven it. And so
to this day, we're struggling because of that.
And so back to your question,
the people skills, smart enough. I was embarrassed
that I hadn't thought thought about that. And
here's this guy at Wawa, a can a
gas convenience store, and they got it wired.
He's figured it out. And so, you know,
we need to be humble and listen to
our people. And if you can do that
as a leader today, you're gonna be so
much better off moving forward.
Absolutely. Well, Tim, I wanna thank you once
again for your time today and for sharing
your insights on the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Thanks
for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you.